Huckleberry House offers continuous 24-hour crisis services and emergency shelter to high-risk youth between the ages of 11 and 17. Located on Page Street (at Lyon) in San Francisco, Huckleberry House has the distinction of being the oldest program for runaway and homeless youth in the country. Program goals are to alleviate problems of runaway and homeless youth by providing 24-hour crisis intervention and resolution services, reunite the youth with their families, empower youth to identify healthy lifestyle alternatives and develop positive decision-making.

Through a continuum of care service model, the program creates a network of support for positive, healthy adolescent development. Most of the clients are from the San Francisco Bay Area which allows us to deliver extended family preservation counseling. All Huckleberry youth receive primary medical care and peer-based prevention education through our Cole Street Youth Clinic.

Counseling Services

Huckleberry House provides a wide range of mental health services, including: individual, family, parent, and group therapy, family mediation, and crisis counseling. Family preservation counseling and family mediation counseling addresses current family problems, such as runaway behavior, parental/adolescent conflict, including physical and/or emotional abuse, other family violence among family members living in the household, stress/depression/suicide and substance use/abuse. Youth and their families often begin the process of therapy during the youth's shelter stay and continue with therapy after the youth returns home. In addition, family mediation has proven to be a very beneficial and highly utilized service, reuniting sheltered youth with their families. Our family mediator first focuses on resolving any immediate family crises and then works with families to help them develop long-term conflict resolution strategies.