Our Services

Traditional healing teachings and events are at the heart of Cultura y Bienestar. These teachings and events serve to educate the community on mental health topics while centering cultural and traditional practices as a way to cope with daily struggles and for overall wellness. These are also a way to bring community together, to learn and to heal collectively. In this way, traditional healing workshops and events provide opportunities for cultural empowerment, cultural pride, cultural connectedness, improved self-esteem, and community building opportunities that help prevent and cope with mental health challenges. 

Traditional Healing Events

Traditional Healing Events are typically led by one the practitioners in our program’s circle of traditional healers, who during the event discuss the history of the approach, demonstrate the traditional methods, and teach individuals and families how they can use these methos to support their own physical, mental, community and spiritual health and wellbeing. 

Our program consults with community elders and healers on a regular basis to deliver culturally based healing and prevention services to participants. A established circle of healers guides and supports our work and provides a variety of practices and approaches to healing and wellness. 

As of 2023, these are the traditional practices/offerings that our program offers:

• Traditional/Medicinal Drumming
• Biomagnetism
• Herbalist
• Ceremony
• Limpias
• Physical activity, dance, movement and wellness
• Zumba
• Curanderos
• Sono Terapia
• Nutrition and wellness
• Gardening/urban farming
• Storytelling
• Sobadora

Community events help provide additional support to participants to reconnect with the healing practices of their cultural heritage and identity. Community events differ from traditional healing events in that they are not always led by a traditional healing practitioner, but that they can be led and facilitated by a community leader or one of our educators or even a group or organization. These include activities to mark specific Holidays or acknowledge specific people, communities or events that are relevant and important to a specific segment of the community. 

Some examples of such activities included: 

• Drumming Circles at health fairs or festivals
• Maya-Mam Art Contest
• Mujer Valiosa Conference
• Día de Los Muertos Festival in the Fruitvale
• Back to School Informational Events
• Día de la Madres Celebrations
• Food distribution activities during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Summer camp activities for school age children
• Indigenous People’s Day Celebrations
• Thanksgiving Holiday celebrations
• Christmas and other Holiday celebrations

These services increase awareness and reduce stigma about mental health in the community as well as provide mental health prevention and early intervention practices and tools to participants. The format of these services is interactive, serving as an opportunity to engage in a more in-depth dialogue with participants around the interconnection of mental health and overall wellness. Through conversations, staff help participants learn about wellness, respecting and honoring the connection between body, mind, and spirit, and how this relates to general mental health challenges or to an individual’s specific topic of concern. These activities can be held at our sites or out in the community at schools, community gardens, libraries, parks or in the home of participants.

Psychoeducation workshops – These provide in-depth education on specific mental health topics, and offer a space for a more intensive dialogue with target participants. These are often led by Health Educators in consultation and collaboration with Mental Health Specialists. These can be open to the general community, or for specific groups, such as youth, parents, etc. 

Support Groups – Meet on a temporary or ongoing basis to provide a shared space to reduce stress, build community with peers facing similar challenges and learn skills to increase resiliency. Some examples of support groups include:

• Gardening for Wellness, Sembrando Bienestar
• Circulo de Hombres Latinos
• Circulo de Sanadores, Women’s Resilience Group
• Youth Joven Noble Group
• Parenting Support Group
• Immigration/Grief support Groups
• Circulo de Jovenes Indígenas
• Los Años Dorados
• Mujeres en Movimiento

Also, faith-based groups and other school-based and senior support groups are part of the regular programming of Cultura y Bienestar. Groups are often geared towards a target population such as children/youth, TAY or older adults. 

Our program is preventive in nature and does not offer diagnostics, treatment or therapy services. Instead, we focus in supporting individuals and families going through difficult times such as transitions or losses and provide them with opportunities to process emotions and feelings that may arise from any of these situations. We offer individual counseling, support and psychoeducational services to eligible participants in Spanish, Mam and English. These individual sessions are limited to 6 meetings, where we help participants process while we arm them with basic skills to help them cope with these difficult situations including community defined evidence practices and traditional healing teachings. These services are mostly provided by experienced and skillful behavioral health educators in close coordination and consultation with mental health specialists. We offer these services in two modalities. 

