PARENT RESILIENCE PROGRAM
Parent Resilience Program
Now supporting families in King County and the North Sound Region (Skagit, San Juan, Whatcom, and Island Counties)
The Parent Resilience Program offers peer-based, non-clinical support for pregnant people and new parents navigating stress, emotional challenges, and who are at risk of, or currently experiencing, mental health challenges related to childbearing. Our program is grounded in lived experience, cultural connection, and trauma-informed care.
We serve pregnant people and new parents up to 2 years postpartum. We also support people who have experienced a loss, terminated a pregnancy, or had other unexpected childbirth outcomes and may not consider themselves parents, and parents who are not currently parenting due to loss, child welfare removal, etc., if they need perinatal mental health and emotional wellness support.
We are now proudly expanding into the North Sound (Skagit, Island, San Juan, and Whatcom)
The Parent Resilience Program prioritizes reaching families in rural communities who may lack access to essential mental health and wellness services. We understand that participants may experience layered challenges related to health, safety, and basic needs, especially in areas with limited access to care. Additional support may be extended in cases where families face multiple barriers to accessing essential resources. Please reach out to see how we can support you in your region.
For Parents
We know parenting can be overwhelming, especially when you feel like no one truly understands what you're going through. That is where a peer can help.
Our Peer Support Specialists (PSS) are parents from your community who have experienced perinatal mental health challenges firsthand. They bring compassion, connection, and understanding, not just training and credentials. They’re here to walk with you, not to “fix” you.
What can a Peer Support Specialist help with?
- Creating realistic self-care routines
- Walking with you through feelings of grief, anxiety, or isolation
- Supporting you in advocating for your needs with healthcare or service providers
- Helping you connect with affirming community resources (doulas, therapist, support groups, etc.)
- Building your wellness goals through a personalized Wellness Wheel
We offer flexible support in-person, phone, text, or video with weekly or bi-weekly sessions that can last anywhere from a few months up to a year, depending on what feels right for you.
What Does “Culturally Matched” Peer Support Mean?
Culturally matched support takes the whole person into account when providing support (not just their diagnosis). That can mean finding culturally, gender, and racially affirming providers and treatments that support and are directed by the goals of the person receiving support. Each of our Peer Support Specialists are active members of their communities and well-versed in connecting their community to resources and events.
The Parent Resilience Program offers culturally matched services to:
- Black/African American families
- Latinx/Spanish-speaking families
- Rural families in the North Sound (Skagit, San Juan, Whatcom, and Island Counties)
For Providers
The Parent Resilience Program provides non-clinical, trauma-informed, culturally matched peer support to individuals navigating the perinatal period. Our model is informed by the needs of our individual participants to provide the unique, tailored support that parents in the perinatal period need to foster, restore, and improve their emotional wellness. We define the perinatal period from pre-conception to two years postpartum.
How peers integrate with a care team
Peers act as “emotional support besties,” and cheerleaders, offering consistent, strengths-based support to help participants achieve their wellness goals.
Peer services are:
- Voluntary
- Mental Health screenings by request only (not required)
- Participant-led
- Highly flexible (in-person, with hybrid offered via text, video or phone)
We see high engagement and retention because of the trust and shared experience built into the model. The Parent Resilience Program can enhance the impact of clinical care by supporting the emotional and practical day-to-day needs of families.
Our Peer Support Specialists are trained and experientially credentialed to provide flexible, family-centered care to parents experiencing:
- Emotional distress, isolation, or anxiety
- Grief, loss, or unexpected parenting outcomes
- Cultural or systemic barriers to accessing care
- Racialized trauma and marginalization
- Navigating complex systems (housing, healthcare, benefits, legal)
- Perinatal mental health conditions like depression, intrusive thoughts, or NICU-related stress
Who Might Benefit from The Parent Resilience Program?
This program is a strong fit for individuals who:
- Need connection to community resources or affirming providers.
- Are immigrants, BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ or from communities that may not feel safe in traditional systems.
