Supporting over 2,000 student cases annually with comprehensive case management
UC Santa Cruz's Student Support Programs office faced growing demands to address students' basic needs, with cases increasing dramatically from approximately 400 when the program began to over 2,000 cases annually today. The team needed a robust system to track interventions, document student interactions, and report outcomes to secure continued funding for their non-clinical case management program supporting students with emergency housing, food insecurity, and financial emergencies.
"We see over 2000 student cases a year and that has grown since over the last 10 years or more. I think when this program first started over 12 or 13 years ago, there were maybe 400 cases the first year," explains Mariah Lyons, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Support Programs.
The Solution:
UCSC implemented Symplicity Advocate to streamline their case management process with customized action item pick-lists to track different types of student support. They recently enhanced their implementation with a custom online intake form that replaced paper forms and emails, enabling better triage and more consistent information gathering. The team also leverages Advocate's incident reporting functionality to coordinate rapid responses for at-risk students through automated email distribution lists to housing staff.
The Results:
With Symplicity Advocate, UCSC's student support team has achieved remarkable outcomes, particularly for housing-insecure students.
"We track how many of those students secured permanent housing after we worked with them because of some action that we took... around 90% of the students that we are supporting with housing insecurity issues... have secured housing after we've worked with them," Lyons reports.
The system facilitates both daily operations and funding justifications. "One is just being able to have auto-generated reports that I can pull each quarter just to go to my leadership to show the numbers and showcase the work that we're doing and the importance of it, but also for funding purposes," explains Lyons.
Key Results:
- ~90% success rate in helping housing-insecure students secure permanent housing
- Growth from 400 to 2,000+ cases managed annually with the same system
- Rapid response coordination for students in crisis through incident reporting
- Streamlined intake process gathering consistent data for better service delivery
The Experience:
UC Santa Cruz has found the Symplicity team to be responsive partners, recently developing a dashboard that provides real-time visualization of program metrics. "Bryan just created a dashboard for us, which has been really cool... It's kept up to date, and so on any day, I can go on there and kind of get a breakdown of how many students reached out for this academic year or how many open cases we have right now or different demographic breakdowns."
As they fulfill reporting requirements for state funding and demonstrate the impact of their basic needs initiatives, Advocate's data collection and reporting capabilities remain central to UCSC's evidence-based approach, with other campuses now expressing interest in their successful implementation.
"It feels like they're able to say, 'OK, this is what your program does, this is what you need. Let's see how we can try and make it work for you.'" - Mariah Lyons, Assistant Dean of Students for Student Support Programs, UC Santa Cruz on Symplicity Client Support
Is your institution looking to better support students with basic needs challenges? Learn how Symplicity Advocate can help you track interventions, measure outcomes, and demonstrate your impact. Contact us today for a personalized demonstration.
