La Familia Counseling Center

Centro de Apoyo Latinx (Latinx Support Center) at La Familia Counseling Center continues to provide services to the most vulnerable populations.  Especially during these COVID times the fear, anxiety and need for services has increased and CAL plays an important role in offering wellness opportunities for the Latinx community.  CAL has Spanish speaking therapists and community health workers to offer short term urgent care services at no cost to assist the individual and family in improving their wellbeing.  

CAL continues to do outreach and offer services to address the inequities in health care resulting in the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 patients in Sacramento and California being Latinx.  To support the community, La Familia became a COVID testing site and offers COVID-19 testing Monday’s (except certain holidays).  Check website for more information.  

Additionally, LFCC advocated with Sacramento County to have a Spanish and English health information campaign targeted for the Latinx community which is currently in process.  LFCC advocated for targeted resources for Latinx community including bilingual Contact Tracers, Community Health Workers and Business Navigators.  As a result, the County provided LFCC with resources to partner with other organizations to ensure 50% of the County Contact Tracers (30) were selected by us and our partners and focused on reaching the communities most impacted by COVID.

Community Health Workers offer resources for food and shelter, referrals for health care, information and education on domestic violence, substance abuse, and communication.  They offer Mental Health First Aid and Recognize Signs of Suicide workshops to introduce the topic of mental health and how to recognize signs of mental illness.  Virtual support groups for the Spanish speaking community are offered weekly and well attended.

The Latinx community tend to be the essential workers, including our agricultural and food plant workers who have the highest COVID rates.  To support our farmworkers, LFCC is leading the Housing to the Harvest program which is a state/county and community partnership to provide housing, support and resources for positive COVID agricultural workers who cannot isolate.  CAL will be providing daily check ins and wellness checks with the workers and their families as well as connecting them to other supportive services and resources.

Some of the other recent services we have been offering include hosting a Health and Safety Fair in September of 2020 that offered flu shots, blood pressure screenings, dental information, mental health and wellness information as well as other support and resources.  In October 2020, we will hold another health fair in partnership with the Mexican Consulate for Bi-National Health Week. “ Celebrando Nuestra Salud” has traditionally been held at a local park, but due to COVID La Familia will host the event at our Maple Center.  In addition to the flu shots, screenings, we will be providing a “mask distribution” and provide information on staying healthy during COVID. 

In addition to the services being offered, LFCC CAL staff are participating in a community college certificate “Community Health Worker” program to become certified Mental Health Community Health Workers.  The CHW program is open to any community member and La Familia is offering stipends as well as scholarships for attendees. Participation through La Familia includes a cultural responsive training on our “8 Prinicples of Cultura de Salud” as well as Promotora Training from Vision Y Compromiso.

During COVID the CAL Team and all of LFCC staff have been extremely busy helping the community with wellness, food distribution, resources for housing, assistance with census, health information and resources, education, training and employment opportunities.  We have continued to keep our doors open to meet the critical needs of our communities.