What Are the Home Daycare License Requirements in Georgia?

Georgia draws the licensing line at three unrelated children.

Anyone who provides care for at least 3 but not more than 6 unrelated children under 13 for pay must apply to DECAL for a Family Child Care Learning Home license, and caring for more than 6 children for pay requires a Child Care Learning Center license instead.

Below that 3-child threshold, our Georgia research pass did not capture separate rules, so ask DECAL what applies to care for one or two unrelated children.

The Family Child Care Learning Home license is the home license DECAL issues in Georgia.

A licensed home may have no more than 6 unrelated children, whether they pay or not.

With DECAL approval, up to 2 additional children aged 3 and over may be present for two designated one-hour periods daily.

When related or resident children are in the home, the total number of children under 13 may not exceed 12.

A home that passes 6 unrelated children for pay no longer fits the home license and moves to the Child Care Learning Center rules.

A Georgia family child care provider must be at least 21 years old.

On applications filed on or after July 1, 2009, the provider must also hold one of the rule's credentials: a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential issued by the Council for Professional Recognition and kept current, an ECE TCC, an ECE TCD, an ECE associate degree, a GaPSC Paraprofessional Certificate, or an ECE bachelor's or master's degree.

Once the home is licensed, the provider and any staff complete 10 clock hours of training every calendar year after the first year.

Georgia's home rules sit on a federal floor.

Under the CCDF background-check rules at 45 CFR 98.43, every child care staff member of a licensed, regulated or registered provider must have a comprehensive background check, and in a family child care home any household member age 18 or older counts as a child care staff member who needs the check.

The check combines an FBI fingerprint check, a National Sex Offender Registry search, and — for the current state and every state lived in during the past 5 years — a state criminal repository check (fingerprints required in the state of residence), a state sex offender registry check and a state child abuse and neglect registry check.

Checks are requested before the person becomes a staff member and repeated at least every 5 years, and a state's fee may not exceed its actual processing and administration cost.

Each state must publish its background check policies and how to submit a request online; the submission details for Georgia homes were not captured in our research pass, so treat DECAL's pages as the authority on where and how to get checked.

Our Georgia research pass did not capture what an inspection of a Family Child Care Learning Home covers, whether homes are visited before licensing, or how often.

The requirements the pass did establish sit alongside that question: DECAL-approved pre-service training must be complete before the license application goes in, and licensed homes then operate under the chapter's capacity limits and annual training hours.

Confirm the current inspection scope and scheduling with DECAL before you plan around one.

The license application goes to DECAL.

Before it can be submitted, the applicant who will be responsible for day-to-day operations must complete DECAL-approved pre-service training: licensure orientation, a pre-licensure provider-competencies course, and CPR and first aid.

The rules set an annual license fee of $50 for a learning home, and late fees can reach $250.

Our research pass did not capture DECAL's current processing timeline, so ask the agency how long applications are taking before you plan around a start date.

The home rules name the point where one provider is not enough: an assistant must be present to help with supervision whenever more than 3 children under 12 months, more than 6 children under age 3, or more than 8 children under age 5 are present, and that assistant must be at least 16.

The annual training rule counts assistants in their own right — it names the provider, provisional employees and employees — so an assistant completes the 10 clock hours too, every calendar year after the first year of employment.

Federal background-check rules reach home staff as well, and under those rules a new hire can start work after a qualifying result on either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint criminal check, supervised at all times by a fully checked staff member until every component is complete.