Do You Need a License to Run a Home Daycare in Iowa?

Iowa does not license family child care homes.

The state's child care licensing agency, the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (Iowa HHS), licenses child care centers under 441 IAC Chapter 109, while a child care home caring for five or fewer children — six if at least one is school-aged — needs no registration at all under Iowa Code 237A.1.

Providers at that smallest size may register voluntarily as child development homes.

A facility providing child care or preschool services for seven or more children is a child care center under Iowa Code 237A.1 unless it registers as a child development home.

The categories are registrations, not licenses: child development homes register in Category A, Category B or Category C.

In each category, the first number counts children not attending kindergarten or a higher grade level and the second counts school-age children: Category A carries up to 6 plus 2, Category B up to 8 plus 4, and Category C up to 14 plus 2, with two providers at Category C.

Capacity also has an age dimension in Category A: a home may have no more than four children 24 months or younger, of whom no more than three may be 12 months or younger.

The minimum age rises with the category: 18 for a Category A provider, 20 for Category B and 21 for Category C.

Iowa sets an education and experience floor at Category B: a high school diploma or GED with two years of child care experience, or a CDA or child care degree with one year.

Before registration, a provider completes pre-service health and safety training, 2 hours of mandatory reporter training and first aid/CPR, and once registered the rule sets a minimum of 24 hours of training in each two-year registration period.

Our research captured the education and experience requirement for Category B; confirm the current expectations for Category A and Category C providers with Iowa HHS before you apply.

A child development home is a registered provider, so the federal CCDF rules in 45 CFR 98.43 apply: every child care staff member needs a comprehensive background check, requested before the person becomes a staff member and repeated at least once every 5 years.

The check combines an FBI fingerprint check, a national sex-offender-registry search, and state criminal, sex-offender and child-abuse-and-neglect registry checks for the current state and every state the person lived in during the past 5 years.

In a family child care home, any household member age 18 or older counts as a child care staff member.

Federal rules give states up to 45 days to complete a request, and each state must publish its background-check policies online, so Iowa HHS's site is the authority on where to submit.

The Iowa child development home rules our research captured cover the registration categories, provider ages and qualifications, training and the 24-month renewal cycle — but not the inspection process itself.

How Iowa HHS inspects a registered child development home, whether it visits the home before registration and what such a visit covers, and whether the process differs by category were not captured in our research.

Iowa HHS can tell you what to expect for your category before you apply.

The training sequence comes first: pre-service health and safety training, 2 hours of mandatory reporter training and first aid/CPR are all completed before registration.

Registration then renews every 24 months, with a minimum of 24 hours of training in each two-year registration period.

Whether 441 IAC Chapter 110 carries a registration fee, and how long a new registration takes, were not established in our research — Iowa HHS is the place to confirm the current application steps and any fees.

Providers caring for five or fewer children (six when at least one is school-aged) may also register voluntarily as child development homes, which brings them under the same Chapter 110 categories, training and renewal rules.

The Iowa rules our research captured name a second provider only at Category C: its capacity of up to 14 children not attending kindergarten or a higher grade level plus 2 school-age children comes with two providers.

Beyond that, our research did not capture qualification or training rules Iowa sets specifically for assistants in child development homes, so confirm those with Iowa HHS before you post the job.

A paid assistant is a child care staff member under the federal CCDF rules, so the comprehensive background check is requested before they start and repeated at least once every 5 years; a new hire may begin once either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint criminal check returns a qualifying result, supervised at all times by a fully checked staff member until every component is complete.