In Colombia, over one million children under five have been exposed to conflict and displacement, while an additional 300,000 Venezuelan children have faced forced migration with their families. These experiences can lead to toxic stress, impacting children’s mental health, brain development, and socioemotional growth, thereby affecting their future and perpetuating cycles of poverty. To address this, Universidad de los Andes collaborated with the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco, to create Semillas de Apego in 2014. This case study examines the community-based program that focuses on improving maternal mental health and establishing nurturing child-parent relationships to protect children from adversity and support their development.
Semillas de Apego involves a 15-week course for caregivers, featuring weekly 2.5-hour group sessions that address caregiver trauma, child development, and positive parenting. Starting in Tumaco, the program has expanded to five regions and aims to reach 7 territories by 2025, benefiting thousands of caregivers and children. Since its launch, 2,717 participants have joined, including 653 in the most recent cohort.
Hard to Reach
Children and their caregivers who are affected by violence in Colombian society.
Key Takeaways
Mental health remains a key focus area for Colombia, with displacement, poverty, and historical conflict all affecting caregiver mental health. Semillas de Apego (SdA) is positioned uniquely within the country’s mental-health service landscape since the organization focuses on parental mental health as a mechanism to foster healthy parent-child attachments. The research identifies the following key aspects of the program’s ability to reach and engage participants.
- Cultural Competence in Program Delivery
- Emphasis on Lived Experience
- A Cycle of Trust
- Reducing Stigma
- Robust Monitoring and Evaluation
Researchers
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Sujeetkumar Kadam
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Brigalow McIntosh
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Jacinta Patel
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Ajak Diing
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Akanksha Agarwal
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Shifa Nathani
Mentors
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Carolina Bermúdez
Program Manager, Colombia, Kindred
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Maria Rodrigues
Director, Kindred
Acknowledgments
We thank Professor Adrian Little and the university’s Office of Research Ethics and Integrity. We acknowledge the invaluable support from Kindred, particularly Steve Fisher, Maria Rodrigues, and Kirsty McKellar. A special thanks to Carolina Bermúdez, our project supervisor, for guiding us through the streets of Colombia literally and f iguratively. We thank our performance coach Vadim Levin and our editor Jacqueline Larson from the Reach Alliance Team. Our research would not have been possible without the ongoing support and guidance offered by the entire Semillas de Apego team including Andrés Moya, Blasina Niño, and Zayra González but especially Felipe Ruiz. And finally we thank and honour the people who shared their time and stories with us, the community facilitators of the program, the driving force behind the success of this intervention. Muchas gracias y un abrazo.
This research received ethics approval from the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee (approval ID: 2024-30006-55688-4).