By Betty Márquez Rosales. EdSource.
As community college students return to their campuses, many will find a new resource to count on: student help centers where they can seek support to meet their basic needs.
Known as basic needs centers, the resources offered differ from campus to campus, but most tend to help students experiencing food and housing insecurity. Others also offer other support, such as paying for car insurance, finding low-cost medical care, paying for Internet and applying for public benefits.
The centers are the result of a new policy that went into effect July 1 and requires each campus to hire a basic needs coordinator to begin establishing a physical center. Some campuses have long offered food and housing support and will now add to the resources offered to students.
The centers are crucial because student needs are constant, officials said, pointing to the experiences of college campuses that have had basic needs centers for a number of years.
At California State University and the University of California, each campus has had a basic needs center for some time. Both systems receive recurring state funding to support the centers: $15 million for CSU and $18.5 million for UC.
At the University of California, Irvine, for example, where a group of graduate students first opened a temporary food pantry in 2011, students are contacting the basic needs center for housing support before the new school year begins later this month.
"This is probably our biggest crisis right now," said Christy Molino, rapid rehousing caseworker at UCI Basic Needs.
For the Orange County campus, Molino is the single point of contact for students who need to find housing as quickly as possible. She is part of a larger team on the campus of 37,000 students who are the go-to group for addressing students' basic needs, including financial wellness consultations, support in applying for the state's food benefits program and offering emergency grants for students experiencing a medical issue, mental health crisis, housing or food.
When faculty and staff reach out to students who need help, they know exactly where to refer them. In fact, Molino estimates that half of the students she serves are direct referrals from faculty and staff.
"A university is like a city... There are so many departments, there are so many people, and having to navigate resources is a big challenge," stressed Molino, who has been in the position for nearly two years.
Molino and the rest of the basic needs team at the Irvine campus are tasked with ensuring that students are as prepared as possible and ready to learn on their first day of school in September and safeguarding continuity in meeting basic needs until students graduate.
"No matter how great the classroom experience may be, or how great the instructional materials or instructors, if students have fundamental needs that cannot be met, they cannot be completed or persist in our institutions," referred Rebecca Ruan O'Shaughnessy, vice chancellor for educational services and support in the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
Many basic needs coordinators, particularly on campuses where the centers are newer, use student orientations during the summer to inform new and continuing students about the services available to them.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, Emily Diehl is the basic needs coordinator for Comet Wellness at Contra Costa Community College, a campus of 10,000 students.
The center offers a variety of services including a food pantry, assistance in accessing public benefits, free access to mental health therapists - both virtually and in person - free menstrual products in campus restrooms and free breakfast.
This week, she presented at multiple orientations for students from diverse backgrounds to connect directly with them so they know exactly who to turn to for support. Last school year, her first year on the job, she made internal presentations to faculty and staff to urge them to recommend students.
"It's been a much-needed resource, having a dedicated space," Diehl detailed. "It's great to have a single point of contact, but there are also limitations because trying to meet all the students with many different needs becomes a very important position."
Administrative and technical support for coordinators like Diehl comes from a team at the California Community College Chancellor's Office. This summer, the office released a toolkit for colleges to use as a reference guide as they establish and grow centers on their campus.
In addition, the 115-campus community college system has received a one-time allocation of $100 million and an annual allocation of $40 million to support coordinators like Diehl and help them develop their teams.
"Both allocations were based on a state funding formula that included a base amount for each campus to ensure there was equity," explained Colleen Ganley, program specialist for educational services and support in the California Community College Chancellor's Office.
Each campus also received additional funds based on the number of low-income students who received the Pell Grant. The remaining funds were distributed to campuses based on total student population and the number of low-income students, he added.
"Ideally, through the single point of contact, students can access these services without having to go from office to office and prove over and over again that they really need the service...That's a huge psychological burden on a student's shoulder," Ruan O'Shaughnessy noted.
The push to establish basic needs centers stems from a California bill passed in 2016. AB 801 required all California community colleges to establish a single point of contact to support students with certain basic needs and encouraged CSU and UC campuses to do the same.
That single point of contact, each known as a liaison, would need to be employed in the campus financial aid office so that they can help current and former foster youth, homeless students and unaccompanied homeless youth, apply for financial aid so that their basic needs could be met.
"It started to bring attention to the problem of college student homelessness, which, at the time, was a problem that was really going unnoticed and not much was being done about it," said Debbie Raucher, director of education for John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit organization that helps homeless and foster youth in California. "It really was the first attempt to try to create some kind of support system for homeless students."
When completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, also known as FAFSA, students who are homeless and not under the direct care of an adult must take additional steps to be identified as independent students. Prior to AB 801, there was rarely a designated person who could guide students through the process or inform them that they might qualify for additional financial assistance.
"AB 801 was incredibly helpful because it instituted the position and also highlighted the need," stressed Rashida Crutchfield, associate professor in the School of Social Work and director of the Center for Equitable Higher Education, both at CSU Long Beach. "Students have been dealing with this problem much longer than we understand they were or understood it as a problem."
On the same campus where Crutchfield is leading research on the impact of basic needs centers, Danielle Munoz is director of the basic needs program, which provides resources such as short-term emergency housing, hotel vouchers, grants for unexpected car repairs, as well as application support for the state's food benefits program.
Muñoz created the basic needs center at Sacramento State, where she worked for about seven years before moving to Long Beach. Regardless of where students are located, students need support because housing and living expenses remain a major challenge, she said.
"When we provide basic needs services, we promote student mental health, we provide equity for people who have limited resources, and we provide a sense of belonging and cultural inclusion," Munoz said. "This is the core of the retention work right here."
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