Since 1942, Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services has served Southern California residents by providing quality, trauma-informed mental health and substance abuse services. As the first non-profit mental health outpatient clinic in Los Angeles, Didi Hirsch was initially founded to help adults cope with the aftermath of the Great Depression. Today, Didi Hirsch primarily serves a diverse population of adults and older adults living with chronic, severe mental illness, as well as children with serious emotional disturbance and their families, recognizing the substantial impact that traumatic experiences can have on the clients we serve. With ten clinical sites and nearly 100 affiliated schools, Didi Hirsch serves more than 90,000 clients annually throughout Southern California. Our services span a continuum of prevention, early intervention, and treatment services for individuals, families, and the community. These services include a nationally recognized 24-hour Suicide Prevention Hotline; outpatient mental health services for children, families, and adults; time-limited crisis counseling; field-based intensive mental health services for children, transition-aged youth and adults; school-based mental health and substance use prevention services; case management; employment services; Wellness Centers; an integrated healthcare clinic; crisis residential care; and residential care for women struggling with substance use and their children. Didi Hirsch also provides unique training opportunities to the broader community of service providers, as well as internship and practicum training opportunities for the next generation of service providers to work with trauma-exposed individuals and communities.
Network Members
This listing of NCTSN members includes current grantees as well as NCTSN Affiliates, former grantees who have maintained their ties to the Network.
Cox, Judi
Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services
Espinoza Hernandez, Rosa, PsyD
Rosa Espinoza Hernandez Psy.D. (she, her, ella) is a Clinical Psychologist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles – USC University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD). Dr. Hernandez is a bilingual (Spanish/English) and bicultural psychologist whose clinical work is driven by her commitment to increase access to quality care in underserved communities. Dr. Hernandez works with children and adolescents, ranging from early childhood to transition age youth. Her areas of experience include working with individuals who experienced medical or immigration-related trauma, court- and gang-involved youth, integrated primary care, and families who are involved with the department of child and family services/child protective services. She provides client-centered care and applies culturally sensitive adaptations of various models such as Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), and Child-Parent Psychotherapy within her practice.
Family Service Agency of Santa Barbara County/Youth and Family Behavioral Health
Family Service Agency of Santa Barbara County provides evidence-based mental health services to trauma-impacted youth and their families in our on-site clinics, in schools, in homes, and in other community locations. In recognition of the impacts of social determinants of health on mental health, we seek to address basic needs and support for families with linkage and referrals to resources, case management, and healthy relationships, parenting, and fatherhood classes. We offer our services in English and Spanish. Our agency strives to be trauma-informed in all our policies and procedures. We partner with other local agencies to serve the most vulnerable persons in our community.
Gustman, Brian, PhD
I am a licensed psychologist in private practice in San Francisco, CA, providing evidence-based psychotherapy, psychological assessments, psycho-educational evaluations, and trauma-informed educational consultation. My areas of specialty are in TF-CBT, CBT, and educational accommodations and services for children with traumatic stress symptoms that interfere with their education.
Hazratzai, Mohammad Sediq, MD, MPH
Mohammad Sediq Hazratzai MD, MPH is Director of Sehat Initiative (SI), a program of the Public Health Institute (PHI), established in response to the humanitarian and healthcare needs of refugees. SI focus is to improve the health and well-being of refugees in California and throughout the United States. Founded by medical and public health experts from within the refugee community, it serves as a crucial bridge between refugees and their wider medical and social environment. Dr.Sediq is a career public health professional and researcher with extensive experience focused on refugee and immigrant health. As a visiting professor at the University of California Davis, Dr. Sediq teaches refugee health and comparative health systems. Dr. Sediq is also a credentialed Principal Investigator with the Public Health Institute (PHI) and an affiliate with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Institute for Global Health Sciences. Dr. Sediq has worked with nonprofits, IOM (UN Migration Agency), and Afghanistan’s Ministry of Public Health in projects focused on the most vulnerable populations – refugees, migrants, Injecting Drug Users (IDUs), and HIV high-risk groups. Dr.Sediq is a board member with Upwardly Global a leading nonprofit that helps immigrant, refugee, and asylee professionals rebuild their careers in the United States. Dr. Sediq used to be a trainer with PHI’s Lotus Project, which focused on child trauma. Dr.Sediq is PI on the California statewide Afghan Refugee School Impact (ARSI) and Ukrainian Refugee School Impact (URSI) programs that support an estimated 10,000 newly arrived refugee children.
