FAMILIES FALL THROUGH NET : VALLEY'S POOR FACE DAUNTING BUREAUCRACY TO GET HELP.

Byline: Yvette Cabrera Daily News Staff Writer

With resignation, Bettye Cooks shuffled through the stacks of papers and phone numbers on her coffee table, wondering how she will feed her seven grandchildren.

At 61, she should be enjoying her golden years, but four weeks ago, Cooks suddenly became the children's temporary legal guardian when her daughter was sentenced to a month in jail.

Now, Cooks is scouring the San Fernando Valley's charities and social service agencies in search of food and clothing for the children.

``This has just overwhelmed me,'' said Cooks, who is on unpaid medical leave from her job as an office supervisor. ``I didn't want to see the kids split up, especially because they are so close.''

What she's found so far is that one organization refers her to the next. Some require complicated paperwork that takes a long time to process, while other charities and organizations say they are too strapped to help.

Cooks is not alone in her plight.

A new study by the Los Angeles County Children's Planning Council identifies several areas of the Valley that are home to large numbers of poor children, and it concludes that the governmental and charitable safety net has allowed many families like Cooks' to fall through.

``Here's a family that desperately needs assistance, but they're falling through the gaps because they don't fit comfortably in any established pattern of service,'' said Laura Escobedo, a member of a coalition of 60 Valley social service agencies.

``There are families that need immediate help, and we need our planning needs to include those kind of stopgap services,'' said Escobedo, associate director of development at the Childcare Resource Center in North Hollywood.

Twenty-two-year-old Xochitl Ayala needed instant aid last year, and she found it at the Santa Rosa Community Center in San Fernando, an area identified as having a high concentration of impoverished children.

Ayala shares a single bedroom with her husband and kids in a home that her brother-in-law rents in San Fernando.

``I see a lot of kids in San Fernando like mine who need help,'' said Ayala, a mother of three children ages 4, 2 and 17 months. ``The center has helped me a lot - it was aid that fell out of the sky.''

The agency, affiliated with Catholic Charities, provides her with infant formula, diapers, food and clothing every month, Ayala said.

But the little extras that Ayala's children ask for, like ice cream or toys, always seems out of reach.

``There are times when the kids see a hamburger or toy on television or they want an ice cream when the ice cream truck drives by,'' Ayala said. ``So I save up what I can, and most of the time I prefer to buy them something than to buy anything for myself.''

Cooks hasn't been as fortunate; her search for aid is typical of what the Planning Council found during its research.

She lives in North Hills, which the Planning Council also identified as one of the pockets of poverty in the San Fernando Valley.

The most impoverished children live in the central and northeastern sections of the Valley, southeast Burbank, southwest Glendale, the city of San Fernando and in west Santa Clarita, the study found.

As Los Angeles County's unemployment rates increased from 1989 to 1993, so did the number of Valley children in poverty.

``The children are just bearing the brunt of it,'' said Cal State Northridge sociology Professor Jean Daniels, who specializes in social welfare and social policy.

``A child is born, and the father or the mother had a good paying job, but when the economy changes or when the parent loses a job, then it's very easy for them to slip into poverty,'' Daniels said. ``And I think that's what we're seeing in the Valley - the children are poor because the parents are poor.''

Cooks said she was receiving $16,800 a year in Social Security payments before she took in her daughter's seven children.

A family of four would fall below the poverty line set by the federal government if it earned less than $15,141 a year.

The number of Valley children in poverty jumped from 14.3 percent in 1990 to 19.6 percent in 1994, while countywide it increased by 32 percent, the Planning Council found.

Likewise, those receiving Aid for Families with Dependent Children have increased to 109,682 people in the Valley, and the ratio of children in school lunch programs now hovers at about 50.2 percent, according to the study.

The Planning Council found that families like the Cookses face a winding path of government agencies and charities that act on their own, rather than coordinate their efforts.

The Planning Council's study recommends that Los Angeles County and private agencies work more closely with local communities to identify needs unique to those areas.

To carry out the council's vision, a coalition of 60 Valley agencies called the Service Planning Area Council for the San Fernando Valley was formed almost two years ago, but their task is substantial.

Sharon G. Watson, executive director of the Children's Planning Council, said she would like to create a uniform application for aid that agencies countywide can use.

``You get more leverage and more bang for the buck by not re-creating the wheel with all these thousands of agencies,'' Watson said. The existing system ``doesn't cause poverty, but it doesn't help people get out of poverty.''

Just ask Cooks.

The Salvation Army in Van Nuys told her to come back in January. The charity says it closes its food distribution until then for lack of volunteers.

Centre Clothes Corner in Van Nuys told Cooks she had to enroll her grandchildren in school before she could receive free clothing. The agency's policy is to have school nurses refer needy children and make appointments for them at the center, according to Chairwoman Carol Sgro.

Other agencies also required similar letters of referral from a social service worker - a requirement that takes time to process.

Escobedo said Cooks' experience highlights the problems.

``That's what the grandmother was hitting - a very formal system, where if you don't have documents we can't help you,'' Escobedo said. ``It's more than just referrals, it's that a lifeline is thrown from one source to another that these families can hold on to and not get lost.''

Cooks was losing hope increasingly with each day; her grandchildren, who range in age from 3-month-old Betty to 15-year-old Brett, continued to gulp down food with a seemingly insatiable appetite.

``They always asking for two helpings,'' she said. ``It was like they were starving.''

Ultimately, Cooks received food staples and diapers from Project Hope, a San Fernando agency. And for herself this Christmas, her gift was the children themselves. ``I feel so blessed that I can help somebody, even if it is my own children.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1--Color) Bettye Cooks of Mission Hills navigated a sometimes overwhelming social services bureaucracy to get help for her grandchildren while their mother spends time in jail.

Phil McCarten/Daily News

(2) San Fernando's Xochitl Ayala and her children Jessica, 4, Miguel, 2, and Enrique Corral, 1, are among a growing number of Valley families who turn to increasingly stretched charities to obtain necessities.

David R. Crane/Daily