This is a guest post by Kim Gilsdorf, a Program Officer for the Perigee Fund, a national philanthropy committed to prenatal-to-age-3 mental health.
I work with organizations that support the mental health of families every day. Still, I know that too many pregnant and parenting families can’t find the mental health support they deserve.
For example, one in five birthing people faces mental health challenges in pregnancy and the postpartum period, but 75% do not get the care they need. Because of structural racism, people of color are the most affected by maternal mental health challenges and the least likely to be screened or receive appropriate services.
Over the next 10 years, our goal at Perigee is to shift policies and systems so they increasingly value and embed supports for caregiver and infant mental health in the settings where families already seek out care during pregnancy and early childhood. In pursuit of that goal, we launched a national open funding opportunity in June 2024. Building Together: Equitable Systems for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Mental Health seeks to fund state, tribal, or regional systems change efforts that are expanding equitable access to mental health support for families.
In designing this opportunity, we asked ourselves what it takes for policy and systems change to meaningfully improve access to family mental health supports. While there are different ways to answer this question, essential ingredients are equity-focused systems collaboration, guided by family perspectives.
Policies can make a difference for family mental health.
To illustrate, I reflect on some of the work we have funded in Washington State. Pierce County is south of Seattle and covers greater Tacoma, a large military base, tribal communities, and rural small towns. Over the last few years, Perigee has been funding the Pierce County Early Childhood Network (PCECN), a regional systems change effort that brings together hundreds of community partners to improve the wellbeing of children and families. PCECN has successfully advocated for several state and local policy and financing changes desired by prenatal-to-age-3 families, including a network of diaper banks and programs to improve access to childcare.
“Pierce County children and families are the ‘why’ behind the PCECN. We are not the decision makers. We are the conveners, the catalyst behind the change. Pierce County Early Childhood Network is a living, breathing system,” says Muriel Herrera-Velasquez, PCECN Network Manager.
Because of PCECN family voices and advocacy, Pierce County now has comprehensive screening and connection programs, which help families find the mental health and other supports they need. One of these is a brief, evidence-based, postpartum support program called Family Connects. It is offered to all families in Pierce County welcoming a newborn. Nurses check in on the health of the baby and the parents and connect families to resources for parenting and child development. Family Connects has been demonstrated to reduce clinical anxiety and depression and to reduce disparities in depression and anxiety between Black and White mothers.
Meeting families where they are matters.
Families are where policy efforts must begin and end as far as Perigee is concerned, so I asked our PCECN partners for a family story that I could share with blog readers. Dulce (last name withheld for privacy) and her newborn son, Alexander, are recent clients of Family Connects. They were offered support by a Family Connects staff person in the hospital. While at the hospital, Dulce felt the mixture of joy and stress that many new parents experience. Yet after she returned home, she began to feel isolated and depressed. Economic stress and a history of depression added to the burden on her mental health. Leaving home, even for routine medical appointments, started to feel impossible.
Throughout this time, the Family Connects team kept in touch with Dulce. The third time they called, Dulce bravely shared that she was not OK. An experienced nurse, Jessica, came to Dulce’s home. Jessica spent time with Dulce and Alexander, checking both their physical and their mental health. When Dulce shared about her struggles with depression, Jessica listened and offered support. Mental health counseling didn’t feel right for Dulce, but joining a group of other parents did. So did accessing some of the diaper bank, WIC, and SNAP resources made available in Pierce County because of PCECN’s work. Continuing her depression medication and rescheduling the medical appointments she had missed also helped.
As the weeks have passed, Jessica keeps checking in, and Dulce is feeling better. “Having someone come to my home and check on me was just what I needed,” she explained.
Together we can accelerate and deepen progress.
Thanks to the work of the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, which Perigee follows closely, I know there are many policies that give rise to programs and services that support parent health and emotional wellbeing. Policies that create paid family and medical leave benefits, offer early intervention services, or provide home visiting are all demonstrated to be effective in supporting the mental health of prenatal-to-age-3 families and are part of PCECN’s efforts.
Perigee released the Building Together funding opportunity because we know that these kinds of policy changes are necessary for families like Dulce and Alexander to receive mental health supports, and because we want to find and resource groups like PCECN that we know exist nationally, but that we have not yet had the opportunity to meet.
Building Together will fund up to eight (8) collaborative efforts that are already engaged in changing systems to support prenatal-to-age-3 mental health in their state or region. Groups can be focused on improving maternal mental health or early childhood mental health and can work across any combination of sectors where families receive services. We are excited about funding a wide range of efforts and know each group will be guided by the input of families in their state or region.
I encourage interested applicants to learn more about Building Together on Perigee’s website, where the full RFP is available for download. Let’s build a world where all prenatal-to-age-3 families can access the mental health support they need to thrive.
