Meeting Student Parents’ Basic Needs

California State University, Fresno, helps alleviate financial hardships of college students with dependents by offering subsidized services and also basic needs supplies. Since 2019, the university has provided free children’s clothing and diapers to parenting students.  

The initiative is one of a growing number at CSU institutions to address basic needs insecurity and foster a more welcoming environment for students with dependents.

What’s the need: National estimates suggest around one in five students in higher education have a dependent under the age of 18, and CSU data found there were 9,600 students in spring 2024 who self-reported having a dependent. Fresno State is home to around 1,300 students who have self-identified as parents, but staff estimate that number is larger.

Basic needs insecurity is a growing threat to student retention, and students’ lack of awareness of resources further hinders institutional efforts to aid them.

A September 2023 report from Trellis Strategies found 63 percent of parenting students who attend a school with at least one food pantry or closet were not aware of the service or incorrectly indicated their institution didn’t have these services. Students with dependents were also more likely to utilize off-campus, community-based food pantries compared to their nonparenting peers.

“Being a parenting student in and of itself doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have basic needs [insecurity],” explains Carolyn O’Keefe, CSU director of student wellness and basic needs. “But we’re trying to be thoughtful about that and how those things intersect.”

How it works: The Lil’ Bulldog Boutique first started as a pop-up closet in the student cupboard on campus, says Brittney Randolph, director of Programs for Children at Fresno State. In addition to overseeing the boutique, Randolph supervises the campus’s three early education centers.

More recently, the Lil’ Bulldog Boutique has moved into the Kremen Education Building, also home to the Joyce M. Huggins Early Childhood Education Center.

Within the boutique, parenting students and alumni can shop for free clothing items, ranging in size from newborn to 11 years old, as well as some potty-training items. Most items are gently used, with the exception of undergarments and socks, which must be new, Randolph says.

In addition, parents can receive free diapers each month through a diaper subscription program, Diapers for Degrees. Students were previously able to shop for diapers at the student cupboard, but the program shifted to the Student Health and Counseling Center, where students could request 100 diapers a month via a Google form, explains health educator Melissa Norris.

“Diapers can be costly, you know, so having those there and accessible to the parenting students has been really great,” O’Keefe says.

Within one to two business days, a staff member will fulfill the request and bag it on a shelf for the student to come pick up—similar to an online food order—labeled with their last name and last four numbers of their student ID. Each month, Diapers for Degrees provides between 6,000 and 7,000 diapers to students.

Most students shop for toddler-age clothing or larger-sized diapers, which could be due to a variety of factors, staff say.

Norris theorizes there’s a gap in when students become aware of campus supports, so once they’re enrolled in childcare they’re more likely to utilize the diaper program, for example. Parents may also be more supported with diapers and baby clothes before or immediately after having a child, compared to when the child gets older, Randolph says.

Overcoming obstacles: One of the challenges to sustaining basic need programs for parenting students is finding funding. Both the diaper subscription and the clothing boutique have relied on outside donors and partnerships, including a four-year $1.5 million Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) grant.

“That grant just ended this year, so right now … we don’t have a funding source and we haven’t tried to seek one out,” Randolph says.

In the future, Norris wants to strengthen relationships with Title IX coordinators to ensure pregnant students know how to access services on campus to increase awareness.

Most students learn about the program from word of mouth, but since AB 2881, which established a number of supports for student parents, staff members have been able to provide more direct communication to parenting students via email or an online hub of resources, Norris says. “But we also have not widely promoted our diaper program, I think partially because we want to make sure we can maintain all of the requests that come through.”

Looking ahead: In July, the California State University system partnered with Michaelson 20MM Foundation to launch the CSU Pregnant and Parenting Student Initiative, which creates new university programs and services specifically for these learners. The initiative seeks to expand and scale existing resources and share best practices across institutions.

A growing need for parenting students is housing, O’Keefe says, and at present the CSU only has two campuses with residential housing that can accommodate families. “Because our res halls are not designed for students with children, a lot of our campuses offer to our students that have dependents hotel vouchers to be able to stay in local hotels for that emergency housing stay.”

Norris has been contributing to the student parent work group, collaborating with other CSU institutions. “We’re all doing a lot of that sharing and checking in with each other … because so many of us are in the same boat going, ‘OK. We know we need these things. How do we make it happen?’” she says. “But the need is there to continue a lot of that work together.”

Fresno State also established a parent scholar task force and a parent scholar advisory team of students with dependents to guide on-campus work.

“My hope is that that task force, along with our parent scholar advisory team, can help really identify what are those strategic priorities we want to start with at present,” Norris says.

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This article has been updated to correct the spelling of the Michaelson 20MM Foundation.