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| Assemblymember Das Williams speaks at the Center's ribbon-cutting ceremony |
Santa Barbara’s Eastside is a socioeconomically diverse
neighborhood, with many low-income and immigrant households. For some of these
households, it can be a struggle to provide food, shelter, and physical and mental
health care for the family. The Santa Barbara County 2013 Snapshot of Poverty report designated the Eastside a High Poverty Area, and recommended
co-locating services in such areas.
That’s where the new Franklin Service Center comes in—providing new
services, co-located with existing services, in a high-need area.
Newly Available
Services
The Franklin Service Center is located in a small office on the campus of
Franklin Elementary School, in the heart of the Eastside. It functions as an after-school resource center, and hosts satellite office hours for agencies that offer programs to support individuals
and families in need. These programs help people meet basic needs, find crucial
information that they might not otherwise be able to locate, and get therapy
and other sensitive services to gain healing, independence and empowerment to
for themselves and their loved ones. Participating agencies include Domestic
Violence Solutions, Planned Parenthood, Santa Barbara City College, and more.
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| The Eastside is one of four High Poverty Areas (HPA) in Santa Barbara |
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| Child poverty is much higher in these HPAs than outside them, but unemployment is not. Residents are working, but many of them are in low-wage sectors such as food service. |
Convenient Location
The Center also refers visitors to other services—and thanks to
its location on the Franklin School campus, those other services are often just
steps away. Next door to the school is the Franklin Neighborhood Center, which
provides community meeting spaces, teen outreach services from the City Parks
& Recreation Department, and office hours for other community agencies such
as the Foodbank and the Santa Barbara Police Department. Also located there is
the County Public Health Department’s Franklin Health Care Center, which offers
clinic services for all ages. Next door is the Eastside Branch Library, which offers
book loans and a quiet atmosphere for learning, and can host agency office hours too.
These four side-by-side facilities—Franklin School and its new Franklin
Service Center, alongside the existing Franklin Neighborhood Center, Franklin Health
Care Center, and Eastside Library—together form a comprehensive Eastside public resource
site.
The Department of Social Services is present at the Franklin Health Care Center every Thursday from 9:00 a.m. to noon, to help residents enroll in services such as food aid (CalFresh) and affordable
health coverage (MediCal).
Helping Families Succeed
The Franklin Service Center effort supports the Santa
Barbara Unified School District’s initiative to make their campuses
neighborhood resource centers that can help provide services after school,
helping students and families to be more successful. The District has recently
hired a Franklin Service Center Coordinator, who will help organize and
coordinate services between County and other participating community non-profit
organizations and agencies. |
| Many other services are available next door, at the Franklin Neighborhood Center. |
Creation of the Franklin Service Center
The Franklin Service Center is a project of the Eastside
Neighborhood Committee, which had identified significant community needs which could
be most effectively met in a familiar, comfortable and geographically
accessible location.
The committee was established by State Assemblymember Das
Williams, an Eastside resident for many years, and served by his staff member
Darcel Elliot. Key participants in the effort included Santa Barbara County
Supervisor Salud Carbajal, Franklin principal Kacie Kilgore, Eastside Branch
Library Director Marivel Zambrano-Esparza, Santa Barbara City Parks &
Recreation Department staff Pete Leyva, City and County agencies and officials,
and concerned residents from the surrounding neighborhood.
The Franklin Service Center
shows what can happen when individuals and organizations reach out and work
together—be they public or private, state or local, large or small. We are
pleased to see this fourth addition to the Franklin public resource site, and we
look forward to meeting more of our Eastside neighbors thanks to referrals from the Franklin Service Center.
