Overview
Centralized Eligibility List (CEL) systems are located in every county in California.  Our local Santa Cruz County CEL (Santa Cruz County CEL) is here to support families in need of subsidized child development services countywide.

Traditionally a child development provider kept a list of children waiting to enroll. Waiting lists were common to subsidized child care and development programs, to Head Start Programs, and to Alternative Payment Programs. The Santa Cruz County CEL is a system that combines all of these separate lists, eliminates duplicates, and allows subsidized child development providers in the system to access children that are eligible for their programs. The term "eligibility" is used because families are ranked by eligibility factors for subsidized care (income, size, and need), not just time on the list.

See Commonly Asked Questions for more information on programs that still maintain individual eligibility (waiting) lists for subsidized services.

Benefits
Santa Cruz County CEL enables families to have access to all programs for which they qualify by submitting a common application to the Santa Cruz County CEL agency or to any of the participating providers, expanding their opportunity to access subsidized care. Providers can potentially pull from a wider net of eligible families allowing their programs to be kept fully enrolled. Communities and counties can plan better to address the demand for care. Local, state and federal funding can be more focused to address the needs of eligible waiting families. We will also support local leaders in their decision making for and planning of affordable quality child care.

What We Do

• Collect family/child application data in a web-based database system.
• Maintain eligibility lists of applying families/children according to state eligibility rules for State contracted programs
• Support State contractors to share eligible family/child data for enrollment
• Maintain contact information for participating contractors