Prevention Visits – These are meetings with individuals, couples, or families to where we review the services we offer and conduct an initial screening of participants’ needs or current state and determine how the program can support them. Places emphasis on emotional release, peer support, and developing coping skills. In many cases this will be the end of our intervention, as participants will be equipped with knowledge, understanding and skills sufficient to go on by themselves or have referrals to other services that could be more appropriate to what the need at that point. Alternatively, if the situations merits it, then the educator will go ahead and schedule a follow-up early intervention session, in which there will be more time and opportunity to process and educate participants as well as to offer opportunities for healing. 

Early Intervention Sessions – These sessions can be focused on individuals, couples, or families and introduce mental health and wellness topics for target participants such as children, TAY, adults, and seniors. These are often referred to as “pláticas” and focus on building upon existing strengths, coping strategies, and reducing risk. They further support participants in identifying strengths, developing wellness plans, teach wellness tools, provide peer support and provide referral linkages as needed. As stated above these sessions are provided by Health Educators in consultation and collaboration with a Mental Health Specialist. 

Through our engagement and encounters with individuals in the community or during an initial prevention or early intervention session, it may become apparent that a participant needs services/resources that are out of the scope of work or capacity of the program. In cases like these, we ensure we can provide information on other resources, and whenever possible, a direct referral to more appropriate resources and treatment services. We make efforts to walk our participants through the steps to make a successful connections through warm hand-offs, follow ups and coaching. Referrals made by our team include: 

• Higher level/specialized mental health services, including psychiatric care and substance use services
• Domestic violence services
• Housing services/shelters
• Financial support services
• Employment services
• Legal services including immigration, housing, employment, domestic violence and custody.
• Developmental assessment
• Community education/GED/English classes
• Parenting skills

Consultation and training can be provided at any time/as needed by the Mental Health Specialists and Health Educators to churches, schools, graduate programs, CBOs or any other group providing services to the Latinx or Indigenous communities. These consultations are most often provided to service providers, teachers, community leaders and influential community members and are intended to increase education about the mental health needs in our communities, decrease stigma around mental health, impart culturally relevant wellness practices and increase leadership. Our team provides consultation using an individual or group format. Topics brought forward through these consultations are outlined below: 

• Integration of mental health and traditional healing
• Culturally relevant/informed practices for mental health professionals
• Identification of mental health challenges in Latinx and Indigenous communities
• Self-care and wellness practices for professionals
• Parenting
• Healthy Relationships
• Immigration challenges

Building capacity serves to increase mental health prevention and early intervention practices at the community level through the development of culturally relevant mental health curriculum, diverse workforce training and increasing knowledge and skill among participants to support others struggling with mental health challenges. 

Examples of capacity building programming:

Curriculum Development – Utilizing the resources and knowledge from our very own team to create new curriculum that is reflective of our work, mission, and community. The most recent curriculum created include “Brazos Abiertos,” which addresses stigma in mental health. 

Mental Health First Aid Training – Utilizing curriculum created by the National Council of Mental Wellbeing, this training and certification equips participants with knowledge and tools to identify signs and symptoms of a mental health challenges, offer support, and connect to mental health professionals and resources. This training is offered to staff and community members alike in Spanish and English. 

Workforce development – Cultura y Bienestar is committed to bringing more Indigenous, Latinx bi-cultural and bilingual professionals into the field of behavioral health and specifically to the prevention and early intervention areas. Our promotores de salud initiatives are part of this effort as well as our collaboration with other departments and academic institutions to provide internship opportunities to Latinx and Indigenous students.

