Uplift Inner Strength

Hello Friends,

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year’s focus is on anxiety. It’s a timely call to attention.

For more than five years now, the Healthcare Foundation has maintained a strong focus on increasing access to mental health services for our most underserved residents.

In this month’s newsletter, we speak to Ana Gouveia, who helps to lead the Family Resource Center at Corazón Healdsburg, one of the Healthcare Foundation’s stalwart community partners and grantees. 

In addition to granting to frontline agencies serving those most in need, the Healthcare Foundation has been developing a strong upstream approach to mental health and community wellbeing. This includes investing in a new generation of aspiring bilingual, bicultural clinicians through our Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP).

This year, we’ve continued to develop this upstream approach with the launching of a Bicultural Clinical Training Program in partnership with Humanidad Therapy & Education Services and On the Margins. The program features two key components. The first provides MHTP trainees with culturally informed Spanish-language supervision at Humanidad, better equipping them to serve local Latinx communities while expanding Humanidad’s capacity to offer services, particularly in relatively isolated and under-resourced Cloverdale. 

The Bicultural Clinical Training Program will also offer a new, online bicultural curriculum created and led by Dr. Daniela Domínguez of On the Margins and her colleagues that will be open to trainees and associates pursuing licensure as therapists, as well as already practicing clinicians who seek to deepen their competency with Spanish-speaking clients. Moreover, because the course will be online, it can support clinicians working locally as well as those working beyond Sonoma County.

Below, we speak with Humanidad’s executive director, Juan Torres. We also speak with one of our brilliant MHTP scholarship awardees, Stephanie Malagon, who will be starting as a trainee at Humanidad in August where as a native of Cloverdale she’ll be fulfilling a longstanding desire to give back to her community.

Speaking of giving back, I want to mention another MHTP graduate student, Jennifer Oseguera Chavez, who will be joining us as a guest speaker for Noche de Amor, our annual community celebration happening June 3 in Healdsburg. Jennifer’s perspective as a first generation college and graduate student committed to serving and advocating for her community beautifully illustrates the purpose of the MHTP program and will be a highlight you will not want to miss. I hope to see you there.

With gratitude for your support,

Danielle Restieaux Murphy, Esq., MSW, ACSW
Healthcare Foundation Board of Directors

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Partner Spotlight: Humanidad Therapy & Education Services

The Healthcare Foundation, in partnership with Humanidad Therapy & Education Services and On the Margins, is launching a Bicultural Clinical Training Program to strengthen the pipeline of bilingual, bicultural mental health practitioners while increasing direct services in areas where there is the greatest dearth of support.

There will be much more to say about the Bicultural Clinical Training Program in the weeks and months ahead. This month, we spoke with Humanidad executive director Juan Torres about the significance of the new partnership in advancing the extraordinary mission begun over a decade ago by Humanidad’s founder Dr. Maria Hess.

How does the new Bicultural Clinical Training Program complement the work of Humanidad?

When Kim [Bender] and Danny [Domínguez] and Doctor Maria [Alvarez] approached me and our clinical director, Claudia Navarro, we felt it was a natural thing to do. Our founder, Dr. Maria Hess, was a professor at Sonoma State who back in 2012 saw the huge gap in bilingual and bicultural services. She tapped some of her best students to join her in starting Humanidad. In addition to bringing services to the Latinx community, the intention was to create an agency that can foster the growth and full potential of trainees and the next generation of therapists. Two of our co-founders—Claudia Cendejas, who is currently our board vice president, and Cecilia Perez, who is one of our clinical supervisors—came in as trainees and have grown from there. 

So the original mission of Humanidad, to strengthen the lives of the Latinx community by increasing access to resources and mental health services and to support the next generation of therapists, ties in directly to this collaboration with the Healthcare Foundation and On the Margins. We’re more than happy to be part of it. It just naturally falls in with what we do.

