Our Purpose
The Sana Sana program is committed to enhancing the well-being of children (ages 0–12) and their families by collaborating with educators, caregivers, and other support professionals. We work within the systems these families interact with to ensure a supportive environment that is responsive to their social-emotional, behavioral, developmental, and cultural needs. Sana Sana provides mental health consultation and support to the adults who impact children’s lives. As adult caregivers gain understanding and skills in how to support a child, it becomes more likely that the child will feel loved and open to healing.
What We Offer
Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation & School-Based Mental Health Consultation
Focused on promotion, early intervention, and building community resiliency, Sana Sana offers services that address the unique developmental, behavioral, and cultural needs of children and their families by enhancing supportive relationships and fostering positive learning environments.
Sana Sana currently provides preschool mental health consultation services to:
- All eleven of Mission Neighborhood Center’s Head Start campuses
- Felton Institute’s Head Start programs: FDC, Solmar, STC, MLK
- Theresa Mahler Child Development Center (SFUSD)
- Bret Harte Early Education (SFUSD)
- Junipero Serra Annex Early Education School (SFUSD)
- Mission Education Center Elementary School (PK, TK) (SFUSD)
- The Family School
- Mission YMCA
- Mission Child Care Consortium
- Project Commotion
- Holy Family Day Home
- GLIDE Family, Youth and Childcare Center
- Wu Yee Children’s Services – Scotia Center
Services are also provided to several Latino Family Child Care Providers. For information regarding these services, please ask your provider if they partner with Instituto Familiar de la Raza.
Sana Sana currently provides mental health consultation to four Family Resource Centers (FRCs):
- Instituto Familiar de la Raza’s Casa Corazón FRC
- GLIDE FRC
- Mission Neighborhood Center – Bayview Hunters Point FRC
- APA Family Support Services – Visitacion Valley Strong Families FRC
Sana Sana also provides school-based mental health consultation services at SFUSD elementary schools in the Mission and Outer Mission Districts. These services focus on reducing barriers to learning by enhancing the capacity of teachers, administrators, and parents to respond to the social-emotional and behavioral needs of children and their families. We currently provide services at the following SFUSD schools: Cesar Chavez Elementary, Bryant Elementary, and Cleveland Elementary School.
SPARK (Supporting Play, Attunement, and Relationships with Kids)
The Sana Sana Program provides comprehensive, holistic, wraparound services to families with young children (ages 0–5) living in public housing, primarily serving Sunnydale families but also other SF HOPE sites, who have experienced trauma. This sub-team is named SPARK.
The primary goal of the wraparound program is to support and strengthen the relationship between a young child and their parent or caregiver as a vehicle for restoring the child’s sense of safety, strengthening attachment relationships (increasing attunement and responsiveness to emotional needs), and improving the child’s cognitive, behavioral, and social functioning.
We accomplish this through client-centered, nonjudgmental, culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
If you would like to make a referral, please see our referral form linked here.
The SPARK (Supporting Play, Attunement, and Relationship with Kids) program is a full-service partnership (therapy, clinical case management, community engagement) designed to strengthen family connections for newborns to 5 years old and their families. The SPARK Program’s approach is based upon a cultural, psycho-social, trauma-informed, healing-centered, attachment, social justice, and mental health framework that affirms and builds upon the strengths of the child, their caregivers, and the community in which they identify.
Contact Us
For more information regarding the Sana Sana Program, please contact Sara Briseño, Sana Sana Program Director, at (510) 269-4991 or [email protected]
For more information regarding SPARK, please contact Linda Mora, SPARK Program Manager, at (415) 319-3622 or [email protected]