Utilizing curriculum created by the National Council of Mental Wellbeing, this training and certification equips participants with knowledge and tools to identify signs and symptoms of a mental health challenges, offer support, and connect to mental health professionals and resources.

Currently, Cultura y Bienestar offers Adult Mental Health First Aid (for adults supporting adults) in English and Spanish, and Youth Mental Health First Aid (for adults supporting youth) in English and Spanish.

Trainings are offered free of cost to community members and community organizations in all of Alameda County.

Dates and registration for trainings in English: https://bit.ly/CYB-MHFA

Dates and registration for trainings in Spanish: https://bit.ly/CYB-PASM

To request more information or inquire about closed trainings, email mhfa@laclinica.org.

Leadership development serves to facilitate community empowerment by increasing the capacity of community members and organizations to promote culturally relevant wellness strategies, identify mental health concerns and provide appropriate referrals for support and resources to those struggling with mental health. 

Using a Promotoras de Salud model Cultura y Bienestar helps members of the community develop the skills needed to educate and link other community members to resources or to promote wellness. Promotores are often active community members with personal or family experience as consumers of healthcare services, mental health struggles or with strong connections to CBO’s or other community networks of support. Community members who become promotores are trained as peer educators, leaders and role models who promote mental health education and wellness in their community. Leaders drawn from the community will be more likely to effectively connect and help their peers to handle stressors and traumas unique to their own experience. In other words, having trained community members deliver outreach, education, and consultation services is key to building and empowering Latinx and Indigenous communities to address their own wellness and mental health needs. 

Each site and partnering agency create or adapts existing curriculum to train their own teams of promotoras or community leaders. This is so that each site can account for the particular needs and strengths of their participants, as well as to discuss in greater detail the topics that affect their communities the most and share resources that are within their geographical area or that they have already existing working relationships with or who can adapt to meet the needs of their client-base.

Examples of Leadership Development at Cultura y Bienestar:

Lideres Comunitarios en Salud Mental – At La Clínica de la Raza, a cohort of 9 promotoras were trained from 2021-2022 using the following model. First, they received training on community health promotion from Visión y Compromiso, a well-established CHW training and professional development agency based in California. The 6-weeks training provided participants with basic health promotion and leadership skills. This was followed by training on our program’s own curriculum on mental health stigma and other basics of anxiety, depression, and stress. 

Promotores de CyB Tri-Valley started in late 2014 after one of the program’s Health Educators from La Familia Livermore attended the Visión y Compromiso conference in Berkeley. Here she saw the beauty in serving others and how this was essential for the communities of Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin, and Sunol. She began speaking with participants who had come to her for support with mental health, family matters, cultural grief, who upon completing their sessions were looking for a way to help their community with the same services. This group of promotores is diverse in age and walks of life. They serve as the eyes and ears of the community and are active in organizing activities, reaching out to and educating community members about our program’s services and benefits as well as normalizing conversations about mental health. 

La Familia – Hayward has recently resumed its promotoras project with a series of training courses for community members. The training is specifically designed to meet the needs of this group and will include mental health first aid among other skills and knowledge on community mental health and traditional healing practices. 

Tiburcio Vasquez Health Center – A group of 12 promotoras participated in the first or second semester of the 8-week women’s resilience support group where they reviewed the topics of self-care and self-esteem, positive communication, immigration, grief, positive parenting, erotism/sexuality, and personal/community resilience. The program is a compilation of material based on the well-known work of Salman Akthar (Immigration), Esther Perel (Dialogue, erotism and self-esteem), Triple P (Positive Parenting) and Personal/Community resilience (Dovetail). From four to six Promotoras (Union City, Newark and Fremont) that have taken the Leadership training and 8 session program in mental health, voluntarily support activities of outreach, community events and workshops. 

Client Advisory Council – This is a group of current or former clients, family members of consumers of mental health services or members of the community at large who meet regularly to provide feedback on our services or who keep our program informed about emerging needs, trends or new opportunities for programming and in their community.