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The Invisible Load of the Bilingual and Bicultural Clinician: Working with Foster Youth Across Language and Culture
2:00 PMThursday, November 12 2026
1:00 PMThursday, November 12 2026
12:00 PMThursday, November 12 2026
11:00 AMThursday, November 12 2026
10:00 AMThursday, November 12 2026
9:00 AM
Dr. Amanda Medrano, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist based in Walnut Creek, California, specializing in perinatal mental health, attachment, and relational trauma. Her work integrates psychodynamic, attachment-focused, and systems-informed approaches, with clinical experience across community mental health, integrated medical settings, and foster care–impacted populations. She serves as a Volunteer Clinical Professor with UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry, where she provides supervision and training to psychiatry fellows. Dr. Medrano’s teaching emphasizes reflective practice and the use of the therapeutic relationship as a central site of understanding and change.
This training explores the experiences of bilingual and bicultural clinicians working across languages and cultural contexts. Participants will consider the invisible labor of adapting clinical frameworks, the possibilities and limits of shared identity, and how clinicians’ own experiences enter the therapeutic relationship. Particular attention will be given to foster youth, whose understandings of identity, belonging, family, and relationships may be shaped by migration, separation, loss, multiple caregivers, and systems involvement.
This course is eligible for 2 continuing education credits.
This course is suitable for Psychologists, LMHCs, MFTs, Social Workers, LPCs, Counselors, and Psychiatrists.
Introductory
11:00–11:10am Welcome and orientation
11:10–11:30am The work across languages and cultures
11:30–11:45am Shared identity and difference
11:45–12:00pm Family, culture, and intergenerational transmissions
12:00–12:10pm Break
12:10–12:40pm Breakout and whole-group reflection
12:40–12:55pm Clinician identity and self-attunement
12:55–1:00pm Closing
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- List one culturally responsive strategy for attending to linguistic, cultural, and relational factors when working with bilingual or bicultural youth impacted by foster care.
- Identify one reflective practice strategy for attending to the clinician’s own linguistic, cultural, and relational experiences when working with bilingual or bicultural youth impacted by foster care.
- Assess one culturally responsive strategy for exploring how language, cultural identity, and migration experiences may shape a youth’s therapeutic relationships and sense of belonging.