Unfortunately, no. A full 40 hour RCFE renewal is not free anywhere in California. You will sometimes see a free hour or two offered by an association, a supplier, or a conference. Those can be real hours. They will never add up to 40.
Why free does not exist
Every hour you use to renew has to come from a course CDSS has approved for RCFE administrators, under Title 22 section 87407(b). Getting and keeping that approval costs a vendor money, so approved providers charge.
The bigger problem with free is that it can get rejected
If the course was not approved for RCFE administrators, it is worth zero hours to you, no matter how nice the certificate looks.
Title 22 section 87407(c)(2) also throws out home study and correspondence courses, because they are not interactive, and a lot of the free material online is exactly that. Under section 87407(c)(4), the same course only counts once per renewal period, so taking free repeats of a topic does not help.
Two rules make the free patchwork harder still
Health and Safety Code section 1569.616(f)(1) says no more than half your hours can be self-paced, so at least 20 of the 40 have to be live with real interaction. Free, live, approved hours are almost impossible to find.
Section 87407(a) also requires specific subjects: at least 8 hours on dementia, at least 4 hours on laws and regulations, and 1 hour on cultural competency for the underserved aging LGBT community if it was not in your original 80 hour course. Piecing all of that together one free hour at a time is a project most administrators give up on.
And free gets expensive fast when it goes wrong
If you hit your expiration date with hours CDSS will not accept, section 87407(e) charges a $300 delinquency fee plus every hour you would have owed if you had stayed certified. That is on top of the renewal application fee, which CDSS currently lists at $140. Past four years, section 87407(f) says the certificate cannot be renewed at all and you start over with the 80 hour course and the state exam.
Our complete 40 hour RCFE and ARF renewal package is $239.99, or $199 if you have taken a class with us before. We are CDSS approved vendor 2000778, our family has been doing this for 30 years, and the package never expires, so you pick your class days when they work for you. Call or text 619-322-9578 or email contact@ncpicare.com and we will tell you for free where you stand on your dates and how many hours you actually need.
