Points of interest…
- UConn's pilot pairs social work and counseling graduate students with clinicians monthly.
- Greater Hartford Gives and Beta Boule foundations fund the Connecticut pilot.
- Student retention and clinician career longevity reveal whether mentorship pipelines work.
In September 2026, UConn launched the Black Men's Mental Health Mentorship Program, pairing social work students and counseling students with practicing clinicians who serve Black men and boys.
The pilot makes monthly mentorship part of graduate training, a direct response to the underrepresentation of Black men among licensed clinicians and the cost, stigma, and provider mismatch barriers Black men face.
Its real test is how campuses translate this structure into culturally responsive curriculum, licensure supervision, and recruitment budgets rather than a one cohort pilot.
Inside Uconn's Black Male Mental Health Professional Mentoring Program
Across graduate social work education, mentorship is moving from informal encouragement to a structured retention strategy for students preparing to work with Black men and boys.
Program Structure and Eligibility
UConn's pilot makes that shift concrete. The Black Male Mental Health Professional Mentoring Program is a joint initiative of the UConn School of Social Work and the Neag School of Education, formally titled "Girding the Roots: A Mentorship Model for Practitioners and Student Trainees to Support Black Male Mental Health Wellbeing." It pairs master's-level students in counselor education, social work, psychology, and marriage and family therapist degree programs with mental health professionals committed to supporting Black men and boys. Students and mentors meet at least once a month. The School of Social Work describes the model as including mentorship, connection, trainings, and professional development round tables, with applications open until all program slots are filled.1
Leadership and Goals
Milagros Marrero-Johnson, MSW, adjunct faculty and senior director of strategic initiatives and community engagement in the UConn School of Social Work, and Latoya Haynes-Thoby, project PI and assistant professor of counselor education in the Neag School of Education, oversee the initiative. As reported by UConn Today, the project's goal is to increase access to mental health services for Black men and boys while supporting student retention and social work career longevity.
A Live Pairing Example
Sean Excellent, a second-year UConn School of Social Work master's student concentrating in Individuals, Groups, and Families, is paired with Maurice Eastwood, LMSW, of Seek Therapy in Hartford and author of "The 5 Bags: The Tools to Building a More Superior You." That pairing illustrates how monthly mentorship connects graduate training to clinical work in Greater Hartford.
The pilot is supported by the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation and the Beta Boule Foundation.1
Why Black Men Face Distinct Barriers to Mental Health Care
Black men often face a stacked set of barriers before they ever sit in a therapist's office. The obstacles are not just individual; they are cultural, economic, and institutional, and they shape who gets into care and who stays.
Masculinity norms and stigma
For many Black men, help-seeking can feel like a violation of expectations to be strong, self-reliant, and emotionally controlled. Shame, fear of being judged, and worry about appearing weak can keep symptoms unspoken. Social work research and practice on African American men has documented that beliefs about independence and negative judgments from others function as real deterrents to opening up about mental health.3 This combination of race and gender creates what some researchers describe as a double barrier: Black adults overall receive care at lower rates than White adults, and men in general are less likely to seek help.
Coverage and access gaps
Care access is also uneven. Federal survey estimates for 2024 show 32.5 percent of Black adults with mental illness received treatment, compared with 57.9 percent of White adults.1 Uninsured rates among Black adults were 10.5 percent, higher than 7.9 percent for White adults.2 These figures are for Black adults overall, not Black men specifically, but men often face an added gender layer. Economic inequity compounds the problem by limiting insurance coverage and provider availability in many communities.
Distrust and the case for mentorship
Historical mistreatment by medical and clinical institutions leaves lasting distrust, which can shorten engagement even when care starts. That is why a mentorship model aimed at practitioners makes sense as a social worker retention strategy: when clinicians share lived experience or sustained community ties, they can lower the threshold for trust before the first session and model a different relationship with care.
What MSW Curricula Need to Prepare Culturally Responsive Clinicians
Some MSW programs treat cultural responsiveness as a standalone diversity elective; others build it into required coursework, supervision, and MSW field placements. The second path is what accredited programs are now formally expected to take.
Accreditation sets the floor
Under the 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, CSWE shifted the required diversity competency from the older "Engage Diversity and Difference in Practice" to Competency 3: "Engage Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) in Practice."1 All accredited programs were expected to operate under the 2022 EPAS by July 1, 2025.2 Competency 6 also requires social workers to use empathy, reflection, and interpersonal skills in culturally responsive practice.3 Programs must integrate ADEI across both the explicit and implicit curriculum at generalist and specialized levels.4
What coursework should add
Accreditation language sets a floor, not a syllabus. Most MSW programs still do not offer a dedicated required course on Black men's mental health. Curricula that prepare culturally responsive clinicians need specific content on masculinity norms, racial discrimination, economic inequity, and family or fatherhood dynamics , future social work skills for clinical readiness. Without that content, graduates may know the competency phrase but lack a clinical framework for engaging Black men and boys.
Field placements make it real
Field placements serving Black men and boys give students supervised practice applying ADEI competencies. Students learn to assess how discrimination, stigma, and family expectations shape help-seeking, and to adjust engagement strategies accordingly. A mentorship program linked to these placements can reinforce what coursework introduces and what supervision refines.
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How MSW Students Can Build Similar Mentorship Pipelines on Their Campus
For social work students, building a mentorship pipeline usually means choosing between starting quickly with a few informal pairings and building a structure that can survive after the first cohort graduates. The UConn model suggests a middle path: launch small, but write down the model from the first meeting.
Start with a faculty champion and a short mentor roster
Find one faculty member who can advocate for the program and help navigate approval processes. Then identify three to five local mental health professionals who already work with Black men and boys and are willing to meet at least once a month. Formalizing that monthly cadence matters more than recruiting a large group. A small, consistent cohort builds trust faster than a broad network that rarely meets.
Open eligibility across mental health disciplines
Mirror UConn's cross-department approach by inviting master's students from social work, counseling, psychology, and marriage and family therapy. This widens the mentor pool and mirrors real-world clinical settings where these disciplines overlap. It also makes the program easier to pitch to a dean or diversity office because it serves multiple graduate programs.
Pitch a pilot before scaling
Ask student affairs, diversity offices, or alumni networks for seed funding to cover modest costs: food, meeting space, a part-time coordinator, or mentor stipends. Frame the pilot as a retention initiative, not just a mentoring club.
Track simple outcomes from day one
Record monthly attendance, student retention in the program, and post-graduation employment or MSW licensure status. Even basic numbers will strengthen the renewal case and help attract future funders.
Program leaders at UConn measure this mentorship model by whether students stay in their programs and build lasting careers, not just by how many sign up. Watch retention and career longevity as the clearest signals that the pipeline is actually working for Black men's mental health.
Students and faculty can start an informal mentor matching effort now, before any formal funding exists. Pair a few MSW students with practicing clinicians who already support Black men and boys, meet monthly, and document what works. Small pilots like UConn's often begin with one committed pair and scale from there.