- Would benefit from co-creating wellness strategies with someone who truly “gets it”.
- Need support beyond what clinical services alone can provide.
Does this program sound like the right fit for you? Call 1-888-404-7763
To access any of our programs please submit a request for services below. Providers can refer via the same link
1-888-404-7763
* se habla español
warmline@perinatalsupport.org
“I hope all your future participants feel the support you have given me”
-PERC Participant
Meet our team
Elizabeth Moore Simpson, PERC Program Manager
Elizabeth Moore Simpson (she/her), LICSW, PERC Program Manager
Is a parent of two and also identifies as a bereaved parent. Prior to joining PS-WA she had over ten years of experience working with growing families. With an infant-early childhood mental health (IECMH) and perinatal health focus, she has held roles as a full-spectrum doula, restorative justice circle keeper, child and family therapist, PMH therapist and community organizer.
Elizabeth practices as a perinatal therapist, abortion doula and is the program manager for PS-WA’s Parent Resilience Program. She enjoys bringing tarot and body-based awareness to her personal and professional practice. She is passionate about supporting families impacted by the child welfare system to sustain, develop and strengthen secure attachments with family and community and working upstream to challenge mandated reporting laws causing harm and distrust between families and providers.
Elizabeth enjoys improvising crafts with her kids and manifesting cozy fall days. She aspires to bring levity, integrity and realness to her work with colleagues and families and can often be found scouring thrift stores for costumes and craft supplies.
Elizabeth.MooreSimpson (at) perinatalsupport (dot) org
Stephanie Valerdi, PERC Program Support Coordinator & Latinx Peer Support
Stephanie Valerdi (she/her/they/them), PERC Program Support Coordinator and Latinx Peer Support
Stephanie Valerdi Tellez (she/they) brings over a decade of experience advocating for families and parents through a variety of community-based roles. Stephanie is deeply committed to promoting equity and accessibility within community services, centering their work around a trauma-informed approach to support families.
With a background in mental health and early childhood education and development, Stephanie has offered compassionate, bilingual support (in English and Spanish) to parents navigating challenges in the birth-to-five age range. Stephanie has provided culturally aligned, strengths-based peer support within the Latinx community and has worked to expand access to Spanish mental health and community resources. Her work is grounded in a passion for improving outcomes for families most impacted by systemic oppression.
Stephanie also brings her lived experience to her work. As a Queer, chronically ill Mexican immigrant and survivor of gender-based violence, she understands firsthand the complexities of navigating the mental health system. She draws on this experience to connect deeply with QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, People of Color) survivors and peers, offering affirming, trauma-informed peer support.
In addition to her one-on-one support work, Stephanie facilitates Queer parent groups and serves her community as a board member of Somos Seattle a Latinx LGBTQ+ organization, and the WA State LGBQT Commission.
Outside of her work, Stephanie is rooted in both family life and community care. They find joy in everyday moments, spending time in nature with her wife, 9-year-old child, and their dog, or attending drag shows and celebrating Queer & Latinx joy. Stephanie remains fiercely committed to challenging racism, homophobia, and systemic oppression in all its forms, bringing that purpose into every aspect of her daily life.
stephanie.valerdi (at) perinatalsupport (dot) org
La Tonia Bussell-Packard, Peer Support Specialist
La Tonia Bussell-Packard (they/she), Parent Resilience Specialist, Traditional Midwife
La Tonia is a queer Black femme who supports pregnant and parenting families as a Parent Resilience Specialist in King County. They serve as an encouraging resource and witness for parents navigating the perinatal mental health landscape by using their firsthand experience as a parent who has lived with anxiety and depression. La Tonia knows firsthand the barriers that exist for Black and queer folx seeking support for their mental health. La Tonia has experienced personal and professional loss, which allows them to offer supportive tools and skills that are based on lived experience and shared community ways of ‘knowing’ and processing grief and loss.
