North Bay Regional Center (NBRC) serves Napa, Solano, and Sonoma counties — whole counties, no neighbourhood boundaries to work out. It is one of California’s 21 Regional Centers under the Lanterman Act WIC §4500, free to your family at any income. Its main office is in Napa. Once intake begins, an assessment is due within 120 days WIC §4643; under 3, evaluation and the initial family service plan are due within 45 days of the referral 17 CCR §52086.
Is North Bay my Regional Center?
If your home address is in Napa, Solano, or Sonoma County, yes. Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Sonoma, Napa, American Canyon, Vallejo, Benicia, Fairfield, Suisun City, Vacaville, Dixon, Rio Vista — all NBRC.
Three counties that do not really behave like one region. Sonoma County looks north and west; Napa is its own valley; Solano County sits along the I-80 corridor, where plenty of families are closer to Sacramento or the East Bay than to a Napa office. Your Regional Center is decided by where you live, though — not by where you work, where your child goes to school, or which hospital you use.
Two nearby centers get confused with this one all the time. Marin County is not NBRC — it belongs to Golden Gate Regional Center. Mendocino and Lake counties are not NBRC either — they belong to Redwood Coast. If you have moved recently across one of those lines, say so on the first call: a transfer between centers is a defined process, not a fresh application.
How does intake actually start here?
Call the main line at the top of this page and ask for intake and assessment. Say your child’s age in the first sentence, and say which county you live in. The state’s directory also lists a separate Early Start referral contact for children under 3.
Expect a real conversation, not a form. Intake here involves an interview about your child’s development, and at some stage a face-to-face meeting with your child. That is normal and it is how the assessment gets built — but it is also the part that generates travel, so ask early where it will happen.
Three questions to ask on the first call, and write down the answers with the date:
- Which office will hold my child’s file, and who is my service coordinator?
- What is the date you received my request? (Ask for it by email. This is the date every clock below runs from.)
- Where will the assessment take place, and can any of it happen closer to home?
Under 3: evaluation, eligibility, and the initial family service plan are due within 45 days of the referral 17 CCR §52086. Age 3 and older: assessment due within 120 days of intake, or 60 days where a delay would risk your child’s health, safety, or development WIC §4643.
What to gather: your child’s date of birth, your address, any medical or psychological reports, the most recent IEP or IFSP, preschool or daycare observations, and your own written list of what an ordinary hard day looks like. A missing report is not a reason to postpone — NBRC funds its own assessments at no cost to you, and there is no charge for assessment or for service coordination.
One small piece of housekeeping that pays for itself: photograph every report and letter and keep the images somewhere you can reach from your phone. Paperwork goes missing, folders get left behind in a move, and a lost document should never be the reason a clock restarts.
North Bay’s website blocks automated checking, so this page can’t confirm its application route — whether there’s an online form or an intake referral coordinator who mails a packet — or a current office list for Sonoma and Solano county families. Ask at your first call and get it in writing.
Somebody — a preschool teacher, a grandmother, the pediatrician at the 18-month visit — said the words out loud, and you have been carrying them around ever since. Making this call is not agreeing with them. It is asking for an evaluation, from an agency whose job is to help, under a law that already says your child is entitled to what they need. You can find out and still decide, afterwards, what you think.
Who qualifies?
A diagnosis is not required to start. At 3 and older, eligibility means a developmental disability beginning before age 18 with significant functional limits in 3 or more of 7 life areas WIC §4512. Under 3, Early Start uses broader delay-or-risk criteria. Ages 3 and 4 can also qualify provisionally on 2 of 5 areas.
The seven areas are self-care, receptive and expressive language, learning, mobility, self-direction, capacity for independent living, and economic self-sufficiency — judged against what is expected at your child’s age.
Provisional eligibility is the door most families never hear about: for a 3- or 4-year-old, a disability that is not solely physical and causes significant limits in at least two of five of those areas can qualify. It is temporary — the center must reassess before your child turns 5, and the full three-of-seven standard applies from then WIC §4512.
What’s the same everywhere, and what’s local?
Statewide and non-negotiable: the eligibility standard, the 45- and 120-day clocks, the right to a written Notice of Action, and the appeal route. Local: which office you deal with, how far you travel, which providers exist in your county, and who your coordinator is.
That distinction is your best defence against a sentence that starts “well, up here we…”. If the rule is state law, no center can bend it in either direction. If it is local practice, it is a practice, and practices can be questioned.
Provider supply genuinely does vary across these three counties, and a thin local market is a real constraint. It is not, however, a lawful reason to leave a needed service out of your child’s plan. If a service is agreed and nobody nearby will deliver it, put that in writing and ask what the center intends to do about it.
The state’s Regional Center directory lists a cultural specialist and a language-access specialist at every center, NBRC included — a role worth asking for by name if language is making this harder than it should be.
What if North Bay says no?
Ask for it in writing. A denial has to arrive as a Notice of Action setting out the decision and your appeal rights. A no delivered on the phone starts no clock and cannot be appealed by anyone.
Say it plainly: “Please send me that decision as a written Notice of Action.” Then read the dates printed on the notice and calendar them the day it arrives. Everything after that is California procedure, identical at all 21 centers.
How to appeal a Regional Center denial, step by step →Free help is available and worth using early. The Office of Clients’ Rights Advocacy (OCRA), part of Disability Rights California, staffs advocates who handle Lanterman Act appeals for families at no charge. (Treat them as help, not as the source of the rule — the deadlines that bind come from the statute and from the dates on your own notice.)
You worked out which of three counties you are in, asked for your date in writing, and learned the standard before anyone quoted it at you. Most families learn all this the slow way. You did not.