Group Homes & Residential Living Options

What Families Should Know

For many families, "group home" is the only term they've heard for out-of-home living support — but it's really one option among several, and the term itself covers a range of very different living situations. This guide explains what these residences actually are, how they're categorized, and how they connect to Regional Center services.

What Is a Group Home / Community Care Facility?

What most people call a "group home" is formally known as a Community Care Facility (CCF). These are licensed by the Community Care Licensing Division of the California Department of Social Services to provide 24-hour non-medical residential care to children and adults with developmental disabilities who need personal services, supervision, or assistance with daily living activities.

A CCF isn't a medical facility — it's a residential setting staffed to match the resident's support needs, ranging from minimal supervision to intensive, professionally supervised care.

A note on naming: licensure categories and terminology around these facilities have changed over the years, so you may hear older or newer terms used interchangeably by different agencies. For the most current information, the Department of Developmental Services and your local Regional Center are the best sources.

The Four Service Levels

Each CCF vendored by a Regional Center is assigned a service level based on the needs of the people it serves:

Service Level 1 — Limited care and supervision for people with self-care skills and no behavior problems.

Service Level 2 — Care, supervision, and incidental training for people with some self-care skills and no major behavior problems.

Service Level 3 — Care, supervision, and ongoing training for people with significant deficits in self-help skills, and/or some limitations in physical coordination and mobility, and/or disruptive or self-injurious behavior.

Service Level 4 — Care, supervision, and professionally supervised training for people with deficits in self-help skills, and/or severe impairment in physical coordination and mobility, and/or severely disruptive or self-injurious behavior. Level 4 is further subdivided (4A through 4I), with staffing levels increasing to match escalating severity of need.

In practice, this means the right fit for one family may look very different from the right fit for another — a facility appropriate for a Level 1 resident wouldn't have the staffing to safely support someone at Level 4, and vice versa (a Level 4 facility would likely be far more restrictive than a Level 1 resident needs).

How Does a Family Access These Options?

Residential placement is coordinated through your Regional Center, not arranged independently. A few things to know:

Your Regional Center service coordinator helps assess what level of support fits, based on your family member's needs, and helps identify vendored facilities with openings that match.
Placement is built into the Individual Program Plan (IPP) — it isn't a separate application process outside of your existing Regional Center relationship.
Availability varies significantly by area and service level; higher-support levels in particular can have longer waits, so raising this with your service coordinator early — well before a placement is urgently needed — gives more options.
Families are encouraged to tour facilities and ask questions directly, rather than choosing based on service level alone. Staffing culture, location, and day-to-day environment vary a lot between facilities at the same level.

Group Homes Are One Option, Not the Only One

It's worth knowing that a licensed CCF isn't the only residential path available through Regional Center. Depending on needs and goals, families may also look at:

Supported living services (SLS) — support delivered in the individual's own apartment or home, rather than a licensed facility
Independent living with services — for individuals who need periodic support rather than 24-hour supervision
Family home — remaining in the family home with in-home supports funded through Regional Center or Medi-Cal waivers

Your Regional Center service coordinator is the right person to walk through which of these fits your family member's needs and preferences — residential decisions are meant to reflect the individual's own goals, not default automatically to the most restrictive option available.