Centers for Community . . . and Maybe Aerobics

Some families go to the Corbin Community Center to become better parents, others to get counseling for their children. Some go for inexpensive health care, and others simply to hang out.

The Santa Ana facility is small and sometimes cramped. But for many families on the brink of crisis, it provides a big help.

The Corbin Center is one of five Family Resource Centers, and they amount to “one-stop shops” for an array of social services, ranging from child-abuse counseling and emergency economic assistance to tutoring.

The centers have been credited not only with effectively providing services but also with turning around their neighborhoods and giving families in need a sense of community and self-respect.

County officials said the centers have proved so successful that they plan an expansion this year.

The Board of Supervisors recently approved spending more than $10 million to build at least seven more centers, mostly in such working-class areas as El Modena and Midway City.

Officials hope these centers, funded by both public and private funds, will change the way aid recipients usually get services. The new centers will be in neighborhoods where the agency previously was absent. They are designed to give families a comfortable, close-by place to drop in.

By providing such services in a convenient setting, officials hope to help families avoid the crises that plunge them into dependence upon government aid.

“A lot of people in these situations suffer from isolation, feel alone or feel depressed. Maybe they’re a single parent, separated from their spouse, or separated from their homeland,” said Angelo Doti, who spearheads welfare reform for Orange County Social Services Agency.

“But they seem to relate better if there is a place [where] they can come together with their problems.”

Community leaders and police in neighborhoods that already have such facilities say they are making a difference.

In Huntington Beach, police believe that the Oak View Collaborative has helped rally the neighborhood to fight the drug, gang and child-abuse problems that have long plagued the area.

“In the past, people hesitated to go outside at night, and even during the day, they’d feel intimidated by the gang members,” said Lt. Luis Ochoa, who has been a police officer in the city for 35 years. “But I believe that all that has changed for the better. It’s just a safer community.”

How did it happen?

Residents active in events at Oak View worked with various social service providers to help reduce street crime problems, as well as reduce cases of child abuse by educating parents and looking hard for signs of abuse.

“It’s one of the better things we’ve done for families in need in a really long time,” Ochoa said.

The community center, located near an elementary school, offers programs suggested by residents.

The center provides homework assistance for students, as well as classes on gang prevention, parenting and even aerobics. Director Tessa Charnofsky believes this variety of classes fosters a healthier family.

“Yes, the connection between gang prevention and aerobics is a bit of a stretch, but the parents will be more relaxed and more healthy as a result, so we raised funds to have classes,” Charnofsky said.

The problem, experts said, with most types of social services is that they focus primarily on families already in crisis and end when the immediate problems have passed.

Typically, they only address single factors such as housing, unemployment or poor health.

John Webb, who coordinates these centers for the county, believes that helping families through less serious problems will prevent them from reaching a crisis.

“As you strengthen the family, you give them opportunities to be successful, and if you get them beyond the conflicts that distract them, you make families more able to take care of themselves.”

At the Corbin Center, visitors can take parenting classes, gain access to inexpensive health care, find employment, get welfare, apply for emergency rent and utility assistance, learn how to fix their credit or just drop by to talk.

Every Monday, a variety of experts meets to discuss the problems of some families and coordinate their support efforts.

Down the hall is a child-abuse counselor, and nearby is an office that offers employment advice. County employees help families apply for government aid, while a child-abuse worker coordinates visits to homes of at-risk children. Jaime Munoz coordinates child-abuse prevention programs at the site and said that services have improved as a result of this structure.

“Before, all sorts of things would be going on at the same time, but caseworkers really didn’t know what was going on because it was hard to communicate with everyone in a different office,” Munoz said. “Now, all of them are here, in one place, and there’s a lot of impromptu communication on a case.”