Read More (4 min read)

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Mental Health Talent Pipeline Spotlight: Catching Up with Stephanie Malagon

When we first spoke with Mental Health Talent Pipeline scholarship awardee Stephanie Malagon for this newsletter, back in 2022, she was about to begin her graduate studies in counseling psychology at USF Santa Rosa. As she explained then, regarding her motivation for becoming a mental health professional, 

“Growing up I never had an opportunity to go to therapy, let alone my parents, who speak Spanish—they were never given the opportunity or the resources related to mental health. I always understood there was a need for that. It’s what has inspired me to, hopefully, be one of those resources for my community…”

Now about halfway through the three-year master’s program, Stephanie is about to begin her traineeship at Humanidad Therapy & Education Services. It’s an opportunity she’s been looking forward to. As a trainee, she’ll be providing services under professional supervision to community members in her home town of Cloverdale. We caught up with Stephanie recently as she prepares to start her traineeship in August.

“In general, we had little access to mental health resources, especially the Latino community—having Spanish-speaking therapists wasn’t really an option for us. Luckily, things are evolving. Organizations like La Familia Sana and Humanidad are reaching out to Cloverdale and other smaller communities to provide those resources that we definitely need.”

Stephanie Malagon, Mental Health Talent Pipeline participant

Read More (2.5 min read)

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Partner Spotlight: Corazón Healdsburg’s Family Resource Center

Corazón Healdsburg is a multi-service, bilingual and bicultural community-based organization serving residents of Healdsburg, Windsor, Cloverdale, and Geyserville. The individuals and families Corazón supports are 100% low-income, while 95% are Latin American and approximately 75% are monolingual Spanish speakers. A Healthcare Foundation grantee and stalwart community partner, Corazón recently joined the launch of a county-wide two-year pilot GBI (guaranteed basic income) program, Pathway to Income Equity.  

In support of Mental Health Awareness Month, we reached out to Ana Gouveia, Team Lead at Corazón’s bilingual Family Resource Center, which last year worked with 551 unique households—or one to two new families every day—providing hands-on support including family-centered case management, family-centered coaching, direct financial assistance, wrap-around services, and referrals to partner agencies.

Originally from Brazil, Ana is a community health worker with over 10 years of experience in nonprofits. We spoke with her to learn more about the work she and her colleagues are doing at the Family Resource Center and the role mental health plays in supporting resilience and furthering wellbeing in the community.

“The financial burden on families has brought a lot of anxiety and we’re seeing that in our clients. People come into the office with huge amounts of stress. We sit with them, hear them out, and work with them to make a plan. We help them apply for financial assistance, but also try to address whatever other needs are showing up at that moment. The need for mental health services always comes up.”

Ana Gouveia, Team Lead, Corazón Family Resource Center

Read More (3.5 min read)

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Champion Sponsor Feature: Foley Family Charitable Foundation

Through the Foley Family Charitable Foundation, my family partners with stalwart and impactful nonprofit organizations addressing the prevailing needs and unique concerns of the communities that we are fortunate to live and work in. With the bulk of our operations centered in Sonoma County, and northern Sonoma County in particular, we are thankful to be able to partner with the Healthcare Foundation in the hard work they are doing to provide equitable access to healthcare for all of our neighbors in northern Sonoma County.

All it takes is one unplanned visit to a doctor or emergency room to fully understand the debilitating costs associated with receiving healthcare. For many of our community members in Sonoma County, these costs are life-altering. No one should have to make a decision that affects their or a family member’s health based solely on financial ability. 

That’s why the Foley Family Charitable Foundation is focused on providing meaningful support to help break down the barriers to vital health and wellness resources for the most vulnerable of our community members. Over the past six years, the Foundation has donated over $2.5 million to nonprofit organizations in Healdsburg and northern Sonoma County, and well over $4 million across Sonoma County as a whole, to bolster the health and wellbeing of the area’s residents. We want to play an active role in ensuring that Sonoma County is a great place to live, work, and recreate for people from all walks of life for years to come.

– Courtney Foley, Foley Family Charitable Foundation

We are also pleased to honor our Champion Sponsors
Douglas and Julianne Muhleman

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