What Are the Home Daycare License Requirements in West Virginia?

West Virginia separates home-based child care by size, and both current family child care rules have been in effect since April 1, 2023.

A registered family child care home may care for no more than six children under 13 at any one time, with no more than two under 24 months; resident and visiting children under 6 count toward that ceiling.

Registration under Legislative Rule 78CSR19 is the state's category for that home — it is still a state authorization with its own caregiver age, training and capacity rules, not an exemption from rules.

Caring for more children than a registered home may serve puts you in the licensed family child care facility category under 78CSR18, and a facility must hold a certificate of license before it operates.

At 13 or more children, a program is a child care center under 78CSR1.

The state's home categories are the registered family child care home and the licensed family child care facility.

The registered home is capped at six children under 13 at any one time, no more than two of them under 24 months, with resident and visiting children under 6 counted in.

A family child care facility serves more children than a registered home but fewer than 13 — the statute's exact capacity range was not in the rule text our research read — and it must hold a certificate of license before operating.

The facility rule adds a staffing floor: two staff members on duty whenever the facility cares for more than two children under 24 months or more than six children at the same time.

Programs of 13 or more children are centers under 78CSR1.

The two categories set different bars.

A registered family child care home caregiver must be at least 18 and able to read and write.

Within three months of registration, that caregiver needs pediatric CPR and first aid plus pre-service health and safety training, then 4 more training hours in year one and 8 hours of approved training each year after.

A licensed family child care facility operator must be at least 21 with a high school diploma or GED and 6 months of experience caring for children — experience the rule counts in a licensed child care center, a family child care facility, a registered family care home, Head Start, or another early childhood or school-age child care program.

The operator also needs pediatric CPR and first aid, child abuse recognition and medication administration training, pre-service training, and at least 15 clock hours of approved training each year.

Under the CCDF background-check rule, 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 federal check bundles an FBI fingerprint check, a National Sex Offender Registry search, and state criminal repository, state sex offender registry and state child abuse and neglect registry checks for the current state and every state lived in during the past 5 years.

On the state side, West Virginia requires a state and federal fingerprint-based check on each center staff member and volunteer through WV CARES, the West Virginia Clearance for Access: Registry and Employment Screening Act, plus sex offender registry checks and out-of-state checks for anyone who lived elsewhere in the past five years — wording our research read in the center rule, 78CSR1.

The family child care chapters, 78CSR18 and 78CSR19, are separate rules whose background-check text our research did not extract, so ask the Division of Early Care and Education exactly who must be checked in a home or facility.

Our research did not confirm West Virginia's inspection steps for family child care homes and facilities: what a pre-licensing visit covers, which premises standards a home is checked against, or how often a registered home is revisited.

Those requirements would live in the family child care chapters our research read — 78CSR18 for licensed facilities and 78CSR19 for registered homes — under the West Virginia Department of Human Services' Division of Early Care and Education.

Ask the division what its review of a home involves before you apply, and treat any secondhand inspection checklist with care.

For the licensed category, the facility rule fixes two points: a family child care facility must apply for and obtain a certificate of license from the Secretary before it begins operating and accepting children for care, and it must apply for renewal at least 60 days before the license expires.

Beyond that, our research did not confirm an application fee or a processing timeline for either category, and the registration steps for family child care homes under 78CSR19 were not in the material we read.

Confirm the application materials, current fees and processing times with the Division of Early Care and Education before you apply.

The staffing trigger sits in the facility rule: a family child care facility must have two staff members on duty whenever it cares for more than two children under 24 months or more than six children at the same time.

For the registered home category, the material our research read sets its requirements on the caregiver and the six-children-under-13 ceiling, with no second-staff threshold recorded.

What the research does not have is qualification text for facility staff positions beyond the operator standard and this two-staff duty, so ask the Division of Early Care and Education what it requires of an assistant you hire.