Spotlight- North Marin Community Services
After decades of serving the Novato community, in 2018 Novato Youth Center and Novato Human Needs Center merged to form North Marin Community Services (NMCS). NMCS is a trusted provider in Marin County, offering community members critical mental health supports, food and rental assistance, health education and linkage to resources throughout the county. Since the start of the Pandemic, NMCS mobilized quickly to provide tele-mental health services and crisis services, intensive care coordination, emergency food and rental assistance, and has partnered with the County, City of Novato, Novato Unified and other community based organizations to coordinate COVID-19 response and prevention in Novato.
BHRS’s Prevention and Outreach team is proud to partner with NMCS to provide a range of services through Mental Health Services Act Prevention and Early Intervention funding, including:
- Mental health and Case Management services to the Latinx community: NMCS’s Bilingual behavioral health providers provide brief interventions for individuals, groups, couples, and families including psycho-education, coping skills, communication skills, and referrals to appropriate behavioral health services.
- School-based Supports: Comprehensive school-based mental health supports to Spanish speaking Latinx students and families at Novato High School and newcomer groups that focus on issues such as grief and loss, acculturation, and building resources and supports for recently immigrated youth.
- Weekly Teen Clinic: The Novato Teen Clinic provides reproductive and behavioral health care, and health education for teens and transition aged youth in partnership with Marin Community Clinics.
- Promotores: NMCS’ Promotores program supports the community through parent engagement, emotional and mental health support, and referral to critical resources. The program also provides leadership training and education to the Promotores. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Promotores have been working tirelessly to connect community members to rental assistance, financial support, food assistance, Covid-19 testing information, connecting to technology support, immigration referrals, housing, Legal and Census information. Learn more about our work with NMCS and other community based Promotores/Community Health Advocates Programs.
