The Demographics of Social Services

* In your editorial, “Social Services and a Changing County” (Aug. 21), I was struck by your sentence, “The county shares in the blame.”

Does that mean we the people are somehow obligated to the Spanish-speakers that are overwhelming our social services? Shall we offer the same kind of largess to the Vietnamese, Koreans, Armenians, Chinese, etc.?

I mean, we have plenty of money for all these programs, right? If not, let’s close a few more libraries, because our first obligation above all is to the poor that Mexico exports to us in ever-increasing numbers.

Boy, and do we need them to keep on coming. After all, there is an unlimited demand for busboys, agricultural workers, gardeners and carwash workers.

Try to restrain your illogical little liberal hearts. Some of us who are not mean-spirited nevertheless understand we cannot feed, educate and provide health care for the poor of the whole world.

DAVID ELIZONDO

Rossmoor

* Your editorial, “Social Services and a Changing County” is “right on.” It reveals another glitch in Orange County’s support for social services, the crisis intervention and prevention mechanisms to deal with the weaknesses in our social institutions.

Cal State Long Beach’s Department of Social Work has been trying to fill the massive gap in the availability of professionally trained social workers in Orange County as has USC’s local social work campus. Our two-year master’s program has averaged 40% ethnic minorities, and 17% of the total are Latinos.

Your significant attention to the need to keep up with the changing demographics of Orange County and Southern California also carries another message, the limited number and support for schools of social work in this area.

Three longtime schools (CSULB, USC and UCLA) account for a third of the 1,100 master’s (in social work) graduates in California. Surveys indicate that all 58 counties in California have difficulty filling positions.

And behind this lack has been nearly three decades of “declassification” of professional social work positions in governmental and voluntary sector agencies to hire cheaper untrained workers.

Thus, there is a need for MSWs for what has been designated by the Department of Labor as one of the most needed professions.

JAMES L. KELLY

Director, Department of Social Work

Cal State Long Beach