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When Healing Travels Through a Family
- 7h
- 4 min read
Mental Health Awareness Month | Homeless Children’s Network | May 2026
A woman sits in her car outside a clinic for nearly forty minutes before driving away.
She had therapy once, years ago. The last therapist she saw told her she was being dramatic. She never went back. When her sister calls later that evening and asks how the appointment went, she says, "It was fine."
Across the city, a twelve-year-old boy is being written up at school for the third time that month. The note in his file says defiant. What the file cannot hold is that he has been sleeping on his cousin’s couch for weeks while his mother stays in a shelter across town. The next time he is sent to the office, the dean is waiting for him. The counselor’s door down the hall stays closed.
In the Bayview, a new mother sits awake at four in the morning holding her three-month-old baby and feeling nothing at all. She knows enough to recognize the signs of postpartum depression because she watched someone she loved go through it years earlier. She also knows the silence and shame that often surrounds mental health in Black communities, so she says nothing.
Unfortunately, these are not isolated stories, they are the everyday realities behind the statistics we read in reports and policy briefs. They are the kinds of moments Homeless Children’s Network was built to respond to.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, we are naming something we see every day in our work: mental health care has never been distributed equally in this country, and the families carrying the greatest burdens are often the least likely to receive the support they need.
The Shape of the Gap
The disparities are impossible to ignore, nationally, Black Americans seek mental health treatment at significantly lower rates than white Americans, despite experiencing high levels of trauma, stress, and systemic inequity. Black and Latine youth are also less likely to access care, and when they do, they are more likely to be misdiagnosed or disciplined instead of supported.
Two children may show the same signs of distress: sadness, anger, withdrawal, difficulty concentrating. One child is referred to therapy, while the other is labeled disruptive.
In San Francisco, those inequities become even more visible. Black residents make up a small percentage of the city’s population but represent a vastly disproportionate percentage of homeless families. Black mothers continue to face severe disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes. Families navigating housing instability, economic hardship, grief, and community violence are also navigating systems that too often fail to recognize their humanity.
What Trauma Looks Like Across Generations
Many of the families who come through HCN’s doors are carrying trauma that did not begin with them, sometimes it looks like a parent constantly preparing for the worst because instability has followed their family for generations. Often, it lives in the body as anxiety, hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, or exhaustion and appears in children long before they have the language to explain what they are feeling.
Trauma does not simply disappear when it goes unaddressed, it moves through households, relationships, and generations, it shapes how families communicate, how safe people feel in their own bodies, and how children learn to move through the world. True healing, then, requires more than short-term intervention, it requires trust, consistency, cultural understanding, and care that recognizes the full context of a family’s life.
What Healing Can Look Like
Last year, our external evaluators Indigo Cultural Center completed an independent evaluation of HCN’s Child-Parent Psychotherapy program, which supports young children and caregivers healing from trauma. The findings reflected something our clinicians and families already knew deeply.
More than 83 percent of caregivers reported stronger relationships with their children after participating in the program. Parents described feeling more confident navigating difficult moments, more aware of their own emotional needs, and more equipped to support their families through stress and instability.
Just as importantly, every participant reported feeling respected in their cultural identity and emphasized how meaningful it was to work with a therapist who understood their language, culture, and lived experience.
That cultural connection matters deeply when we are navigating individuals who have lost confidence in mental health systems long ago. One caregiver in HCN’s Ma’at program shared:
I have a better understanding of how important mental health is. And I try to prioritize it a whole lot more, not just for my children but for myself as well.
That is what generational healing can look like in real life, a parent beginning to see mental health as something woven into how a household cares for one another every day.
Why This Work Needs Sustained Support
Culturally responsive mental health care takes investment; it requires clinicians who reflect and understand the communities they serve, it requires long-term relationship building, it requires time, consistency, and care that cannot be rushed. Right now, many organizations providing equity-centered, community-rooted care are facing enormous financial strain.
Funding streams are shrinking, programs across the Bay Area are being scaled back, meanwhile, the need for mental health support continues to rise.
At HCN we continue showing up for children, youth, caregivers, and families across San Francisco. We continue building relationships strong enough to hold grief, healing, fear, hope, and recovery. We continue investing in care that sees families fully.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, we are asking our community to help sustain that work.
The mother sitting in silence deserves support before she reaches a breaking point, the child labeled "defiant" deserves care that looks beyond discipline and asks what happened to him.
Healing changes families, and when families heal, communities heal too.
If this work matters to you, we invite you to support Homeless Children’s Network by donating, sharing our mission, or partnering with us to expand access to culturally responsive mental health care across San Francisco
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