Bicultural Clinical Training Program

In 2023, the Healthcare Foundation secured a major grant from Kaiser Permanente to launch a Bicultural Clinical Training Program designed to strengthen the local pipeline of bilingual, bicultural mental health practitioners while increasing direct mental health services in areas of northern Sonoma County where residents have the greatest challenges to accessing such care.

A collaboration with Humanidad Therapy & Education Services and On the Margins, the Bicultural Clinical Training Program, which launched in August 2023, includes two novel components. The first, which the grant covers for two years, allows Humanidad to bring its services to Cloverdale residents through two paid traineeships per year. Additionally, these traineeships feature professional supervision by a bilingual, bicultural Clinical Supervisor—a rare opportunity designed to deepen the culturally responsive nature of the education and practice of the bilingual graduate student trainees.

The second component of the Program (additionally supported by a grant from the Peter E. Haas Jr. Family Fund) is a culturally responsive online curriculum called Nepantlah. Developed by On the Margins, this bilingual workshop series is designed for mental health practitioners, including trainees like those in the Humanidad component described above, serving bicultural and/or Spanish-speaking clients in northern Sonoma County, or even around the state and country.