What Are the Home Daycare License Requirements in Texas?

Under Human Resources Code §42.052, a family home that provides regular care for compensation for three or fewer unrelated children in the caretaker's own residence must list with HHSC, and a home caring for four or more unrelated children must register.

A home caring only for children who are related to the caregiver needs neither listing nor registration.

Which tier a home falls into decides its standards and its fees, and HHSC Child Care Regulation administers all three tiers.

Texas statute names three home tiers.

A listed family home cares for three or fewer unrelated children for compensation; it has limited minimum standards, is not inspected unless a complaint is filed, and must carry $100,000 per-occurrence liability insurance or give parents written notice that coverage is not provided.

A registered child-care home is required from four or more unrelated children, and in statute a family home — the listed and registered tiers — cares for no more than six children under 14 who are not related to the caregiver, plus up to six additional after-school elementary children, with no more than 12 children total at any time.

A licensed child-care home, the group day-care home, is care in the operator's residence for seven or more children under 14, at least two hours a day, three or more days a week.

HHSC publishes capacity charts for registered and licensed homes in 26 TAC Chapter 747 that our research could not read, so the capacities above come from statute; ask HHSC Child Care Regulation for the current chart.

HHSC sets the primary caregiver's qualifications by tier.

For a registered child-care home, 26 TAC §747.1007 requires a primary caregiver who is at least 21 years old, holds a high school diploma or high school equivalent, and completes the Licensing pre-application course within one year prior to the application date; the same rule requires current pediatric first aid and CPR, a tuberculosis record where the local health authority requires one, and training in topics including child-maltreatment reporting, abusive head trauma, safe sleep and SIDS prevention, and emergency preparedness.

For a licensed child-care home, 26 TAC §747.1107, amended effective March 1, 2023, keeps the age and pre-application-course requirements and adds that the primary caregiver must have one of several combinations of education and experience in a licensed child-care center or in a licensed or registered child-care home.

Our research did not capture an annual training-hours figure for Texas home caregivers, so confirm the current hours with HHSC Child Care Regulation.

For a registered or licensed child-care home, the federal CCDF rules in 45 CFR 98.43 require a comprehensive background check for every child care staff member, requested before the person becomes a staff member and repeated at least once every 5 years; a provider whose care is subsidy-eligible is covered as well.

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.

States must complete the request within 45 days of submission and must publish their background-check policies online, so the state's own site is the authority on where to get fingerprinted.

In statute, a listed family home has limited minimum standards and is not inspected unless a complaint is filed with the commission.

Our research captured that listed-home rule and the qualification rules for registered and licensed homes in 26 TAC Chapter 747, but did not capture the inspection schedule HHSC applies to a registered or licensed home before and after its permit issues; HHSC Child Care Regulation can tell you what to expect for your tier.

Texas licensing applications — every kind except a listed family home's and a compliance certificate — start with an HHSC pre-application interview, which teaches applicants the application process, the licensing requirements and the administrative procedures; HHSC may hold it as an online group class.

Texas statute requires HHSC to charge a nonrefundable application fee and an initial license fee for child-care facilities, plus an annual license fee due each anniversary, and listed and registered family homes pay the annual fee.

The dollar amounts are set in HHSC's rule charts (26 TAC §745.505–.509), which our research could not read, so get the current schedule from Child Care Regulation.

The annual fee is not optional bookkeeping: a license, listing or registration is automatically suspended when the annual fee goes unpaid and is revoked if it is not paid within six months after the date the automatic suspension begins.

Our research did not capture a published processing timeline for a Texas home permit; the pre-application interview is where HHSC walks applicants through what follows.

A paid assistant at a licensed, regulated or registered provider is a child care staff member under the federal CCDF rules in 45 CFR 98.43, so the same comprehensive background check applies before hire and at least once every 5 years after.

One federal provision shapes the start date: a new hire may start work once they have a qualifying result on either the FBI fingerprint check or the in-state fingerprint criminal check, but until every check component is complete they must be supervised at all times by an individual who received a qualifying result on a background check within the past five years.

Our research captured the primary-caregiver qualifications for registered and licensed homes but not the qualifications Texas sets for additional caregivers in the home, so confirm the training and any ratio or supervision duties that apply to a hired assistant with HHSC Child Care Regulation before you post the job.