Santa Cruz County Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis
Understanding Santa Cruz County's Prenatal to Five System of Care
The earliest years of life—from pregnancy through age five—lay the foundation for a child’s lifelong health, learning, and well-being. Thrive by 5 Santa Cruz County is built on a shared belief: all children deserve a strong start, and families deserve systems that work for them.
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In Santa Cruz County, families and providers deeply value these early years, yet the systems designed to support them have not kept pace with community needs. Families face limited access to affordable child care, especially for infants and toddlers. Early childhood educators and family support professionals—whose work is essential to children’s development—are often paid less than a living wage. Funding comes from many different sources, each with its own rules, creating a system that is hard to coordinate and even harder to sustain. These challenges fall hardest on families with the fewest resources, widening existing inequities.
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The creation of the Santa Cruz County Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis emerged from a collective commitment to take a clear look at how the local prenatal-to-five system is funded—and what it truly costs to deliver high-quality care and support for families.
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Led by Prenatal to Five Fiscal Strategies (P5FS) in collaboration with First 5 Santa Cruz County(F5SCC) as a part of the Thrive by 5 initiative, brought community partners together to examine how the prenatal-to-five system is funded, what it truly costs to provide high-quality services, and where gaps persist. The analysis looks across early care and education, family strengthening, and system-level supports, recognizing that families experience these services as connected parts of their lives.
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By grounding decisions in real data, lived experience, and shared values, this work creates a common foundation for action. It supports Thrive by 5’s vision of a more coordinated, equitable, and sustainable prenatal-to-five system—one that ensures all children and families in Santa Cruz County can access the support they need, when they need it, during the years that matter most.
The Santa Cruz County Online Fiscal Mapping Tool is an interactive way to engage with how public and private funds flow into programs serving children prenatal to age five and their families. This fiscal map provides a clear picture of who funds what, how much is invested, and where gaps or overlaps exist in the system.
Built from the county’s Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis, the map shows how federal, state, local, and private funds support early care and education, family strengthening services, and system-level initiatives. It helps policymakers, service providers, and community members understand the current landscape of investments and identify opportunities to better coordinate resources and meet the true cost of high-quality services.
Users can explore funding streams by program type and administering agency. By translating detailed fiscal mapping into clear visuals and summaries, the tool supports advocacy, planning, and decision-making to build a more equitable and coordinated prenatal to five system.
Explore the Fiscal Map to view current funding for prenatal to five programs and compare it to the Cost Modeling Results to understand what it would take to meet the true cost of high-quality services for every child and family.āā