Welfare Office Feels Cutback : Bankruptcy: Clients and their children wait hours to be served in cramped quarters by a reduced caseworker staff. Officials had predicted that turmoil would follow layoffs, closure of three offices.

The Murdock children, Samantha, 2, and Stephanie, 7, have been ready to leave the Garden Grove welfare office for hours. They are tired of playing, tired of being hushed and, most of all, they are bored.

But until their mother, Lisa Murdock, 25, of Westminster gets their welfare check and food stamps, they can’t leave. The family has no permanent home; the check cannot be mailed to her.

And so they waited Thursday, along with about 100 other people as dependent on the county’s beleaguered welfare system as they are.

For months, county Social Services Agency officials had predicted that turmoil would come to the welfare system when 300 welfare eligibility workers were laid off and three regional offices closed as a result of budget cuts prompted by the county’s financial crisis.

Thursday, welfare workers and their clients saw the chaos firsthand: standing-room-only crowds, long lines and interminable delays.

The final reorganizing of welfare offices was completed last week, and Thursdaymarked the first day since then of scheduled payments to the 44,000 families on the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program.

Because of the bankruptcy, the Social Services Agency’s West Regional Centre now handles the work of two offices--but with no additional space and fewer resources.

“This is so frustrating. I’ve been here all morning,” Murdock said. “I was on aid for three years before I moved out of state, and now I have to prove who I am all over again, now that I’ve moved back.”

The first day of any month, when checks go out and problems inevitably arise, is a busy one at any welfare office. But Thursday, people applying for welfare or people who stopped in to pick up checks waited three hours if they were lucky and all day if they were not.

“It’s really tight, but we don’t have a choice. There really is no room in the inn,” said Judy Pickard, the office’s assistant manager.

In the waiting room, crowds numbering 75 to 100 people hovered all day. Mothers cuddled or scolded their children while waiting to learn if they qualified for aid.

The predominantly Asian and Latino clients whispered concerns to younger relatives brought along to interpret for them.

The Garden Grove office, which had 10,214 open cases before the layoffs, now has roughly 35,000 cases of people enrolled in the AFDC, Medi-Cal, general relief and food stamp programs. About 80 employees who survived closure of the three former offices have been moved onto the first floor, while first-floor employees now work upstairs.

Cardboard boxes with case files and supplies line a hallway. Workstations built for two now have three or four people. Welfare application interviews, once conducted in strict privacy, are now done while as many as three families at a time reveal the events that brought them to poverty.

“This office just is not suited for a large production,” said Angelo Doti, director of financial assistance programs for the Social Services Agency. “Today is the beginning of a new era where we cannot do all the things we’re supposed to do.”

Several employees at the center suggested that the county is already out of compliance with state mandates. Thousands of case files that have yet to be assigned to social workers are going unscrutinized, and the employees speculated that undeserved checks are being issued while no one is checking for discrepancies.

“I’m sure there will be errors for overissuance of checks,” said Lupe Arias Martinez. “But I think that once the sanctions start coming in, people will pay more attention to this situation.”

Some welfare workers were coping with traumas of their own.

As part of the budget cuts, Luz Garrison was demoted from a supervisorial position to welfare eligibility worker, a job she has done now for three weeks. The loss of her position and the corresponding pay cut sting even more because she and her husband are expecting their third child.

“It’s not that you have no compassion--especially for the children--but it’s hard right now to listen to the stories,” Garrison said.

Out in the waiting room, a hierarchy of sorts develops. Old hands at the system step confidently to the counter and greet security guards by name. Obvious newcomers clutch their forms and appear lost.

Against the back wall stands Al Baker of Orange with his 6-month-old daughter. Few single men with children are in the waiting room, and he is a curiosity. He is sure people are judging him.

“I know what these people think, they think I shouldn’t be here,” said Baker, who is unemployed. “But this is the only way I have right now to take care of my daughter. I’ll wait all day if I have to.”

* ON THE BLOCK

Orange County will put 19 properties up for auction on June 20. B4