Healthy Environments and Response to Schools (HEARTS), Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital
HEARTS is a whole-school prevention/intervention program that aims to create trauma-informed, safe, supportive, and equitable learning and teaching environments that foster resilience and wellness for everyone in the school community. HEARTS utilizes a multi-tiered system of support to address trauma at the student, staff, school organizational, and district levels through training and consultation with school personnel, and mental health supports for students and families. HEARTS work is guided by six principles that are grounded in trauma research and an extensive review of trauma-informed systems work nationally: Understanding Trauma and Stress; Cultural Humility and Equity; Safety and Predictability; Compassion and Dependability; Empowerment and Collaboration; and Resilience and Social Emotional Learning. A core feature distinguishing HEARTS from many other trauma-informed school approaches is the centrality of cultural responsiveness and equity in all aspects of the program. We believe that given the toxic, trauma-inducing, and pervasive nature of structural racism and other forms of oppression, any efforts to mitigate the effects of trauma must include efforts to counteract these harms. Further, without a culturally responsive and equity-promoting lens, there is a risk that trauma concepts could be used to pathologize marginalized communities rather than underscore their resilience. HEARTS-Extended (HEARTS-E) is our NCTSI-funded project that provides evidence-based trauma-focused mental health treatment, services, and support systems for trauma-impacted children and youth at three elementary and two middle school sites in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), focusing on capacity-building for SFUSD personnel to deliver these services.
Held, Jordan, LCSW
Jordan Held (he/him/his), LCSW is a Primary Therapist and Gender Specialist at Visions Adolescent Treatment Center. Jordan works in both IOP and residential programming, working with teenagers and their families to build resilience and cultivate positive mental health outcomes. Prior to Visions, Jordan was a Therapist and Intake Coordinator at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, the largest trans youth health clinic in the USA. Jordan’s mental health practice centers around creating a trauma-informed and healing-centered space for both adolescents and their families. Jordan’s expertise is working with gender and sexual minority youth with complex histories of trauma. Jordan was a lead clinician on a SAMHSA/ NCTSN grant, which created the first therapy hub for transgender youth with complex history of PTSD. Jordan speaks internationally about creating and supporting affirmative LGBTQ+ environments with an emphasis on informed consent and enhanced family communication. As a queer identified, transgender man, Jordan brings an important dual perspective to his work as a mental health provider. Prior to social work, Jordan worked extensively in secondary school education, with a decade of experience teaching, coaching, and developing health and wellness curricula. Jordan’s work focuses on gender violence prevention, diversity, equity, inclusion and cultivating strength and belonging for teens. Jordan is on the Board of Director’s of the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the Laurel Foundation, JQ International and Mental Health America of Los Angeles. Jordan is also a long-time facilitator at Transforming Family, a support group for gender diverse youth and their family.
Hendricks, Alison, LCSW
Alison Hendricks, LCSW, is a trainer and consultant who specializes in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), trauma-informed systems, and Secondary Traumatic Stress. She is a Certified National Trainer for TF-CBT and the Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit, a product of the NCTSN that she helped to revise in 2012. She worked with the Chadwick Center of Rady Children’s Hospital for nine years, first as a trauma therapist and then as Operations Manager of the Chadwick Trauma-Informed Systems Project. She provides training and consultation on TF-CBT, trauma-informed care, and Secondary Traumatic Stress to programs across the country. Alison is the lead author on two workbooks on TF-CBT. She also specializes in Culturally Modified TF-CBT with a focus on Latino children and families. She has presented at numerous conferences and has published several journal articles on a wide variety of topics related to childhood trauma. Alison graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Psychology from Columbia University and completed her MSW at Hunter College School of Social Work. She lives in San Diego with her husband and daughter.
Hill-Ford, Cindy
The Center for Restorative Solutions (C4RS) was founded by Cindy Hill-Ford, MFT in 2014 to promote the use of an integrated approach to Restorative and Trauma Informed Practices (known as RTIPs) as a means to enhance the capacity of those who seek to help children, youth and families in communities afflicted by chronic poverty and violence overcome adversity and thrive. C4RS partners and associates provide program development, training, and consultative services designed to promote the development of restorative and trauma informed educational, mental health, and community-based service delivery systems that seek to support those dealing with the impacts of trauma. In 2018-19, C4RS is collaborating with the Urban Youth Trauma Center of the University of Illinois-Chicago Department of Psychiatry, the California School Based Health Alliance, (RJOY) Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, the West Contra Costa Unified School District, NCTSN affiliates, and youth serving organizations in Northern California to develop and empower the development of restorative and trauma informed ervice delivery systems and promote trauma healing.