UKIAH, CA. , 12/10/25 — Ukiah-based nonprofit Tapestry Family Services has received a $1 million grant to improve access to mental health services for youth up to 25 years old in remote areas of Mendocino County. The grant will also expand access to parent-child interaction therapy for families outside Ukiah and Fort Bragg, where services have been unavailable or hard to access without costly travel. Tapestry Family Services provides mental health and foster care support for families across Mendocino County.
The grant, from the Tow Foundation, will be spread out over the next three years to fund therapists to visit rural areas rather than families traveling, possibly for hours, to find therapy. Therapists will use a Sprinter van that Tapestry purchased recently.
The East Coast-based Tow Foundation awarded Tapestry the grant from its 2025 Innovation Fund. Tapestry Family Services Operations Director Brian Erickson has expertise in grant writing and helped the organization secure the grant. Erickson said this grant was right up their alley as it pertained to helping youth with mental health.
Erickson noted that, with success, the mobile program that the grant will help fund could be the start of something bigger.
“Hopefully, when we start seeing these amazing results that we’re expecting to see, we’re able to share that with other communities, whether that be reaching out to them and sharing or identifying other places that are similar to us and reaching out to them,” Erickson said in an interview. “To be able to connect us to the larger community around us — not just Mendocino County, or even Northern California — but to be able to change the landscape of rural mental health in the United States.”
Tapestry Executive Director Kendra Palma noted the importance of a program like this in Mendocino County.
“Working in mental health and social work is about meeting people where they’re at,” she said. “In this case, it’s not just geographically, but also about their needs. We recognize that the more rural people are in Mendocino County, the more isolated they are. And we know that being rural means that there is a severe reduction in access to services. We want to try to find a way to meet people where they are, whether that is in their local community, but also at a time when they are in need.”
Erickson explained that there can be a stigma around mental health treatment in rural communities — but there doesn’t have to be.
“There doesn’t have to be something wrong with you to get mental health services,” he said, explaining that mental health services benefit overall health and that therapists being in the community is vital to earning trust and breaking down barriers. “[This] is going to end up hopefully breaking cycles that we’ve seen in some of these communities that keep them struggling. So that’s the whole intent of the program, is to be able to go to those communities, break down those barriers, and create access where people are.”
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