What Are the Requirements to Be a Daycare Teacher in Utah?

Child care centers in Utah are licensed by Child Care Licensing (CCL), which sits in the Office of Licensing within the Division of Licensing and Background Checks under the Utah Department of Health and Human Services.

The center rules that set teacher qualifications are Utah Administrative Code R381-100.

Caregiver qualifications, the training hour floors, first aid coverage and the background check all come from that chapter, so when a requirement here and the current rule disagree, the rule governs.

Utah sets one list for center caregivers — the rule's word for classroom staff.

A caregiver must be at least 16 years old, pass an Office of Background Processing check, complete the 2½-hour Office of Licensing preservice training before working with children, and complete at least 20 hours of child care training each year.

No high school diploma or college coursework is required, and the rule does not require a CDA.

An individual center can still set its own hiring bar in a job posting, so read each listing.

Our research found no separate assistant-teacher category in R381-100: the rule writes one caregiver list, so treat the age, background-check and training requirements above as the baseline for any classroom role and ask a hiring center how it titles the position.

The rule does open two entry routes.

Volunteers aged 16 and older and registered high school or college child care student interns can count in a center's caregiver-to-child ratio — the intern route is a way to start in a Utah classroom while still in school.

Before you work with children, Utah requires the Office of Licensing's 2½-hour preservice training.

It runs through 15 topics, among them medication administration, pediatric first aid and CPR, prevention of shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma, SIDS and safe sleep, child abuse reporting, and recognizing homelessness.

The rule sets the deadline as before you work with children — during onboarding at a hiring center, before your first shift in a classroom.

Utah caregivers complete at least 20 hours of child care training each year, counted on the facility's license date.

If you are hired partway through the licensing year, the floor is at least 1½ hours of training per month you work instead.

Our research did not confirm a state-approved topic list for these hours, so confirm with your center or Child Care Licensing what training counts.

Utah requires at least one staff member with current pediatric first aid and CPR certification to be present when a child is in care — American Red Cross, American Heart Association or an equivalent, with hands-on CPR testing — and the same coverage applies on each offsite activity and in each vehicle.

As the rule reads, the requirement is presence-based: it asks for a certified person present, not a certificate for every caregiver.

On staff health checks, our research did not confirm Utah's requirements for tuberculosis or other staff health screening, so ask Child Care Licensing what applies before you start.

Utah runs its checks through the Office of Background Processing (OBP).

The rule's background-check section also reaches household members: those aged 12 to 17 need an OBP check, and a household member 18 or older needs one that includes fingerprints.

Under the federal CCDF rules at 45 CFR 98.43, every child care staff member of a licensed, regulated or registered provider must have a comprehensive background check, with components that include an FBI fingerprint check, a National Sex Offender Registry search, and state criminal, sex-offender and child-abuse-neglect registry checks for the current state and every state lived in during the past 5 years.

Checks are requested before someone becomes a staff member and repeated at least once every 5 years, and federal rules require states to complete a request as quickly as possible and within 45 days of submission.

The hiring center initiates the paperwork, so ask the director what to complete and when.