Expanding Perinatal and Early Childhood Mental Health Services

The Healthcare Foundation is honored to be among the first recipients of Measure I funding, awarded through First 5 Sonoma County to expand access to perinatal and early childhood mental health services across northern Sonoma County. This new support will enable the Foundation to invest $500,000 in local initiatives that advance the health and wellbeing of new parents, infants, and young children—particularly within underserved and Spanish-speaking communities. 

Among the funded partners are Alliance Medical Center, which will relaunch its Madres y Comadres perinatal program and host trainees and associates to provide mental health services for perinatal clients. Funding will also go to the Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP), specifically in its capacity to support new bilingual and bicultural mental health professionals in serving children and families in our region.

Measure I, a ¼-cent sales tax approved by Sonoma County voters in November 2024, established the Sonoma County Child Care and Children’s Health Initiative to generate approximately $150 million over five years to strengthen early care and education (ECE), children’s health services and access to perinatal mental health screening and treatment across Sonoma County. 

Under the initiative’s early investment plan, $11.4 million is being deployed countywide between September 2025 and June 2026 to address urgent needs while a long-term strategy is finalized. Forty percent of Measure I funds are dedicated to children’s health and behavioral health supports—investments that are arriving at a critical moment as other government resources shrink and as families continue to face systemic barriers to affordable, culturally responsive care.

With this Measure I support, the Healthcare Foundation and its partners will be able to strengthen the local perinatal care network, expand mental health access for new parents, and build a diverse, sustainable healthcare workforce that reflects the communities it serves. Together, these efforts represent a vital step toward closing long-standing gaps in maternal and early childhood health services—ensuring that every family in northern Sonoma County has the opportunity to begin life on a foundation of wellness and support.

To learn more about Measure I’s structure and importance, we spoke recently with Angie Dillon-Shore, executive director of First 5 Sonoma County.

What does Measure I do, and what is First 5’s role in stewarding the funds mobilized by Measure I?

Measure I, aka the Sonoma County Child Care & Children’s Health Initiative, is expected to generate $30 million annually to strengthen early care and education (ECE), children’s health services and access to perinatal mental health screening and treatment across Sonoma County. 

Forty percent of the revenue is to be spent on improving children’s health and well-being. This includes things like screening and supports for perinatal mental health; doulas; lactation support; help for families to navigate healthcare and social support systems; strengthening supports for children exposed to adverse childhood experiences and trauma, including housing instability and homelessness; culturally responsive programs that promote child and family well-being; and ensuring that we have a strong, culturally responsive and concordant workforce in Sonoma County to provide all of these services.

The other sixty percent of the revenue, after administrative costs, is to be spent on strengthening the early childhood education and childcare system that has been so woefully underfunded for decades by the state and federal governments and unaffordable for many families that are not eligible for a subsidy. These investments will include improvements in new and existing childcare facilities; increasing compensation for the lowest paid childcare and early-learning providers; and scholarships and paid apprenticeships that incentivize new early-learning professionals to enter and stay in the field.

In terms of First 5’s role, the First 5 Sonoma County Commission has almost 30 years of experience administering public funds to support early childhood development in Sonoma County. We administer public dollars for community benefit through transparent governance, a very robust administrative capacity and engaging community stakeholders in decision-making. Instead of setting up a new organization to administer Measure I, it made more sense to the folks who led the ballot measure effort to leverage First 5’s proven capacity and established infrastructure. First 5’s mission is closely aligned with the purpose of Measure I. This was a very fiscally prudent and cost-effective strategy for stewarding these local Measure I taxpayer dollars and ensuring that funds get out the door to the intended beneficiaries as quickly and effectively as possible

What makes the Healthcare Foundation an appropriate partner?

First 5 Sonoma County, as a public funder, has a strong history of partnering with private and community philanthropy to maximize our impact, especially in working to meet urgent and critical needs of community members in times of crisis and to support those who have been historically marginalized and excluded. To put it simply, we can achieve so much more by aligning and investing together and building on existing efforts than we can as individual organizations. First 5 Sonoma and the Healthcare Foundation are deeply aligned when it comes to our values around social justice, equitable access to community care, and the power of investing early. The focus of the Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP)—to build more robust and diverse local capacity to address the urgent mental health needs of our communities—is one of the top priorities of Measure I, but further focused explicitly on the mental health and social-emotional needs of very young children and pregnant/parenting individuals during the perinatal period. The MHTP has already demonstrated its value as a strategy to build a culturally responsive workforce, not only in the northern part of our county—where the Healthcare Foundation traditionally focuses and where there is clearly a need to expand availability of mental health supports—but countywide. 

Can you say more about the nature and scope of the need? 

In preparation for development of a new 5-year plan for investment and to inform funding priorities, First 5 Sonoma County assessed the health and mental health needs of young children and their families and the current level of resources and access to services and supports. This included many focus groups with parents, interviews and discussions with providers, and a deep dive into data. 

The findings were unequivocal: there is a critical need for more accessible, easily navigable, culturally and linguistically responsive, community-based mental health services for young children and for pregnant, birthing and parenting individuals during the perinatal period. The degree to which cultural bias, generational poverty, pervasive stigma, lack of awareness, inadequate funding, and siloed systems and services create barriers—especially for families of color, LGBTQ+ families and especially our immigrant community—cannot be overstated. We are greatly appreciative and proud to invest in the efforts of the Healthcare Foundation to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce that is trained to provide the culturally relevant mental health services and supports that young families of color in Sonoma County deserve.

“As families and children access the supports that heal trauma and help them thrive—by helping them to learn, to be productive, to connect with each other, and to experience what it’s like to belong and to be seen—our county will become a healthier place for all of us.”

Angie Dillon-Shore, Executive Director, First 5 Sonoma County

What are your expectations as the funding goes to work in the community?

It will take some time to see the concrete impacts of these increased investments in our community, but over the next few years, we will begin to see better access to care and healing for families with young children. As families and children access the supports that heal trauma and help them thrive—by helping them to learn, to be productive, to connect with each other, and to experience what it’s like to belong and to be seen—our county will become a healthier place for all of us. 

First 5 Sonoma County’s priorities—what we’ve invested in over the years—have always been driven by research and evidence about what works. We’ll be evaluating all of the initiatives funded by Measure I so that we can tell the story of the impact of these tax dollars over time. We’ll share those stories and data on our website and through published community-facing reports, as well as community events, so please stay connected and sign up for our newsletter at our website!

Anything else you would like to add?

On behalf of the First 5 Sonoma County Commission, we are very grateful for the work of the Healthcare Foundation, for its having the equity-centered vision and foresight to establish the Mental Health Talent Pipeline, and for its willingness to partner with First 5 to develop special cohorts focused on the mental health of very young children and birthing people.