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By Krissy Waite
Published May 2, 2025 in The Marin Independent Journal
Six organizations have secured a $3 million grant to help new families and children in Marin.
The grant, from the state Commission for Behavioral Health, will support the health care of birthing parents and children up to age 5. The partners aim to address disparities in prenatal, postpartum and early childhood care in Marin.
“Our goal is to address stigma and close service gaps,” said Casondra Webb, a vice president at North Marin Community Services. “We know that there’s a lot of gaps, and there’s not a lot of care coordination. We’re just trying to ensure that new families aren’t falling through the cracks.”
North Marin Community Services is the lead agency of the partnership. Webb said the initiative is about creating a “seamless” system that communicates with each health care service and follows up on referrals to ensure care was received.
The other partners are First 5 Marin, Parent Services Project, Help Me Grow Marin, Jewish Family and Children’s Services and the Postpartum Support Center. While the organizations have been working together for years, the three-year grant will formalize the partnership, help hire more staff and work to create a linked system of supportive, bilingual services.
“There’s all of that tweaking and connecting of the system that goes on behind the scenes that often doesn’t get a lot of attention, but you feel it when you go to one program that somebody recommended and you don’t qualify,” said Maria Niggle, executive director of First 5 Marin. “Then that ends there, and then all of a sudden and you’re like, well, I guess I don’t qualify for anything.”
Services will include maternal mental-health peer support groups; play groups; diapers and baby supplies; referrals for home visits and doulas; individual and family therapy; clinical consultations for early childhood mental health and development; lactation consultations; and a parenting program. The free services will be offered to parents before and after birth.
Niggle said providing developmental screenings and early childhood services for children before they enter school is important because the brain’s ability to change and adapt is greater in the formative years. Often it can take longer to identify and address developmental issues once the child starts school.
“What this actually helps us do is really make sure that families are the drivers here and that they are aware of all the information and support and services long before they enter the school system,” Niggle said.
Alyse Clayman, a program director at Jewish Family and Children’s Services in San Rafael, said the grant will help expand services to home and family day cares, which have younger children and might not be as connected to services. She said they “support the systems that support kids” — early childhood educators and caregivers — by teaching about issues such as vicarious trauma, sensory processing disorders and burnout.
“Really, to help them understand what’s going on behind behaviors and to think in a really curious way about kids and their behaviors as opposed to just responding in a reactive way to a child,” Clayman said. “As we all know, the younger we can serve a family, child, the better the outcome.”
Marin County has more than 2,000 births per year, and a quarter of the parents experience mood and anxiety disorders before and after birth, according to North Marin Community Services. Three quarters of those disorders go untreated, especially in low-income, Black, Indigenous and other marginalized communities.
The nonprofit says that unaddressed postpartum anxiety, depression and stress lead to more emergency room and urgent care visits and recurrent pediatric appointments. This is compounded by the fact that one-third of Marin residents are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and more than half of renters in the county are spending at least 30% of their income on rent, according to the organization. Financial barriers, untreated mental health conditions and other parental stressors add to a high-stress environment that can affect a child’s development and mental health.
Ivana Jagodic, founder and executive director of the Postpartum Support Center in San Rafael, said these untreated mental health complications go beyond affecting the pregnant person. There’s a ripple effect that affects the child, siblings, partners and caregivers. It can also break bonds or create unhealthy attachments between parents and children, Jagodic said.
“As the baby grows up, there is anxiety, there is depression, there is a generational effect of untreated mental health conditions, and it’s just something that I am still trying to wrap my head around,” Jagodic said. “When I went through this as I’m a mom of two, I couldn’t find help that I needed soon enough and I had no idea where to start looking for help and I couldn’t recognize what was wrong with me, so we have pledged that we will change that.”
The center provides early mental health screenings for parents before and after births to prevent disorders like postpartum depression. It offers resources like peer support groups, mental health aid and parenting classes.
“For me personally, this is a dream come true,” Jagodic said about the grant. “We want to see healthy families. We want to see healthy children. We don’t want to see these consequences because they’re huge, they’re huge for families for kids. It’s just really having this ripple effect that we want to prevent.”
Webb said success for the program would be seeing some of those statistics move toward the middle. She said while three years is not long enough to eliminate the disparities in the county, it could narrow the gaps.
“Thriving families is what we need to create,” Niggle said. “Thriving children and how do you thrive? It’s knowing that you’re supported, that you live in a community that respects your family and wants your family to thrive, and I think that’s the message, ultimately.”
The initiative will take several months to set up, but Webb said she thinks organizers might roll out a plan by the late fall.
“We’re really excited,” Niggle said. “We think we have the right players at the table to make this happen.”
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