La Tonia has spent the last 7+ years advocating for families, attending births, and providing compassionate care as a birth doula and student midwife. They graduated from midwifery school in June 2021 and now practice and attend births as a traditional midwife. In all their work, La Tonia centers Black, Indigenous, and QTPOC families in their role as a midwife, doula, and peer. They use the framework and lens of reproductive justice, the intersections of race, class, gender/sexuality, and ability, and radical rest politics when supporting families in their community.
Amy Menjivar, Peer Support Specialist
Amy Menjivar (she/her), Peer Support Specialist
Amy is a Latina and mother of two children and PMAD’s survivor and Bilingual Spanish speaker. She has a passion to provide strong contributions to our society, with awareness of the use of stigmatizing language around mental illness. She has a background in Early Childhood Education and has worked with children for the past 9 years. She has supported King County Families and children of all ethnicities with special needs. She has worked mostly with Latin families as their family support specialist.
Amy is passionate about helping the community, engaging families and building community. She is committed to help immigrants in the community and teach families that there is someone here to listen to them and also to receive help.
Addelle Diedesch, Skagit PERC Program Manager
T. Addelle Diedesch (she/her), PERC Program Manager Skagit County, MA, LMHC, PMH-C
Addelle is the Skagit and North Sound Site Manager, where she provides strength-focused reflective supervision to Parent Support Specialists, builds community connections, and advocates for systemic change. She also helps grow and guide the program, tending to the behind-the-scenes details of program management while keeping the focus on people and families.
Her career began in substance use disorder treatment, including a perinatal inpatient program and later medically assisted treatment with the Stillaguamish Tribe, where she supported Indigenous families through culturally affirming care. She also worked in community mental health and school-based services for children and adolescents before her own experience with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders shifted her path. Facing the lack of rural PMAD support firsthand inspired her to focus on perinatal mental health, community advocacy, and building stronger systems of care. Today, she is especially passionate about supporting families with young children and developmental differences. Alongside her work with PS-WA, Addelle maintains a private therapy practice specializing in the reproductive journey and in supporting parents of children ages 0–5.
Her leadership is rooted in empathy, humility, and lived experience. Growing up and raising her family in rural North Sound communities has given her a deep understanding of the gaps families face, particularly those in underserved groups. As a neurodivergent individual supporting a neurodivergent household, she is committed to bridging divides and creating meaningful change through culturally relevant care and advocacy.
Outside of work, Addelle enjoys the lively chaos of raising three kids, staying grounded in her spiritual community, and spending time with friends. She loves live music, co-creating fantasy role-playing worlds with her family, and serves on the board of Skagit Preschool and Resource Center, supporting children with developmental differences and their families.
addelle.diedesch (at) perinatalsupport (dot) org
Crystal Kombol, Skagit Peer Support Specialist
Crystal Kombol (she/her), Parent Resilience Specialist
Crystal has supported youth within the educational system and housing displaced families in Skagit County for the last 8 years. Equitable access to educational opportunities and behavioral health have been a cornerstone of Crystal’s 15 years of social service work.
Crystal experienced unexpected pregnancy complications leading to the premature birth of her child. Art journaling, mindfulness coaching and healing in community helped Crystal endure the highs and lows of both infertility and NICU parenting. Crystal’s lived experience led her to become passionate about advocating for systemic practices that promote perinatal wellness within the whole community.
Briseida Fredrickson, Skagit Peer Support Specialist
Briseida Fredrickson (she/her), Skagit Peer Support Specialist
Briseida Fredrickson is a proud Latina, DACA recipient, and mother to a young daughter. With a background in education, she has worked as a teacher supporting multilingual and diverse learners. Briseida is bilingual in English and Spanish and passionate about creating inclusive spaces where families feel seen and supported. She is deeply committed to giving back to her community and draws on her own lived experiences as a first-generation college graduate and parent to connect with others with empathy and care.
Parent Resources and Handouts
County Resources & Referrals
Due to COVID-19 many of of the support groups below are either not meeting, or are meeting virtually. Please visit our Virtual Support Groups Handout below for all the details.
