The Southern California Counseling Center has been an innovator and supporter of mental health services that fit the needs of a diverse community. We have been at this for over 50 years and have a lot to be proud of.  We are particularly proud of a project which began in 2014 that serves a disproportionately under-resourced community.  The systemic poverty and social injustice that this community has and continues to survive is truly remarkable.

SCCC has been in partnership with a non-profit in Watts that has been a foundation and touchstone for the community. We entered into a collaboration with Watts Labor Community Action Committee in 2014 and have brought Outreach Services, and the unique way that we provide those services, to the Watts community.  The project has thrived.  When we started, we were told there was no need for individual services because there would never be a demand for counseling beyond court-mandated individuals. Three years later there is a 6-week waiting list for both mandated and self-motivated clients.   This is a fantastic problem WLCAC never saw coming and a first in its history.

SCCC now ventures into another phase of this project.  For the past three years we have been working to provide services wherever we could fit within the limited space the WLCAC complex had available.  This month, December 2017, we have secured a 6-room building on the WLCAC campus to provide even more services to a community that is now becoming aware of the benefit of relational counseling. We have become part of the Watts community through our programs but more importantly through the way we have provided services that respect the client, their lives and what they have survived through their personal and collective resilience. The Southern California Counseling Center has committed to this community through our Outreach Services and through our belief in the ability of the members of this community to bring what they experience through our services to the rest of their family and friends.

Many members of this community are joining our Community Counselor Certificate Course so that they can support the community as we have. Our new space at WLCAC, which we are securing for three years, is our way of expanding what we started in 2014. We hope you will be as excited as we are and support us not only in spirit but in our need to raise funds to keep this momentum going. We are truly impacting the lives of the community and in this we are also saving the lives of those who are just too important to lose.