Elevate Policy Lab, the NYC Department of Homeless Services (DHS), and nonprofit BronxWorks are collaborating to launch a new cultural adaptation of the MOMS Stress Management Course in the city’s family shelter system. This adaptation will expand the reach of MOMS services to Spanish-speaking mothers, including recent immigrants and asylum-seekers. The MOMS Stress Management Course is an eight-session group intervention that forms the centerpiece of the MOMS Partnership® Model.

The MOMS Partnership® has the potential to reduce a mother’s depressive symptoms and increase a mother’s ability to meet her families’ basic needs. In 2021, Elevate, NYC DHS, and BronxWorks partnered to pilot the NYC DHS MOMSSM Partnership in two BronxWorks-operated shelters for families with children.

That pilot demonstrated both the successful implementation of MOMS services within the DHS system and the promise of program effectiveness: participants experienced reductions in depression symptoms, depression severity, and anxiety, as well as an increase in social support. At the same time, the pilot also demonstrated the limitations of English-language services: BronxWorks staff estimated that over the course of the pilot period, between 30% and 50% of prospective participants — mothers who had not yet participated in MOMS — were ineligible due to a language barrier.

Since early in the partnership, NYC DHS, BronxWorks and Elevate partners have been interested in expanding program reach to Spanish-speaking mothers and pilot findings cemented shared investment in addressing the gap. Previous work had been done to translate the MOMS Stress Management course into Spanish, but a culturally adapted curriculum for the Spanish-speaking client community — Latina mothers in the Bronx, many of whom are recent immigrants — had never been developed or tested. BronxWorks and Elevate took the initial steps to change that in fall 2024. Together, the partners have followed Elevate’s established process for cultural and linguistic adaptation, grounded in best practices from the field to ensure the final product represents the needs, experiences, and voices of the participant community.

Classes of the newly adapted MOMS SM curriculum are set to begin in January 2025. Simultaneously, Elevate will conduct an evaluation to rigorously test the acceptability, feasibility, and promise of effectiveness of the adaptation for this new demographic of participants. Ultimately, these findings will advance our shared goal of expanding services for Spanish-speaking mothers — and will pave the way for future cultural adaptations to continue closing the gaps in mental health programming.

This project is supported by the Robin Hood Foundation.