Our Progress to Date

The Relational Center opened its doors in January of 2008 to work against the isolating and paralyzing effects of our current social context. We tailored our counseling services to the marginalized and impoverished residents of the Los Angeles metropolitan area who were in greatest need of community and connection. We offered counseling to adults, couples, youth and families. We also had a psychiatrist on site to provide medication support when needed. And we created issue-specific support groups for our participants.

Through our education program, we offered advanced training to healthcare providers with the intention to build a workforce of professionals equipped to engage in highly collaborative, culturally sensitive and action-oriented change work. That training included structured internships and practicums for psychology and social work graduate students as well as periodic continuing education workshops for licensed mental health providers.

As our impact grew and we developed wider support, we expanded our focus to include consulting services for other organizations interested in developing collaborative practices in their operations and business activities. We have already succeeded in building relationships with several businesses and agencies as a result of the consulting work we accomplished, focusing primarily on strategic planning, program development, and quality improvement projects.

Our Counseling Participants

Since we first opened our doors, The Relational Center has served over 800 low-income participants with a combination of collaborative counseling, group work, resource coordination, and psychiatric support. Sixty-four percent of our participants have been women. We have seen many minorities (40 percent), with Latinos accounting for 33 percent of all our participants, African Americans 10 percent, and Asians 4 percent. While English is the primary language in which services are delivered, over 20 percent of our participants speak Spanish as their primary language and have received Spanish language services from The Relational Center. Thirty-three percent of our participants have identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ).

The mean annual income range for all of our participants has been between $10,001 and $20,000. Thirty-nine percent of our participants have had incomes below $10,000 per year, placing them below the federal poverty line, while 69 percent of all of our participants have reported annual incomes of under $20,000. Most of these participants paid next to nothing for their services (55 percent).

Our Education Participants

The Relational Center has enrolled over 60 students since we opened in the Winter of 2008. Of those, 29 percent have been people of color and 22 percent LGBTQ (over half of our student body from minority communities). Over 80 percent of our student body has been women. Twenty-one percent of our students have provided services in Spanish. When beginning their training, 83 percent were enrolled in a graduate program in the Los Angeles area, including at Antioch, Pepperdine, CSU Long Beach, University of Santa Monica, CSU Dominguez Hills, Phillips Graduate Institute, Mount Saint Mary's and Pacifica Graduate Institute.