Jury Report Chafes South County : Mental health: Residents indignant as area’s attractive clinics for children are upheld as evidence that the county is neglecting children from other sectors.

South County residents were indignant Wednesday over an Orange County Grand Jury report that pointed to their pleasant child mental health clinics as evidence that the county is neglecting the rest of its children.

“I received 60 calls today from volunteers, parents and others familiar with our clinics who said they were upset that it seemed from the grand jury’s recommendations that the South County clinics were unfairly developed at the expense of the rest of the county,” said Linda Rappaport, chief of the county-operated mental health clinics in South County.

“The fact is that the clinics were developed by a network of mental health officials working with school districts and volunteers to meet the local needs,” she said.

Volunteers who helped to build the clinics were particularly concerned about suggestions from grand jury members that the county should redistribute some of the South County’s mental health resources.

Such a shift, Rappaport cautioned, could require abandoning some children now being helped. The grand jury on Tuesday said the Orange County Health Care Agency’s children and youth services department is providing better services in predominantly white areas of the county, most notably the South County.

The South County contains seven of the department’s 14 clinics, and in the last three months has treated 745 of the 1,626 children seen at county mental health clinics. The vast majority of them are special education students whom schools have referred to the county for free mental health services.

Far fewer children are being treated at mental health clinics in other regions of the county: 266 in the west, 236 in the east and 237 in the north.

County officials Wednesday attributed the regional disparity to the exceptional relationship that Rappaport has fostered between the mental health program and South County school districts, which have provided space on campuses for counseling.

They add that more recently, similar efforts to establish school-based clinics have been made in other parts of the county.

Tom Uram, director of the Health Care Agency, conceded Wednesday that his agency “will probably have to do more outreach” into communities to rectify a shortage of minority children in its programs.

Uram said that white parents tend to be more demanding of county mental health services for their children, and that the county has responded.

“A lot of times we are seeing (white) parents with their lawyers demanding service,” he said.

Uram noted, however, that the county is already short of mental health funds, with an annual budget of $15 million to $18 million for the adult and child mental health clinics.

Timothy Mullins, the county’s director of mental health, said that instead of removing resources from the South County he will go after new sources of funding, although he couldn’t say exactly what they will be.

The grand jury report also called for the immediate closing of the health agency’s Anaheim clinic, contending that it is “unpleasant and potentially dangerous for its young patients.”

Housed in a cinder block building at the corner of Ball Road and Paulina Place in Anaheim, the mental health clinic has long corridors and a grim institutional feeling to it, with dirty and patched white walls.

The 96 children currently treated there arrive by bus or taxi or are escorted by their parents, often having traveled a long distance from their homes or schools scattered throughout North County.

Manny Robles, in charge of the region that includes Anaheim, said that since he took that position in November he has hired bilingual social workers and added a second bilingual psychologist to help at the clinic, where a significant portion of the clientele speaks only Spanish.

Grand jury members were distressed to find that the children’s clinic is upstairs from an adult mental health unit whose “clientele includes drug users and other emotionally disturbed persons.”

Mullins agreed that the Anaheim clinic is ill-maintained and should be relocated. He said the county General Services Administration has been trying to identify alternative locations for the adult and children’s clinics for two years. GSA officials, however, say they have been actively searching for six months.

Mullins acknowledged that in the last six months there have been three violent outbreaks in the adult clinic, involving a client who assaulted a staff member, another client who had to be disarmed of a knife and a third who attempted suicide. However, he disputed the grand jury’s contention that it is dangerous for the clinic’s children to be in contact with the adults, using the same entrance to the building and the same restrooms.

“I do not think it is an unsafe environment,” Mullins said.

Reynold Elkin, who chaired the grand jury committee that investigated the health agency department, retorted, “If there were youngsters wandering around who were able to rub elbows with some of those people on the first floor, I would be scared to death. . . . What are we waiting for?”

The Anaheim clinic contrasts sharply with the school-based mental health clinics that have been springing up in South County over the past eight years. For instance, the clinic at San Juan Elementary School in San Juan Capistrano looks like someone’s home, with comfortable chairs and colorful pictures, plants, lace curtains and teddy bears propped everywhere.

“It is child-friendly,” said Rappaport, noting that all the furniture and decorations were donated by people in the community.

Rappaport’s husband is deputy assistant director of the children and youth services department, and the grand jury in its report said this gave the impression that the South County was therefore receiving special treatment.

But Elkin was quick to say Wednesday that Rappaport is “doing an extraordinarily good job. She is doing a hell of a job down there, but why are we ignoring the other three regions?”

Times correspondent Terry Spencer contributed to this story.