Boston has committed unprecedented funding to address the growing mental health crisis facing children and families, announcing more than $21 million for youth behavioral health programs and an additional $24 million to strengthen health services across Boston Public Schools. These investments, highlighted by the City as “transformative,” aim to expand trauma supports, community partnerships, clinical care, and multilingual family engagement.
Sources:
Immigrant Families Face Barriers Despite Major Funding
For thousands of immigrant families and students of color, these announcements collide with a different reality: shrinking school-based mental health staffing, long waitlists, and a persistent lack of culturally and linguistically appropriate services. Boston Public Schools’ Behavioral Health Services department outlines a comprehensive support model intended to serve all students, but the system’s capacity has not kept pace with rising need.
A GBH investigation reported that mental health support in BPS has actually shrunk in many schools, even as students show increasing signs of anxiety, depression, trauma, and behavioral challenges. Some schools have lost psychologists and social workers, leaving hundreds of students dependent on a single clinician.
These gaps fall especially hard on immigrant youth who rely on school-based supports as their primary point of care and who often experience culturally specific stressors, including migration trauma, language barriers, acculturation pressures, and family responsibilities.
Language Barriers and Cultural Realities
Parents from Somalis, Haitian, Cape Verdean, Arab, Latino, and West African communities consistently report difficulty obtaining timely services for their children. Families often cannot access evaluations or follow-up care in their home languages, and many report feeling left out of critical decisions because of a lack of translated communication. School staff, already overwhelmed, acknowledge that meeting the needs of multilingual families requires staffing levels and cultural competencies that many schools currently lack.
Some schools have begun incorporating the city’s new funding into their planning, primarily through expanded telehealth and wellness initiatives, but these improvements remain uneven across the district.
A Lifeline for Immigrant Youth in a Growing Support Gap
For immigrant students, school is not only an academic environment but also a cultural and emotional anchor. When staffing shortages persist, these students lose access to trusted adults who help them navigate stress, identity conflict, and experiences of discrimination or isolation. Community health workers describe a growing number of children coping with layers of trauma, including war, displacement, and separation from relatives, while simultaneously serving as interpreters and cultural bridges for their families.
Despite the city’s financial commitments, families say that services on the ground remain difficult to access, unfamiliar to navigate, and inconsistent from school to school.
As Boston strives to expand mental health capacity, the disconnect between investment and implementation remains a pressing concern. Funding alone does not guarantee equitable access, and without culturally responsive clinicians, stable staffing, and reliable communication pathways, immigrant youth will continue to face barriers that undermine their well-being and academic success.
The city’s diversity requires mental health systems that understand and reflect the communities they serve, especially those who rely most heavily on school-based support.
Addressing the Equity Gap at the Heart of the Crisis
Boston’s record-level investments signal a significant step forward, but the lived experiences of immigrant families reveal that the mental health system still falls short of meeting their needs.
The crisis outlined in the title remains unmistakable: despite historic funding, immigrant youth continue to encounter shrinking services, uneven implementation, and barriers that place them at a disadvantage.
The clear takeaway is that meaningful progress will only occur when investments reach the students and communities who rely on them most. Boston’s future depends on ensuring that mental health resources are delivered equitably, consistently, and in ways that fully reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the city’s families.
Abdullahi Hussein is a community journalist focused on uplifting immigrant voices and local stories in Boston. He is also our director of editorial and development.
