Do You Need a License to Run a Home Daycare in South Dakota?

It depends on the size of the home and how it is paid.

South Dakota licenses a group family day care home serving 13 to 20 children and a day care center serving 21 or more, counting children under six living in the home.

A family day care home of up to 12 children is not licensed: it registers with DSS, and the registration rules apply only to homes paid directly or indirectly with public funds.

Homes not paid directly or indirectly with public funds are not covered by the registration rules, which is why the license question turns first on capacity and the registration question on funding.

The statutes name three settings and two instruments.

A family day care home may not be registered for more than 12 children at a time, including children under six living in the home, and registration certificates last two years.

A group family day care home serves 13 to 20 children and must be licensed.

A day care center is any facility serving 21 or more children, including a family home, and must also be licensed.

Children under six living in the home count toward the total in all three settings.

South Dakota requires child care providers — the rules' term for people giving direct care — to be at least 18.

A family day care provider completes 6 hours of training each year, and CPR renewal does not count toward that total.

Every provider must hold pediatric CPR certification with a hands-on skills test and complete pediatric first aid every five years.

Providers must also finish orientation training in 13 areas, including infectious disease, safe sleep, medication, allergies, abusive head trauma, emergency preparedness and child abuse reporting, within 90 days of hire and before caring for children unsupervised.

The five regional Early Childhood Enrichment sites DSS works with deliver licensing-required and quality training, technical assistance and coaching to providers, and the state's Pathways to Professional Development career lattice recognizes education and training for people who work with children from birth through age 12.

For a home under the registration rules, yes.

South Dakota requires federal CCDBG background checks for all providers, for program employees 14 and older, and for family day care household members 18 and older, repeated at least every five years.

The process starts with fingerprinting — live scan preferred or ink cards — and adults who lived outside South Dakota in the past five years also complete out-of-state criminal and central registry forms.

Because the rule names household members, an adult who lives in the home is part of the same check cycle as the provider.

Our research captured the South Dakota rules that bear on a home daycare provider's day-to-day work — capacity, provider age, training hours and background checks — but did not capture what a home inspection covers, how often one happens, or what the agency looks for before it registers a home or licenses a group family day care home.

Those details sit with the Office of Licensing and Accreditation inside DSS's Division of Child Care Services, the agency administering the consolidated child care licensing chapter effective July 3, 2023.

Ask DSS what to expect before you apply.

Applications run through DSS's Division of Child Care Services.

The statutes give two anchors: a family day care home may not be registered for more than 12 children at a time, and registration certificates last two years before renewal.

The consolidated child care licensing chapter took effect July 3, 2023, so older how-to guides may not match the current rules.

Our research did not find a registration or license fee in the rules we read, so this page states no fee figure — ask DSS for the current application steps, forms and costs.

A family day care assistant may be 14 or older, but the rules treat assistants under 18 differently: they count in ratio only if another adult is present, and they may not be left alone with children.

An assistant also changes what the capacity rules allow.

Alone, a provider may care for up to 12 children with no more than four under age two and no more than three of those under one; with an assistant, up to eight children may be under two.

The background-check rule also reaches program employees 14 and older, and a check repeats at least every five years.

The registration rules carry a funding condition: they do not apply to family day care homes providing services not paid for directly or indirectly out of public funds.

A home that begins taking public funds moves under those registration rules.

What else attaches to a home outside the registration system — whether local zoning, food programs or anything else reach such a home — was not established in our research, so confirm a no-public-funds home's obligations with DSS and your local authorities before you open.