The Nest at the Cosumnes River College Family Resource Center is hosting a monthly event called Parent Connect – Thoughtful Thursdays every second Thursday of the month.
This event is designed to support student parents and create an emotionally safe space for them. Thoughtful Thursdays are just one of the many resources and events the Nest provides for student parents on campus.
“Our goal with parent connect is to build relationships with parents and to embrace their lifestyle,” said Student Support Specialist Emily Salgado. “To help them to have a community that provides different resources for them.”
Parent Connect along with other programs provided by the Nest, share the same goal of supporting student parents in balancing their lives with their schoolwork.
“Part of the values of the Nest are that we want to build parent resilience, connections with each other, knowledge of parenting and child development,” said Early Childhood Education/FCS Professor, Jeannette Mulhern. “We’re also giving what’s called concrete support in times of need, so that’s things like diapers, formula, we have those available for our student parents.”
Every parent connect meeting features different topics of discussion and the Nest welcomes any feedback from student parents about what they want to talk and learn more about.
Beyond parent connect, the Nest also provides resources to help student parents with job opportunities, food stamps and connecting with other student resources on campus.
“If [student parents] need the resources like the WIC program, or other programs like housing or anything they’re interested in, we try to help them to find those resources if we cannot find the answers for them,” said Nest Support Teacher Elham Ghaleb.
The WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program is a resource in place to help parents who have children from ages zero to five years old. It is income based and provides assistance in helping mothers obtain formula and food as well as dental and medical care for themselves and their children.
Salgado also emphasized the multi-purposeful private rooms available to parents in the Childhood Development Center.
“Basically we just provide a lot of space for student parents to feel welcome, to feel that they can have their meetups with professors or counselors,” Salgado said.
The family resource center is located in the Childhood Development building room 107 and is open on Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 a.m.. to 3 p.m.. and on Fridays from 10 a.m.. to 12 p.m. The next parent connect Zoom meeting will be held on Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. For more information about these events, click the link here.