Rental assistance, school supplies and help filling out government forms are common requests at Santa Barbara County’s new Farmworker Resource Center.

Staff from the Workforce Development Board coordinate the Proyecto Campesino program, which has a van for on-the-go office hours as well as outreach visits to public events and agricultural job sites.

Since July, the center has reached about 3,500 people and referred 1,200 of them to services, according to the Workforce Development Board’s Luis Servin, executive director, and Cesar Guerrero, farmworker program coordinator.

About 77% of requests have been for “education access and support” and “emergency supportive services” — including food, clothing, rental assistance, help filling out forms for Medi-Cal and CalFresh, and immigration legal services, Servin said.

“One of the items that has surprised us, even though it’s not shocking, is really the level of need in the community, and the level of need that each individual has,” he said.

A lot of people struggle completing simple forms in English or Spanish, he added.

Some people and agencies charge a lot of money to complete forms, Guerrero said. The Farmworker Resource Center staff can help people fill them out, verify them with relevant agencies and submit them all at once from their mobile unit.

Guerrero said the language barrier with Mixteco-speaking clients is a big challenge, but one that’s helped by having a fluent staff member connect with the community.

All five members of the county Board of Supervisors praised the early successes of the program during an update presentation this week.

Santa Barbara is one of three California counties to get grant funding to establish the center — about $833,000 — and put up another $208,000 as a condition of the grant.

“This program has been an amazing success,” Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. “It was an experiment, and it’s an experiment that’s working.”

Supervisor Steve Lavagnino said he was skeptical at first. He voted against applying for the grant last year. He supported the idea, he said at the time, but not partnering with the state on it.  

“I’m very excited about what you’ve been able to accomplish,” he said Tuesday.

Santa Barbara County did a survey of about 2,000 people and created a needs assessment earlier this year, Social Services Director Daniel Nielson said.

That and experience of on-the-ground staff will help form recommendations for a longer-term program plan, he said. That update is expected to go to the Board of Supervisors in March.

Ventura County opened a farmworker resource center in 2019, and local legislators — including Steve Bennett and Monique Limón — introduced legislation that established the state grant program funding more of them.  

Santa Barbara, Monterey and Stanislaus are the three counties that won grant funding for the farmworker resource centers this year.

“I don’t want to brag or anything, but it does seem that we are a step or two ahead of the other two counties in terms of how much growth we’ve done with growers and employers, and how much we connect with farmworkers directly,” Guerrero said.

“It’s more beneficial for my staff to be at an employer site for two hours and reach anywhere between 80 and 100 farmworkers versus going to a shopping center and being there for seven hours and reaching only five or six people.”

Agricultural employers can request a visit to talk to employees through the resource center website here.