The Sonoma County Office of Education is hosting a series of free, bilingual virtual workshops during the 2026-27 school year for families and caregivers to explore critical youth mental health subjects.
The sessions will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursdays with both English and Spanish tracks. The first session, set for Thursday, Sept. 10, will be a Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) Suicide Prevention Gatekeeper Training.
This is the fourth year SCOE has offered the sessions. Mary Champion, a school psychologist and licensed marriage and family therapist with the office, said the sessions grew out of a needs assessment to determine struggles for students, families, and districts.
“We heard a lot of families saying they wanted more access to information, and we heard a lot of districts saying, ‘We want to do more outreach and more psych education for families,’” she said. “We figured, as part of the Sonoma County Office of Education, something we could offer to every single district are these virtual workshops.”
The sessions have since grown to include community partners like Kaiser Permanente and local nonprofit Positive Images, who will join presentations in the winter and spring. Past workshops have included Common Sense Media.
“We’ve seen certain topics have higher attendance,” Champion said. “We did a partnership with Common Sense Media to talk a little bit about online safety, and for that we had a big increase.”
Since that initial needs assessment, the education office has used data from YouthTruth surveys and anecdotal information from school sites and district leaders. Social media and online safety was a highly-requested topic among districts and families. Champion said that there will be a February session on artificial intelligence and wellness.
“This is just one opportunity to learn how to support and understand issues that affect youths’ well-being and mental health, and there are a lot of community resources out there and sometimes they can be tricky to find,” Champion said. “If folks are hesitant, they don’t have to have their camera on, they don’t have to participate. They can just listen.”
The Sonoma County Office of Education also offers a bilingual family consultation line, open to every family with a school-aged child in the county, for immediate support and connection to resources.
The Sept. 10 session will cover the warning signs of mental distress and how to intervene in a potential suicide crisis and connect someone to resources. QPR suicide prevention is taught by trained mental health providers and is appropriate for those 12 years and older. The Nov. 5 workshop, “Understanding and Supporting Youth with Anxiety and School Avoidance,” will cover signs of anxiety in youth, what adults can do to help, strategies to support school attendance, and local resources.
“Our hope for these workshops is that families start to see schools as their partner to support their child,” Champion said. “Along with other community agencies, together we can really figure out how to better support the whole child and the whole family.”
Families and caregivers can sign up to participate at SCOE.org or call 707-522-3241. Attendees can choose sessions based on interest and will receive an email reminder with access links ahead of each workshop. Additional topics will be announced later this fall. For additional information or help with registration, contact Mary Champion at mchampion@scoe.org or Gabriela Gachet at ggachet@scoe.org.
Staff Writer Hannah Harn can be reached at hannah.harn@pressdemocrat.com.