1736 Family Crisis Center is ready 24/7 to help girls and boys facing life on the streets grow stronger, overcome their challenges, and get on the right path to reach their full potentials.

Every hour of the day, every day of the year, you can get help for yourself or a troubled teen you know by calling (310) 379-3620. A specially trained 1736 Family Crisis Center hotline counselor will listen with an open heart and offer immediate assistance. This includes referrals to Center shelter and community counseling programs and other life-changing community aid.

We accept collect calls and have been helping pre-teens and teens in crisis overcome tough problems since 1972.

Girls and boys ages 10 through 17 in need of short-term help to stay off the streets can find a nurturing refuge and help to get back on track at our emergency youth shelter. Whenever safe and possible, we work to help kids get back with their parents. Free services include:

• 24-hour intake based on telephone pre-screening
• Two weeks of 24-hour housing, food, clothing, and personal amenities
• Individual, group, and family counseling to address specific problem areas and build self-esteem
• One-on-one goal setting, problem solving, and communication skills enhancement to foster self-mastery and improved relations with family, friends, and others
• Training in independent living skills for youth working toward emancipation
• Anger and stress management instruction
• Drug/alcohol education
• Education on teen dating violence and how to create healthy relationships
• Education on sexually transmitted diseases
• Guidance on how to make good life choices
• Transportation
• School enrollment and tutoring
• Referrals to medical care and transportation to medical appointments
• Referrals to 12-step programs and transportation to meetings such as Marijuana Anonymous and Al-Anon, plus other required care
• Recreation, including weekly therapeutic art activities, outings to museums, beaches, hiking trails, and the library
• Case management to meet medical, schooling, long-term housing, and other critical needs

Our emergency youth shelter is licensed by the California Community Care Licensing Division. In addition, our Youth Advisory Board, comprised of youth shelter graduates and other caring community teens and adults, provides input and support to help ensure that our program is meeting the complex and changing needs of young shelter residents.

For more information, call our 24-hour youth services crisis hotline at (310) 379-3620. Or click here for other contact information.

Children and teens not requiring shelter can work through tough situations with caring counselors at 1736 Family Crisis Center's community service centers. While counseling services here are provided on a sliding-scale basis, we won't turn you away if you can't pay for services.

Services offered at both sites include:

• Walk-ins during business hours
• Individual counseling
• Family counseling that brings youngsters together with parents to address and resolve family issues
• Domestic violence education and counseling groups for teens
• Case management, service referrals, and linkage to helpful community resources

For more information or help now, call our 24-hour youth services hotline, at (310) 379-3620.

Our Los Angeles community service center is located at 2116 S. Arlington Ave., Suite 200, Los Angeles. For more information, call (323) 737-3900.

Our community service centers are certified by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to provide Early Prevention, Screening, Detection, and Treatment (EPSDT) services to children and their mothers.

Across three decades, 1736 Family Crisis Center's steadfast aim has been to help traumatized children and teens heal their emotional wounds, mobilize their inner strengths, solve problems, and set goals. On this essential front, we have developed proven effective shelter and community counseling programs, as well as special interventions to promote treatment and developmental achievements.

1736 Family Crisis Center's Heart-to-Art program, launched in November 2001 with a seed grant from Center benefactor Sheldon Hearst, greatly supplements and stabilizes the historic therapeutic and recreational art activities we have provided to promote better outcomes for traumatized youngsters.

During weekly Heart-to-Art activities, children and teens in our shelter and community service center programs experience:

• Classical music in all sessions to calm anxiety and strengthen concentration
• An artist's "candy store," stocked with materials to intrigue every age and interest
• The chance to freely express themselves in vivid colors and tantalizing textures or to wordlessly, artfully explore a mind and spirit-stretching topic
• Participation in fun-centered gatherings designed to foster laughter, relaxation, joy, self-esteem, and creativity

All activities are provided within a framework designed to uplift self-esteem and well-being by encouraging – in a nurturing, nonjudgmental environment – lightheartedness, freedom of expression, and self-discovery. For instance, during some Heart-to-Art sessions, children and teens are asked to focus on a suggested topic, such as: "I feel safe when..." or "Before 1736 I..." or "My dream is..." Session participants are also asked such questions as: How do you feel after the art session? Do you enjoy what you are creating? What makes the activities so enjoyable and fun?

Sample answers have included: "I feel so much better." "I feel happier; I can't believe I did that!" "I like making my own decisions on what colors to use." "I feel I have room to think." "I feel Heart-to-Art is one of the few times for myself and my thoughts." "I love the laughter!"

Such activities are designed to specifically help hurting children and teens process feelings about their abuse and promote feelings of empowerment and hope. Change on an emotional level is one of the prerequisites to creating a new lifestyle that will help them become independent, safe, self-respecting members of the community.

For example, an 11-year-old girl produced, two months apart, the following samples. "Love isn't everything in your life," she first wrote in murky, purple monotone paint. Eight weeks later, she discovered – in vivid magenta, gold, red, blue, green, and purple paint – "The thing I like is... ME."

At our emergency youth shelter, a family touring the facility to explore the placement of a teen daughter chanced upon a Heart-to-Art session in progress. The positive impression generated by the music, laughter, painting, and art supply-strewn work table compelled the father to tell our shelter coordinator that this was the right place for the girl to work out her problems. When the daughter became a shelter resident, she joined the next scheduled session!

Another teen at our emergency youth shelter had fled crisis at home and was also struggling with the depression of having just broken up with his girlfriend. Quiet and introverted, he sat silently at the Heart-to-Art worktable, showing no interest in the horde of art supplies in front of him.

As the Heart-to-Art project personnel chatted with the teen, however, he brightened. His passion in high school, he suddenly related, was ceramics. This revelation led to questions about what his art looked like, how he got inspired, and when his interest began. By the end of the session, the teen was painting, talking and laughing animatedly, and sketching some of his past creations. Not ready to quit, he remained engaged and asked if he could continue working. He did so until the shelter coordinator gathered up the art supplies to prepare for lights out.

For more information, call our Los Angeles community service center at (323) 737-3900.

1736 Family Crisis Center's Los Angeles community service center offers help for troubled community teens facing prosecution for robbery, graffiti, truancy, fighting, marijuana possession, and other non-violent crimes.

The Youth Advocacy Program accepts kids ages 10 to 18 referred by the Los Angeles Police Department and the City of Los Angeles District Attorney's office. Qualifying program participants are first-time offenders or young people who are considered at high risk for juvenile crime.

To avoid court proceedings, such teens must attend 15 counseling and education sessions over a four-month period. These individual and group gatherings are designed to help them work out their problems, stay in school, and avoid further distress by learning about anger management, alcohol and drug addiction, violence in the home, how to increase self-esteem, and other essential issues affecting their lives. Parents join their children for family counseling when possible.

Teens also benefit from referrals from program staff for after-school tutoring and recreation, mentoring opportunities, and other community resources they can access to channel their energy into positive behaviors.

For more information, contact our Los Angeles community service center at (323) 737-3900.

Emergency food, clothing, and other aid are available 24 hours a day at 1736 Family Crisis Center’s emergency youth shelter.