Cuidado de las Madres

A new partnership between the Healthcare Foundation, Humanidad Therapy & Education Services (HTES), and First 5 Sonoma County is preparing the next generation of therapists to support mothers and families.

Pregnancy and the arrival of a new baby can bring profound joy, but also anxiety, depression, isolation, and emotional challenges that too often go unrecognized or untreated. For many mothers in Sonoma County, particularly those in immigrant and Spanish-speaking communities, finding mental health support that feels accessible, trustworthy, and culturally understanding can be especially difficult.

A new training initiative at HTES is working to change that. In partnership with the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP) program and made possible through Measure I funding administered by First 5 Sonoma County, the program provides specialized bilingual, bicultural clinical training in perinatal mental health to early-career therapists, both graduate school trainees and pre-licensure associates. Measure I is the voter-approved initiative strengthening childcare and children’s health services throughout Sonoma County.

Cuidado de las Madres, as the program is called, addresses the medical and psychological challenges that can arise during pregnancy and after childbirth through a unique curriculum (developed and led by Allison Murphy, LMFT, of Mother’s Care, and Cecilia Perez, LMFT, of HTES) designed to bridge a cultural divide. That divide can keep Latina mothers from accessing or feeling open to mental health services, and it can also limit culturally concordant and effective postpartum treatment by mental health practitioners.

Building on a smaller pilot Humanidad launched last year, the program this year features a cohort of 10 participants, three of whom are provided through HTES and seven through the Healthcare Foundation’s MHTP program. The goal is to prepare 30 mental health clinicians over three years (the funding period associated with the grant from First 5) to better serve mothers and families, particularly those whose experiences and cultural perspectives have historically been overlooked in conventional healthcare settings.

Meeting a Critical Need

For Humanidad Co-Clinical Director and Lead Clinical Supervisor Cecilia Perez, MS, LMFT, the initiative builds on more than a decade of work making mental healthcare accessible to Sonoma County’s Latine community.

Founded in 2013 by Perez, Dr. Maria Hess, and Claudia Cendejas, Humanidad combines affordable psychotherapy with clinical training and community education. Over time, Perez says, listening to community members sharpened its focus on bilingual, bicultural care. Families wanted therapists who spoke their language, understood their experiences, and could create an environment where seeking help felt safe rather than stigmatizing.

“Culturally responsive support goes beyond speaking Spanish; it recognizes family relationships, spirituality, traditions, immigration experiences, and culturally shaped expressions of distress. By reducing stigma and helping mothers seek support earlier, this care can strengthen entire families.”

David Galeana, Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and MHTP alumnus

Those needs are particularly pronounced during the perinatal period. A recent Maternal Health Needs Assessment conducted by First 5 Sonoma County identified 34% of reproductive age women in Sonoma County experienced serious psychological distress in the past year; 44% among Hispanic/Latino women of reproductive age versus 25% that was reported statewide (California Health Interview Survey 2022–2024). Alongside this are barriers involving stigma, family expectations, acculturation and cultural differences.

Perez explains that traditional values and beliefs emphasizing “familiarismo” family responsibility and “arianismo” maternal strength can provide tremendous resilience while sometimes making it difficult for mothers to acknowledge emotional struggles. A mother experiencing postpartum depression, for example, may feel guilt or shame because she believes she should be happy and capable of caring for everyone around her.

For clinicians, Perez emphasizes, that means recognizing how cultural identity, immigration experiences, expectations surrounding motherhood, and the weight of family roles can shape whether  someone feels comfortable seeking help.

Integrating Clinical Knowledge and Cultural Wisdom

A distinguishing feature of Cuidado de las Madres is its integration of evidence-informed perinatal mental health training with culturally grounded approaches to healing.

Participants receive monthly clinical instruction and additional sessions introducing traditional practitioners, including parteras-curanderas (midwives-healers) and doulas, who carry ancestral wisdom of other healing practices such as yerberia (herbalism) and sobadas (traditional bodywork). In addition, sessions introduce specialists who address obsessive-compulsive disorder and psychosis, complex trauma and stress.

Rather than treating Western clinical approaches and ancestral healing traditions as mutually exclusive, the program helps future therapists understand how they can coexist in supporting mothers and families.

“As we say in Spanish, nuestro granito de arena [our little grain of sand]: This is the piece we can add to the bigger, beautiful ensemble of work that’s happening here in Sonoma County.”

Cecilia Perez, Humanidad Therapy & Education Services

For David Galeana, a bilingual, bicultural Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and former MHTP participant, this integration is especially meaningful. “I am especially drawn to the program’s integration of clinical knowledge with the wisdom of professionals, traditional healers, and parteras,” he says. “Culturally responsive support goes beyond speaking Spanish; it recognizes family relationships, spirituality, traditions, immigration experiences, and culturally shaped expressions of distress. By reducing stigma and helping mothers seek support earlier, this care can strengthen entire families.”

Because the training is accessible to graduate-level trainees and prelicensed associates, it also allows clinicians to develop this specialization early in their careers, rather than waiting until after licensure to pursue what Perez notes is often costly additional training, not necessarily available locally. “This program offers a specialty that, to my knowledge, hasn’t been offered here in Sonoma County,” she says.

Investing in Families and the Workforce That Serves Them

Since 2018, the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline has worked to address Sonoma County’s shortage of bilingual, bicultural mental health professionals through scholarships, training opportunities, and robust partnerships.

Cuidado de las Madres represents an important extension of that work into maternal and early childhood mental health, a priority supported by Measure I.

Nallely Ramirez, MA, LMFT, another former MHTP participant who now works primarily with Latine patients at Alliance Medical Center, sees the potential impact firsthand. “With the cultural congruency existing between client and provider, I’m confident that it will improve outcomes, trust, increase awareness, reduce stigma, and early identification and intervention,” she says. “In my own work at Alliance Medical Center, I can see clearly how with this training we can help reduce health disparities and support healthier perinatal experiences.”

By preparing more clinicians to recognize and respond to the full complexity of mothers’ experiences, Cuidado de las Madres and the three-way partnership between Humanidad, the Healthcare Foundation, and First 5 Sonoma County are helping to build a mental healthcare workforce that reflects and understands the community it serves.

“The idea is that these 30 trained therapists will be available to support those community needs in nonprofits, in clinics, in hospitals,” says Perez. “As we say in Spanish, nuestro granito de arena [our little grain of sand]: This is the piece we can add to the bigger, beautiful ensemble of work that’s happening here in Sonoma County.”

For northern Sonoma County families, that means the possibility of receiving compassionate care that honors not only their mental health needs but the language, culture, traditions, and lived experiences that shape and nurture their lives.