1736 Family Crisis Center provides empowering shelter and non-residential programs to help domestic violence victims and their children rebuild their lives with newfound strengths and valuable skills.

Every hour of the day, every day of the year, you can get help for yourself or someone you know who is experiencing intimate partner abuse by calling:
(213) 745-6434
(213) 222-1237
(310) 370-5902
(562) 388-7652

A specially trained 1736 Family Crisis Center hotline counselor will listen with an open heart and offer immediate assistance. This includes referrals to the Center's shelters and community counseling programs and other life-changing community aid.

We accept collect calls and have been helping domestic violence victims and their children piece back their lives with confidence and hope since 1981. All hotline calls are confidential.

Sometimes the most difficult step toward a safer life is the first. That's why 1736 Family Crisis Center works hard to make our shelters for domestic violence victims and their children warm, inviting homes where residents can gather the support, confidence, and skills they need to create brighter futures.

All shelter services for domestic violence victims and their children are free. We welcome pregnant domestic violence victims as well as single women and mothers with children, girls and boys up through age 17. Women in shelter care may also hold, or get, the jobs they need to sustain financially independent lives, away from their batterers.

1736 Family Crisis Center's shelters for domestic violence victims and their children offer a unique blend of emergency and more long-term help. Our confidentially-located shelters throughout Los Angeles offer both emergency and up to nine or twenty-four months (depending on the shelter) of safe housing, intensive counseling, and supportive services.

Assistance provided to bolster wounded bodies, minds, and spirits includes:

• Nurturing refuge
• Food, clothing, and other life necessities
• Needs assessment and life planning for children, teens, and adults
• Individual, family, and group counseling, including art therapy, play therapy, and pet-assisted therapy
• Supervised/organized recreation
• Work with infants
• Case management services to help shelter residents identify and access future-building resources
• Linkage to free legal assistance to resolve child custody and other pressing legal matters
• Life skills training (budgeting, nutrition, housing searches, etc.)
• Parenting education for mothers
• Medical care (chronic, acute, and extraordinary)
• Referrals to other necessary services (e.g., dental care)
• School enrollment and tutoring
• Childcare to facilitate job training/search activities, work, and educational pursuits
• Celebration of holidays and other special days
• Other ancillary services as may be needed on a per-case basis

1736 Family Crisis Center also provides women in shelter care with specialized CalWORKs and welfare-to-work job training, placement, and support services to comprehensively address the major barriers to employment that domestic violence survivors face. In addition, the Center offers crucial household assistance, aftercare, and referrals.

The five shelters are customized, each with its own charm to create a warm, home-like setting. Child and adult residents benefit from assistance provided to build self-esteem, mend together mothers and children into functional loving families, promote education and friendships, encourage laughing and fun while also helping each resident deal with past emotional traumas, celebrate accomplishments and special days, strengthen the skills required to establish safe homes, and instill the value of believing in oneself.

Particular attention is focused on abused children who have suffered the emotional trauma and developmental delays that can result from abuse, neglect, and repeated exposure to violence between parents or family members. Children's assistance is provided as appropriate for each child's age and developmental stage and each shelter has a child therapist to provide specialized services.

For help now or for more information, call our 24-hour domestic violence hotlines at:
(213) 745-6434
(213) 222-1237
(310) 370-5902
(562) 388-7652

To help domestic violence victims who may not need our shelter services, 1736 Family Crisis Center provides an array of outpatient services to ensure their and their children's well-being at community service centers. This includes:

• Walk-ins during business hours
• Short- and long-term individual, group, and family therapy for children, teens, and adults
• Case management services to help victimized women identify and access future-building resources
• Jobs and job readiness assistance and on-the-job support for eligible domestic violence victims on welfare
• Domestic violence victims support groups in English and Spanish
• Domestic violence education and counseling groups for teens

While counseling services at our community service centers are provided on a sliding-scale basis, we won't turn you away if you can't pay for services.

Our Los Angeles community service center is located at 2116 S. Arlington Ave., Suite 200, Los Angeles. For more information, call our Los Angeles
24-hour crisis hotline at (213) 745-6434.

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.

For help now or for more information, call our 24-hour domestic violence hotlines at:
(213) 745-6434
(213) 222-1237
(310) 370-5902
(562) 388-7652

To help ensure the financial independence of women working to shape better lives away from their batterers, 1736 Family Crisis Center offers help to get, and keep, jobs.

Since 1999, almost 300 women have found jobs through our U.S. Department of Labor-funded POWER Project, which offers eligible domestic violence victims on welfare – in shelter care or residing in the community – help on a confidential basis. Los Angeles County-funded CalWORKs aid is also focused on the crucial goal of matching eligible domestic violence victims with promising, paid employment training, internships, and placements.

1736 Family Crisis Center partners with caring community employers who can provide jobs in:

• Retail sales
• Childcare
• Office technology
• Medical billing
• Convalescent care
• Other areas of your choice

Women enrolled in our job development and placement services for domestic violence victims on welfare are able to earn a salary in a part- or full-time job and also benefit from a range of free services to bolster their prospects for success. This includes:

• Enrollment in job training, basic education (such as GED, ESL), and community college courses to improve job skills
• Counseling for children, teens, and adults
• Short or longer-term shelter
• Legal aid, including help with child custody and restraining orders
• Childcare
• Referral to medical care
• Parenting education
• Transportation
• Life skills training, like controlling anger, managing money, and forming a support network

For more information, call us at (323) 737-3900, Ext. 244.

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 is one example. Launched in November 2001 with a seed grant from Center benefactor Sheldon Hearst, the program 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 shelters and community service centers 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."

As another example, week after week, Heart-to-Art staff and volunteers had observed a group of older children at one of our domestic violence shelters opt out of Heart-to-Art activities to play basketball. One by one, however, the children began to stop playing early to join the session's final 45 minutes.

Few of the children had previously been interested in art - or had enjoyed the opportunity for creative expression. Suddenly, they were actively taking on painting and crafts projects, attracted by the group's festivity and the amazing assortment of available supplies.

Basketball was still an important pursuit to these girls and boys, but so became the Heart-to-Art sessions that provided other avenues for increased self-esteem, mastery of key growth and developmental tasks, and self-expression.

On another front, a family touring our emergency youth shelter 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!

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

Emergency food, clothing, and other aid for people of all ages are available 24 hours a day at 1736 Family Crisis Center's emergency youth shelter.