The Guidance Center (CA)

The Guidance Center provides comprehensive mental health treatment to our community?s most disadvantaged children and their families struggling with mental illness and abuse, leading them toward a positive and productive future. The Guidance Center envisions a community where all children have the help they need to be healthy and happy. In 1946, a visionary group of local public school teachers and counselors responded to growing mental health needs of school children and their families by forming the agency to provide help and hope to those in need. For more than 70 years, The Guidance Center has been able to build upon the legacy of our founders ? anticipating the needs of our community and adapting as an organization to meet them. Our therapists provide comprehensive mental health services that are evidence based and especially tailored to each child?s unique needs. Driven to remove barriers to accessing treatment, our therapists meet those children wherever they are ? whether that?s in school, a hospital, their home, or foster care. Headquartered in Long Beach, we are a major community mental health provider ? employing nearly 200 mental health professionals, support staff, administrators, and interns ? that serves more than 3,000 children and families annually across Long Beach, Compton, San Pedro and Catalina Island. Under the leadership of Patricia Costales, LCSW, The Guidance Center continues to seek new opportunities to partner with civic leaders and local organizations, educate the community about the complexities of mental illness and implement healing solutions. At The Guidance Center, we don?t see ourselves as a service provider to the community. We see ourselves as neighbors. We are much more effective in bringing hope and healing to the families who need us when we are an integrated part of the neighborhoods and communities where they live. We collaborate with sister organizations, civic leaders, and community members so we can be joined in our efforts and our mission to help the families who need us most.