San Andreas Regional Center (SARC) serves Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey counties — one of California’s 21 regional centers operating under the Lanterman Act WIC §4500, free to your family at any income. SARC runs offices in San Jose, Watsonville, and Salinas, and it routes intake calls by county. For a child 3 or older, SARC also accepts an online intake interest form — useful if you cannot take a call during business hours.
Is San Andreas my regional center?
If you live in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, or Monterey county, yes. SARC’s boundary is the county line, not a neighborhood map, so there is nothing subtle to check — unlike Los Angeles, where seven centers split a single county.
That said, SARC’s four counties are four different worlds: Silicon Valley, the Santa Cruz coast, the Salinas Valley, and rural San Benito. The law is identical in all of them. The travel time, the office you walk into, and the local provider mix are not.
Counties just outside SARC belong elsewhere — Merced and Madera to Central Valley Regional Center, and the counties north of Santa Clara to Regional Center of the East Bay and its neighbors. What decides it is where your child lives, not where they go to school or see a doctor. Our Regional Center finder confirms it.
Which SARC office is mine?
| County | Office | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Santa Clara | San Jose | SARC’s headquarters and the number DDS lists as the main line |
| Santa Cruz | Watsonville | Serves the Santa Cruz side of the county line |
| Monterey | Salinas | Covers the Peninsula and the Salinas Valley |
| San Benito | Ask when you call | SARC groups San Benito with San Jose on its contact page, but routes San Benito intake calls to the Santa Cruz number. Confirm on the call which office holds your file. |
That San Benito wrinkle is worth a sentence, because it is exactly the kind of thing that costs a family two weeks. If you are in Hollister or anywhere in San Benito county, ask on the first call: “Which office will my child’s case live in, and who is my intake worker?” Write the answer down.
San Andreas — Intake page and county numbers →How does intake start here?
Two doors, depending on age. Under 3 goes to Early Start, and you call your county’s intake number to make the referral. 3 and older can either call that same county number or submit SARC’s online intake interest form. Either way, the request is what starts the legal clock — so note the date you call or submit.
The online form matters more than it sounds. Parents working shifts in agriculture, food service, or care work often cannot make a call between 8 and 5, and “I’ll do it tomorrow” turns into six weeks. A form submitted at 11pm starts the same clock a phone call does.
Before the intake interview, gather what you already have — not a perfect folder:
- Pediatrician notes and any developmental screening results
- Any evaluation: speech, occupational therapy, psychological, audiology
- School or preschool records, an IEP or an IFSP if one exists
- Your own two-paragraph description of a hard day — what your child cannot do yet, how often, and what it takes out of the household
Missing pieces are not a reason to wait. SARC does its own assessments at no cost to you.
What are they on the hook for, and by when?
15 working days from your request to initial intake WIC §4642. 120 days from intake to a completed assessment — 60 days where delay would risk your child’s health, safety, or development WIC §4643. Under 3: 45 days from referral for the Early Start evaluation and assessment 17 CCR §52086. Then 60 days from the completed assessment to the written plan WIC §4646.
Those clocks are statewide. They apply to SARC exactly as they apply to every other center, and they run from your request — not from when a worker gets around to opening the file. If a deadline passes, put it in writing: name the date you first contacted SARC, cite WIC §4642 or WIC §4643, and ask for a decision date in reply.
Who qualifies?
For a child 3 or older: a developmental disability that began before age 18 and is a “substantial disability” — significant functional limits in 3 or more of 7 life areas (self-care, language, learning, mobility, self-direction, independent living, economic self-sufficiency) WIC §4512.
For a child under 5, there is a second, lower door most parents never hear about: provisional eligibility, which requires significant functional limits in at least 2 of those same areas rather than 3 WIC §4512. A child found provisionally eligible is reassessed before turning 5. If your 3- or 4-year-old was told they “just missed” the standard, ask specifically whether provisional eligibility was considered.
“I kept waiting until I had a diagnosis, because I thought that was the ticket. It isn’t. The regional center does its own assessment — my job was just to make the call and then describe my kid honestly, on his hardest day, not his best one. The waiting I did on my own was the only part nobody was on a clock for.”
What if San Andreas says no?
A denial must come as a written Notice of Action. A coordinator saying “we don’t fund that” on the phone is not a decision and starts no clock — ask for it in writing. From the written notice you have 60 days to request a hearing WIC §4710.5; check the dates printed on your own notice.
Free help exists and you should use it. The Office of Clients’ Rights Advocacy (OCRA), part of Disability Rights California, has advocates who handle regional center appeals across the state. Bringing one costs nothing and changes how a meeting goes.
How to appeal a Regional Center denial →You know which number is yours, what starts the clock, and what a real “no” has to look like in writing. That is the whole first move.