CARE Program Aids Child Abuse Fight : Schools: Teams educate teachers and students about warning signals. But its future is uncertain because of state budget crunch.

These days, Louise Gagne is sometimes haunted by the face of a little girl who was in her class at a well-regarded private school a few years ago.

“I realize now she was severely sexually abused, but I just couldn’t recognize it at the time,” said Gagne. Now a teacher at Micheltorena Street Elementary School in Silver Lake, she is part of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s highly praised anti-child-abuse program.

As a participant in CARE (Child Abuse: Recognize and Eliminate), Gagne is part of a team at the school that has been specially trained to recognize the often elusive signals of neglect and of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. She and her peers are well-grounded in when, what and how to report suspected incidents. The team works with staff members and parents to help head off or defuse problems at earlier than usual stages. Perhaps most important, they teach children how to protect themselves, including ways to fight the life-scarring psychological effects of abuse.

“It’s the most comprehensive, thoughtful and efficient school-based program anywhere,” said Dr. Michael Durfee, coordinator of child abuse prevention programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

Durfee was among those who helped persuade Board of Education members in June to leave the CARE program untouched when it needed to cut $220 million from the district’s budget.

However, the program faces a much bigger problem. Nearly 75% of its annual $800,000 funding comes from a $10.1 million state program Gov. George Deukmejian has said he wants to eliminate to help solve California’s own budget problems.

“It is unconscionable for the governor even to propose such a thing,” Board President Jackie Goldberg said Friday. She said it would be very difficult for the district, which is likely to face even more cuts as a result of events in Sacramento, to find the money to save the CARE program.

“We certainly would want to,” Goldberg added, “but I don’t know how we could.”

The funds were intact in the budget approved by legislators on Saturday, but it was uncertain whether they would survive the governor’s expected veto of specific budget items this week.

Developed by former teacher Shayla Lever, now director of the district’s Child Abuse Prevention Unit, the CARE program began in 1980 and has grown to include 152 of the district’s 414 elementary schools.

Lever’s office provides intensive training for a small, handpicked team of staff members at each participating school, along with some basic education in program principles for other staff members, curriculum materials, student instruction and parent workshops. The program is designed so each school, once training is completed, can operate nearly autonomously, freeing the 10-member office to monitor program effectiveness, provide teaching for new staff members and other support services, and concentrate on bringing more schools into the fold.

“We have managed so far to provide the training to every school that has asked to be included and still maintain a high level of service,” said Lever, whose project has drawn the interest of several other school districts in California.

Noting that victims of child abuse often grow up to be deeply troubled, sometimes antisocial adults, who in turn abuse their own children, Lever argued that cutting prevention program funds is a false economy.

One of the more tangible measures of the program lies in the statistics tabulated annually on reports of suspected child-abuse cases from all of the district’s more than 600 schools. CARE schools, on average, submit about six times the number of suspected cases as non-CARE schools. About 6% of those reports are deemed unfounded by the agencies who receive them, while that proportion ranges anywhere from 40% to 70% for the other schools.

State law requires principals, teachers and others to immediately report suspected cases to a child protective agency: in Los Angeles, the county Department of Children’s Services or the local police department. Those who do not risk facing criminal charges.

Child abuse is sometimes so hard to recognize that, despite the district’s widely disseminated instructions, many cases that should be reported are not, while some incidents are submitted that turn out to be without merit, Lever said.

The numbers of reports filed--an average of 14 per school last year--remains fairly constant for CARE schools. From July, 1989, through June, 1990, those schools accounted for 2,129 of the 6,168 cases reported districtwide.

“An issue overall is simply one of correct information,” said Lt. Steve Day, former head of the Los Angeles Police Department’s child protection section. “We can generally tell if the reporter is a graduate of the CARE program.”

Because of the state reporting law, Day added, “teachers and others tend to err on the side of reporting. The potential to clog the system (with unwarranted reports) is there.”

He recalled the months after teacher Terry Bartholome’s arrest in 1984, and eventual conviction, for molesting students in his elementary school classes. “You had institutional paranoia then,” Day said.

In the 1985-86 school year, the number of reports from the district zoomed to 7,011. Nearly 5,500 of those came from non-CARE schools and most were determined to have been without basis.

“The fallout from that was really, really detrimental,” said Lever, not only because innocent people were accused but also because, in the resulting loss of credibility, “abused children went by the wayside.”

Psychiatrist and child-abuse expert Dr. Roland Summit of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center said the CARE program has many other benefits, including an emphasis on teaching children that they are not to blame and are not unworthy if they are unable to fend off the abuse.

Another benefit comes from the heightened awareness and skill of CARE school staff members, he said.

“It provides more avenues of support, and it gives teachers a way to get more comfortable (in dealing with child abuse) on an ongoing basis. That’s much more effective than bringing in a consultant for a few hours of training and then moving on.”

In 10 years, only three schools have dropped out of the program. Despite the track record, the principals at most of the district’s elementary schools have not joined. They include those at the two schools Bartholome taught, and the one at which another former teacher, Don Ray Moore, has been accused of sexually abusing fifth-graders.

Lever said the reasons range from an unwillingness to make the required substantial commitment in time and staff, to a lingering unfamiliarity with the program, to a reluctance to acknowledge child abuse as a widespread problem. (Experts estimate that, nationwide, at least one in five youngsters suffers some form of abuse.)

At Micheltorena, Principal Eugene Sabin is so enthusiastic about the program that he has included himself in the five-member project team.

“I think we have learned a lot about the needs of our students. I’ve been surprised at the extent and depth of some of the problems,” said Sabin, who said his main criteria in assembling the team was to pick dedicated, energetic teachers who had the respect of their colleagues.

Teacher Stephanie Buehler, a member of the CARE team since the program started at Micheltorena two years ago, said she believes the whole staff, including bilingual classroom aides and clerical workers, works in a coordinated way to help children and their parents.

“We have a strategy, and everyone knows what it is,” Buehler said, reciting the principles the program aims at young abuse victims: Say no; get away if you can; tell someone; it’s not your fault; it will not always be like this; and there are people who care and can help.

“The child knows there is a whole support network here, and many times we are able to help parents before a situation reaches the point of abuse,” agreed teacher Donna Kusumoto.

She cited the case of a kindergartner who began crying as the teacher passed out projects the youngsters had crafted for Mother’s Day gifts. After some gentle questioning, the child said her mother had threatened to throw the offering in the trash. During a hastily arranged, informal talk, the frazzled young working mother confided she felt under a lot of pressure and had once told her daughter, “I wish you’d run away.”

Kusumoto said the CARE team lined up some counseling and other help for the family.

Sometimes, what happens after an incident is reported becomes as crucial as stopping the abuse in the first place, team members said. They related a recent case of an 11-year-old girl who said she was being molested by an uncle living at her home. The report was investigated and the uncle was ordered by authorities to leave the house.

Then the child suffered the anger of her parents, who had counted on the uncle to help them pay the rent.

“It’s very hard at home. They’re blaming me,” the girl often tells her teachers.

“We’re working a lot with her, trying to build up her self-esteem, assure her that she did the right thing,” Kusumoto said. “We want her to know that she is more important than the rent, no matter what she is being told at home.”