Budget Woes Force Clinic for Alcoholics to Close : Health care: The closure of the county outpatient center in Costa Mesa will put indigent clients especially at risk, officials say.

The Orange County Health Care Agency will close its outpatient clinic for alcoholics Saturday, a move that could significantly weaken the county’s ability to provide help to those suffering from alcohol-related diseases.

The closure is the latest in a series of setbacks for the county’s alcohol program due to shrinking budgets. Last year, the neighborhood recovery center in San Juan Capistrano shut down, and in July, a Laguna Beach outpatient clinic for alcoholics was also forced to close.

But Ron LaPorte, a Health Care Agency division manager, said the loss of the Costa Mesa clinic, which serves 130 clients and has become a fixture in that community in the past decade, will be the greatest blow so far.

“We’re not just tightening our belts at this point,” LaPorte said. “This is a real cut. This is a real serious loss to our system.”

Ironically, LaPorte said, the closures have become necessary even though the county’s overall budget for alcohol programs has more than doubled in the past decade.

Federal funding, which had increased from 1984 through 1992, was allotted for specific groups, such as Latinos, teen-agers and women with dependent children, he said.

“With a lot of the new money have come requirements for specialized programs for specialized populations,” he said.

In the meantime, reserves that had helped maintain the basic programs have run out.

“We’re now having to cut back on our basic service system,” LaPorte said.

The Costa Mesa clinic opened in Newport Beach in the 1970s and relocated to its present Red Hill Avenue location in the early ‘80s, said Sharon Granados-Clark, who runs the Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo clinics.

In Costa Mesa, recovering alcoholics were able to get individual or group counseling two or three times a week along with other services.

Those clients will now be routed to one of the county’s four remaining clinics in Aliso Viejo, Santa Ana, Westminster and Fullerton.

But Granados-Clark said such transitions are not easy.

“In dealing with addictions, we understand how difficult it is to establish a rapport and get trust,” she said. “Some of the clients are choosing to discontinue treatment altogether.”

In addition, some of the clinics already have waiting lists for specific programs, Granados-Clark said.

LaPorte said closure of the Costa Mesa clinic will be most keenly felt by the indigent, since the county charges clients based on their ability to pay. Some clients pay nothing.

“There are private concerns out there” to help alcoholics, he said, “but we’re the county. We can turn no one away for the lack of ability to pay.”

Laguna Beach community activist Marsha Bode, who used to hustle people to the outpatient center there whenever they expressed a desire to stop drinking, said she still misses having that clinic nearby.

“With alcoholics, you need somebody right on the spot to catch them when things are tough,” she said.