ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Nonprofit Groups Agonize Over Funds : Social services: Supervisors assure money for essential health, welfare and safety needs--but give few details.

Private health and social services agencies pressed for details Monday about whether money crucial to their operations will be frozen as a result of Orange County’s financial crisis.

The County Board of Supervisors allayed some concerns late in the day by saying it will continue to pay for essential health, welfare and safety services--including foster care, hospital care and indigent medical services.

However, those services were not described in detail.

“I think I’m a little more comfortable than I was,” said George Hood, director of Child Or Parental Emergency Services, a Santa Ana group-home service for abused youngsters. “We were waiting for some instruction or insight, and it would appear that (our) revenue streams still are pretty much intact and safe.”

The organization, known as COPES, receives 90% of its $1.4-million annual budget from the county to operate four homes for 24 abused children.

Earlier in the day, Hood and other administrators of nonprofit agencies, including those that receive state or federal funds funneled through the county, said they were not getting information from the county about whether they would be paid for services billed before the county’s Dec. 6 bankruptcy filing.

Several agencies said they had heard nothing from local officials and feared that all or much of their funding would be frozen, along with other county assets.

The effects “will range from limited to very dramatic,” depending on which funds are delayed and for how long, said Kevin Meehan, executive director of Orange County Youth and Family Services, a nonprofit agency whose services range from counseling victims of child abuse to housing adult offenders in the county’s work furlough program.

Meehan said he is trying to remain optimistic.

At his agency, he said, “we try to teach people . . . not to worry about things beyond their control. We’ll see how it works out.”

Meehan said his agency generally receives about $150,000 of its $250,000 monthly budget from county sources, so any delay would be painful. The agency is owed $200,000 for services provided before the bankruptcy filing, he said.

Carol Burby, executive director of the county Mental Health Assn., said her agency has a $600,000 contract with the county to operate two daytime activity centers for homeless, mentally ill adults, and it is determined to keep them open regardless of the crisis. “We’re committed to providing services one way or another,” she said.

Other nonprofit service providers said Monday that they fear that state and federal payments made through the county will be delayed.

County officials said those concerns are unwarranted. Distribution of such “pass-through” funds will be uninterrupted, county spokesman Jim Bourne said.

But concerns lingered.

“The truth of the matter is that nobody knows, and nobody is giving us anything official,” said Joan Cobin, executive director of Laguna Beach Community Clinic, which is awaiting about $65,000 in state and federal funds.

The money is essential to the clinic, which has a staff of 28 and operates on a budget of $100,000 a month, Cobin said.

“Nonprofits don’t operate on much of a margin,” she said, “and we’re in a worse place than most people. We just moved into a new building last February. Right now, payday . . . is in jeopardy.”

Hood of COPES said he is confident that the county will view his organization’s work as essential. “All of our kids are preschool-age victims of child abuse,” he said. “We’re caring for them, and if we don’t have the money to do that, we as an agency--and as a county--have a serious problem.”