A nationally recognized program serving children with severe mental and emotional disabilities could become a casualty of Sacramento's bruising budget battle.

The $35 million Children's System of Care program goes to 52 participating counties for care of the state's estimated half-million children with severe disabilities, including 1,000 in San Francisco alone.

"Some of these kids have been seriously abused physically and sexually, sometimes resulting in serious post traumatic stress for the kids," said Carolyn Novosel, director of children's services for Alameda County. "There's a potential for these kids hitting the doors of juvenile justice."

System of Care serves children who suffer from such debilitating problems as autism, severe depression and eating and bipolar disorders. It lets case workers pull together help from a variety of agencies to make sure children and their families get counseling and other services.

The goal is to keep these children in school and living at home instead of placing them in expensive, potentially traumatic care centers.

In May, Davis proposed balancing the state budget shortfall through a mix of tax hikes and budget cuts, including System of Care.

Its funding was restored in the Senate's budget proposal, but the state's $100 billion spending plan is now stalled in the Assembly.

Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said the governor supported the Senate plan, but that the program's fate depended on Assembly Republicans.

"The only thing from keeping this (program from continuing) are the Assembly Republicans who want $5 billion more in cuts, and this would certainly be on their list," said Maviglio.

Peter DiMarco, a spokesman for Assembly GOP leader Dave Cox of Carmichael, said Republicans were not against any particular program but believed the state had to bring its spending under control.

"The members in our caucus don't believe that raising taxes is the way to solve the problems the state faces," said DiMarco.

Program supporters say if the cut goes through, more children will fail in school, be hospitalized and engage in criminal activity, and more families will be broken apart.

"If we eliminate all of the most effective mental health program models, we are setting our state's mental health policies back years," said Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, D-Davis, who wants funding restored.

A San Francisco System of Care program provided intense training from behavior specialists over several years to help Jessica Gallegos, 11, who is autistic, control her fits and learn to speak, said her mother, Teresa Gallegos.

Next school year, Jessica will be in a regular class at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. Her mother now serves as a parent advocate, guiding families through the city's youth and mental-health bureaucracies.

"She was a head banger and had some emotional problems on top of being autistic," recalled Gallegos. "Now when she grows up, she'll be fairly independent."

Kim McComb of Concord said her family had been falling apart two years ago when they began receiving System of Care services. She and her husband were close to getting a divorce. Her 15-year-old son was in a group home for treatment of bipolar disorder, and her 17-year-old boy was soon to go into supervised care to help him handle anger.

But after nearly two years of counseling sessions and group therapy classes, the boys are back home, and McComb's family is stronger than it has ever been.

"His self-esteem has shot through the roof, and he's just totally different, " McComb said of her 15-year-old son, Branden. "And Mike's been home for a year. I'm positive they'd be in jail (now) without the help we received."

Contra Costa County, which stands to lose about $1.3 million, will be devastated if that money is taken away, county officials said.

Chief Probation Officer Steve Bautista said it would almost certainly result in more troubled youths being taken from their homes and put in juvenile detention centers.

Sai-ling Chan-Sew, children's coordinator for San Francisco's Department of Public Health Community Mental Health Services, said $1 million in state funding fueled several different programs in the city's schools, mental health,

juvenile probation and social services departments.

About 1,000 of the 5,000 children served annually by San Francisco's mental health system are extreme cases requiring the involvement of multiple agencies like juvenile services, education and foster care.

"They're really the highest of the highest end in terms of needs," said Chan-Sew. "This grant allows us to provide intensive care."

Alameda County serves more than 200 kids a year ranging from 8 to 18 years old through its Destiny program. It would lose about $1.2 million in funding, said Novosel.

"There'll definitely be less of an opportunity for agencies to intervene early with the child," said Novosel.

The System of Care concept began in California in the mid 1980s and has been copied nationally.

A 2001 study by a collaborative of the University of California, San Francisco and the state Department of Mental Health found counties with system of care programs placed fewer youth in costly restrictive centers than the state as a whole.

They also show a significant improvement in school achievement and a drop in juveniles who get into legal trouble.

"Nobody knows if its going to be saved or not," said Rusty Selix, executive director of the Mental Health Association in California, a nonprofit child advocacy group.