The Giving List New Beginnings

On Entertainment

by Steven Libowitz

When New Beginnings began serving Santa Barbara as a nonprofit half a century ago, providing confidential, therapeutic psychological testing, assessment, and counseling to low-income individuals and families in the greater Santa Barbara area was its core mission.

Experienced masters-and-doctoral-level counselors support clients exploring life transitions, relationship issues, and any number of other concerns – including anxiety, depression, grief and loss, trauma, abuse, compulsive behaviors, substance abuse, job loss, stress, aging, isolation, and anger management. New Beginnings has always worked on a pay-what-you-can basis, offering the most affordable sliding scale fee in the area, based on income and other financial circumstances.

But in recent years, the organization has recognized the interconnectivity of other issues for its clients and moved to address those areas by establishing new programs. While counseling remains a foundational program for the agency, there are three new programs that now form a four-pillar approach to achieving its mission to provide quality, affordable counseling, shelter, case management, and education; offerings that strengthen the community and provide clients with the ability to lead healthy and productive lives.

Its Safe Parking Program – which provides safe overnight parking to individuals and families living in their vehicles – is the first of its kind in the nation and has been replicated by dozens of communities, while its Rapid Rehousing component involves case management to transition program participants into permanent housing and employment.

New Beginnings’ Supportive Services for Veteran Families program – with the lofty aim of ending veteran homelessness within Santa Barbara County – helps veterans attain housing stability through short-term case management and financial assistance, and its Life Skills Parenting & Education Program teaches critical hands-on skills, mindfulness strategies, and overall life skills to those who need practical tools to establish and maintain stability in their home environments.

One result of all that good work, though, has been that the expansion of services rendered its headquarters in downtown Santa Barbara far too small and obsolete.

“We’ve been needing to hire additional staff – just in a counseling area alone – as the number of associates and psych assistants that we had was increasing to the point where we just literally didn’t have sufficient capacity,” explained Executive Director Kristine Schwarz . “There simply wasn’t enough space for anybody.”

A second office to house the Safe Parking and Rapid Rehousing program specialists came with its own set of issues because of the logistics, she said.

“It was really difficult for the staff and wasn’t good for any sort of collaboration or coordination, not at all efficient or expedient. It made it very challenging to have resource-sharing across programs, when sometimes minutes can make a difference between getting somebody into housing or not.”

When the homeless services programs continued to expand as a result of additional CARES funding and the investment that the state is making into addressing homelessness, there was thought of adding a third office.