Family Service Agency

It’s been a landmark year for major anniversaries in Santa Barbara. The Granada Theatre launched its year-long Granada 100 celebration in the spring. The Summer Solstice Parade held its 50th festival on the first day of summer. And Old Spanish Days Fiesta is in the midst of its centennial celebration as this issue hits newsstands. 

Another local nonprofit is also marking a major milestone in 2024, one that dates back even further than those cultural organizations. The Family Service Agency turns 125 this year, which is nothing short of an astounding anniversary in the world of nonprofits, and has been helping people in town since its humble beginnings back in 1899, when a small group of concerned citizens gathered in the halls of Santa Barbara’s Chamber of Commerce to organize ways to help fellow community members in need. 

Back then, relief came in the form of clothing, firewood to heat their homes, and assistance to cover medical bills. A few years later, FSA’s Milk Fund Program launched, providing milk to children and expectant mothers suffering from nutritional deficiencies from 1917-46. Nowadays FSA has a full array of services to meet its clients’ needs. 

But while the specifics may have changed with the times, the organization’s purpose has remained steady: FSA exists to help people who are experiencing hardship so that they can stabilize and provide better lives for themselves and their families. 

“The bottom line of FSA is that we meet people’s real needs, their basic needs for the times, whatever that might be,” said Chief Executive Officer Lisa Brabo. “And we adjust as conditions change.” 

Some of the parallels are almost eerie. FSA was there to help people with shelter, food, clothing and financial support during the devastating Santa Barbara earthquake in 1925, adapting to provide assistance that people needed. Almost 100 years later, the agency did the same thing during the COVID pandemic, helping people through the crisis by providing everything from financial assistance to mental health services.  

During the Great Depression, providing direct financial relief for families was a challenge, so the agency instead created employment opportunities; men chopping trees for firewood and repairing shoes, while another group collected vegetables from local farms and delivered them to needy families. 

The same approach guided the nonprofit during the recent series of natural disasters, to which FSA was quick to respond. 

“This organization stays relevant because we’re totally tied and connected to the community,” Brabo said. “We provide for people’s core needs, from physical wellness such as food, clothing, jobs, a good home environment, housing, and healthcare, to an array of mental wellness services. What we see through history is that there is a different emphasis on specific core needs depending upon what’s occurring around us. From the very beginning, we have stuck to those core needs and simply adjusted them according to the times and what’s happening.”

One of the ways FSA has evolved to be more efficient in its services is to develop the concept of whole person care, an approach that is patient-centered and takes into consideration the optimal physical, behavioral, emotional and social wellness of every individual as well as families. 

“We’re trying to meet that totality of the need for the family, whether they’re older or they’re a young family with young kids or somewhere in between, because we know that needs change as the family changes,” Brabo said. “But it’s actually not new for us.”

Indeed, FSA has been providing mental health counseling since the 1950s with programs that support couples, older adults, and children, and since the 1980s has been providing school-based mental health counseling. Currently, FSA is in 55 school campuses throughout the county, assisting students with social and emotional issues so they can stay in school and succeed. FSA also has a long history in mental health service to seniors, launching a support group for adults 55 and older called the Worry and Concern Clinic, group counseling for older adults where they can share their common concerns.

“Right now, we are working internally to better integrate our programming so that we can do the best job possible with people who contact us to meet every need that we can,” Brabo said. “And we are always working very proactively to make sure we have the public and private organization partnerships to make that happen, whether it’s helping our clients in learning English as a second language and or finding an open slot for counseling.”

Part of FSA’s proactive work is getting out ahead of the age boom, the so-called ‘silver tsunami’ where an exponentially larger percentage of our population will be older, which requires a different method of meeting evolving needs. 

“We have increased our programming for older adults, and then people caring for older adults,” Brabo said. “Families are much more dispersed now than in the past, so there isn’t the same level of social connection and engagement in everyone’s lives. Loneliness, isolation, and anxiety are much more significant issues for older adults. So now we have services that address those issues, including creating an ombudsman program to advocate for the needs of people in long-term care facilities.”

Financial sustainability has been a key to FSA’s success and longevity, and the organization of course taps into every public source of funds that they can because that’s steady and strong even in difficult economic times. But it doesn’t cover everything. 

“What private funds do is they plug the holes, because not every need of families fall within the guidelines of public funds,” Brabo said. “The private funds also help us innovate, to come up with new approaches like our patient mental health navigation, which is a pilot project.”

As it celebrates 125 years of service, FSA is looking to the future. 

“We’re proud of our history, but we’re looking forward to serving the county for the next 125 years, and doing that in a very integrated, holistic way, so that whatever needs a family or a senior has, we can find a way to meet it. We’re taking everything we’ve learned and applying it to do an even better job, and to be even more responsive to the community’s needs going forward.”