Congratulations to HCN's Inaugural CPP Graduates

In July 2024, six HCN clinicians began an 18-month training and learning collaborative to become rostered practitioners in Child-Parent Psychotherapy, and this month we are proud to celebrate the completion of that journey and to recognize our inaugural CPP graduates. Reaching this milestone required sustained dedication, clinical courage, and the willingness to grow in the middle of an already demanding caseload, and we could not be more proud of each of them for seeing it through.

Please join us in honoring our graduates:

Kimberly Banford

Karen de la Torre

Ada Freund

Isela Gonzalez

Angelique McGuire

Alejandra Shuttleworth Juarez

Becoming a rostered CPP clinician is no small undertaking, and the path to that designation involves completing an intensive learning collaborative that combines rigorous didactic training, ongoing consultation with a CPP facilitator, and supervised clinical practice with real families in real time.

HCN's cohort worked directly with a contracted CPP facilitator, Vilma Reyes from UCSF's Child Trauma Research Program, through bimonthly consultation calls and quarterly program meetings, deepening clinicians' theoretical grounding in the model while simultaneously applying it with the children and families they were serving. They were not learning the work from a distance, they were building the skills while doing the work, holding families in active therapeutic relationships, and bringing what they were learning back into sessions week after week.

To be rostered as a CPP clinician is to have demonstrated fidelity to an evidence-based model that makes specific and demanding clinical asks of the practitioner: to hold space for both the child and the caregiver at once, to work relationally rather than prescriptively, and to help families do the hard work of healing within the relationship that matters most to a child's development. Our graduates met that standard while serving some of San Francisco's most underserved families, which makes the achievement all the more meaningful.

Child-Parent Psychotherapy is a nationally recognized, trauma-informed intervention built on a foundational truth, that the relationship between a young child and their caregiver is not just important to healing, it is the vehicle for healing. When a child has experienced trauma, their sense of safety in the world shifts, and their developmental expectations of the people who care for them can shift along with it, which is why CPP brings caregiver and child into the therapeutic space together, creating the conditions for trust, attachment, and emotional safety to be rebuilt through relationship rather than through observation or instruction alone.

For the families HCN serves, many of whom are navigating housing instability, complex trauma, domestic violence, and systems that were never designed with them in mind, that relational foundation is the difference between care that lands and care that does not. Young children carry the weight of what has happened to them in their bodies, in their behavior, and in the way they reach for or pull away from the people who love them, and CPP is designed to hold all of that with both the child and caregiver present, healing together in real time.

Our graduates brought a clear sense of purpose to this training, one shaped not just by clinical knowledge but by a genuine conviction about how healing works.

I have this belief that we need to heal in community. Going through grad school and getting our degrees, it's very individualistic, and it's the western model of healing. Even when I was doing my practicum, I saw that, yes, my client would come in, the child would come in. And a lot of the times I felt like, ‘why isn't the parent here?’ Like there could be so much more healing and understanding if the parent or the grandparent, the caregiver, the family, was in the room. -CPP Clinician

That instinct, paired with the clinical framework to act on it, is exactly what CPP provides, and for HCN's clinicians, the training was less a departure from the values they already held than a methodology that finally matched them.

An independent evaluation of HCN's CPP program conducted by Indigo Cultural Center found that over 83 percent of caregiver participants reported:

• stronger connections with their children,

• increased confidence in parenting, and

• a greater ability to navigate difficult situations after engaging in the program.

Caregivers also reported an enhanced ability to identify their own needs and manage their own emotions, reflecting what HCN has long understood about whole-family healing, which is that supporting a child means supporting the whole family.

One caregiver shared that working with her CPP clinician gave her the ability to bond with her daughter in ways she had not been able to before, another described participating in therapy as one of the best things that had ever happened to her and her child, and a third shared something that speaks to the depth of the work, which was that CPP helped her understand that her son was not trying to misbehave but was neurodiverse, and finally gave her the framework and the support to understand him differently.

What makes HCN's approach distinct is its commitment to cultural alignment. The majority of families served through HCN's CPP program are Latine-identified and Spanish-speaking, which is why HCN intentionally matched families with clinicians who shared their cultural background and language.

The evaluation found that 100 percent of caregiver participants said their cultural identities and values were respected and celebrated by their CPP therapist, and 100 percent emphasized the importance of having a therapist who speaks their preferred language. Cultural alignment in this work is not a preference or an added benefit, it is, as the evaluation puts it, a precondition for developing the trust needed to fully engage in the therapeutic process. When a caregiver can speak in the language they think and feel in, and when they are met by someone who understands where they come from and what they are carrying, the therapeutic space becomes somewhere they can actually show up. Several of HCN's CPP clinicians spoke to this directly during the evaluation, describing how being able to offer therapy in Spanish helped them bridge access and minimize barriers for families who might otherwise never have reached care.

For our graduates, the experience of training and practicing CPP has reshaped how they show up for families in the room. CPP clinician Ada Freund shared that the model has sharpened her capacity to work in tandem with both the child and their caregivers to support the restoration of safety in the relationship that shapes all relationships, and described showing up for the families she works with as a consistent and reliable guide while helping caregivers make sense of how trauma impacts a child's development.

The CPP model has become the healing foundation of my therapeutic approach. – Ada Freund, CPP Clinician

Her words capture what so many in the cohort have expressed about how this training has rooted them more deeply in the work. CPP clinician Karen de la Torre described what the training has equipped her to do:

This experience has meant that I can carry with me an evidence-based, trauma-informed practice which helps families name what hasn't been said and begin the hard work of healing in a safe environment. – Karen de la Torre, CPP Clinician

Karen's reflection names something the cohort articulated again and again across the year, which is that CPP gives clinicians a framework for addressing significant attachment ruptures and trauma experiences within families, and a steadier place from which to do that work.

Our graduates are now fully rostered as licensed CPP practitioners, expanding HCN's capacity to deliver evidence-based care to the children and families who need it most. In a moment when funding for mental health services in marginalized communities is under sustained pressure and the demand for culturally responsive care continues to grow, HCN's investment in training, retaining, and supporting a clinically skilled, culturally aligned workforce is a statement of commitment that extends well beyond any single program or grant cycle. We are deeply proud of this cohort, grateful for everything they have brought to this work, and excited to see the impact of their practice deepen in the years ahead.