Family Assistance
Student Back-Up Care
UCSF Family Services and the Student Services Fee Advisory Committee offers high-quality back-up care through Bright Horizons when you need to be at school or work and your regular child or adult/elder care is unavailable. Students get ten days of back-up care per year free of charge. Learn more here.
Additional Family Services resources include:
- Sitters, Back-up Care & Other Home Help: Sittercity is a free web resource where you can post jobs for babysitters, nannies, housekeepers, pet sitters and more.
- Child Care Referral Service: UCSF’s in-house child care referral coordinator can identify licensed child care options that work for your family based on location, budget and other preferences. This service is free to the UCSF community.
- Lactation Accommodation Program: This program is dedicated to helping lactating UCSF learners and employees continue to comfortably provide milk after returning to school/work by offering access to clean and private lactation rooms, information on your rights, workshops and support groups, free supplies, and discounts on pump kits.
- MyFamily Resource Directory
- Free Emergency Back-up Child Care for CalWORKs Families
The Early Learning San Francisco (ELS) program provides child care subsidies, for ages 0-5, to income-eligible San Francisco families. These subsidies can be used at many licensed child care programs, including UCSF’s on-site/near-site centers. Students get first priority in the UCSF child care centers’ wait pool.
Review other child care resources available to the UCSF community on the MyFamily web portal and this Family Services' Student Resource webpage.
Subsidized Child Care
Use the Children's Council of S. F.'s Child Care Financial Assistance Eligibility Calculator to determine what types of subsidies you might qualify for.
• The following two programs have income and other requirements; there are generally wait pools.
The San Francisco Unified School District’s Early Education Department operates over thirty Early Education Schools across the city. The majority of the sites only serve children 2.9/3 years of age or older. While many of the centers have just subsidized spots, a few sites do offer a limited number of tuition-based (full-fee) – albeit still relatively affordable – spaces for subsidy-ineligible families. Although availability may vary by location, the Early Education Schools usually have wait lists.
Early Learning SF is a web-based system through which families may apply for child care subsidies. Applicants must meet income and other requirements. Learn more about subsidies at the S.F. Department of Early Childhood.
• If you live outside San Francisco and would like information on child care subsidies in your community, please contact your local child care resource and referral agency.
Diaper Bank
The San Francisco Diaper Bank distributes FREE DIAPERS to eligible CalWORKs, CalFresh, and Medi-Cal families with children under 3 years old. The Diaper Bank is a program of Help a Mother Out. Their mission is to improve baby and family well being by increasing access to diapers for families in need.