Long Beach's Guidance Center Moves to New Home

The desire to be closer to its client base and to house both its administrative and clinical staff in one building prompted Long Beach’s Guidance Center’s 18-month search for a new home.

Patricia Costales, the center’s executive director, dubbed the new home, the “big green apple.” The grey-and-green concrete building, located at 1301 Pine Ave., was chosen for its proximity to where most of the 2,400 families and children the center serves in the Long Beach area live.

“The old center [in Bixby Knolls] was not located where our clients are,” she said. “We reviewed three years of client data to see where our clients are and this location was deliberately chosen.”

Also, the center did a staff survey and found that there were some communication issues with people not being the same building, Tim Sailor, the center’s board president, said.  

The new building, a renovated warehouse, was also designed to be big and welcoming for the children the center serves, Costales said. Inside, there are brightly painted walls, private therapy rooms, and play and conference areas.

Having served the greater Long Beach area for more than 60 years, providing mental health treatment to children and their families, Sailor said that not a lot of people in the community know about or aware of the services the center provides and he hopes that the building will change that.

“We have a strong school base presence,” Sailor said. “We are well known in the field for what we do, but the community doesn’t know about us. There’s a stigma around mental health service and we want to change that with community awareness.”

At the center’s Aug. 6 grand opening, 8-year-old Alexis Cunningham showed how the work at the Guidance Center changed her life. As an aspiring singer, Cunningham suffers from social phobia. After coming to the center for two months, she was able come out of her shell and blew the audience away when she performed at the ceremony.

“She’s the perfect example of the potentials of the clients we serve,” Costales said.

Maya Cunningham, Alexis’s mother, said she definitely noticed a change in her daughter.

“She’s more confident,” Cunningham said. “She’s able to express herself more.”

For her part, Alexis said the kids at her school are nicer to her now that’s she is able to interact with them more.