How to Start a Daycare in Wyoming: Licensing Steps, Costs and Staffing

The Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS), Child Care Licensing, licenses the state's child care facilities.

The rules sit in the Wyoming Code of Rules, agency 049, Child Care Licensing chapters 1-10; the center rules were adopted October 7, 2016 and amended February 2, 2022.

Anyone who provides care for more than two children must be licensed unless exempt under W.S. 14-4-101/102, and an owner who is legally exempt may still request voluntary licensing.

Start any question about applications, inspections or renewals with this agency.

DFS lists three license types.

A Family Child Care Home serves 3 to 10 children in the provider's own home with no additional staff; its capacity is set by the licenser up to 10, the home must be the owner's primary residence, and the owner must be on site at least 75% of the operating week.

A Family Child Care Center serves up to 15 children with licenser-set capacity, adding one staff member once more than 10 are present.

A Child Care Center serves 16 or more, and a facility for 16 or more children may not be located in any person's residence — the center's capacity is set room by room.

The rules anchor the path to a license in a few concrete requirements.

The owner or director completes pre-service training before the license is issued, and all applicants pay the licensing fee at the time of application.

What our research did not capture is the operational detail: a step-by-step application checklist, the inspection itself and any published processing timeline.

DFS Child Care Licensing is the office to ask for its current application packet and what its licensors review before a facility opens.

A Wyoming child care center director must be at least 21, hold a high school diploma or equivalent, and have either two years of equivalent combined education and experience in early childhood management, early childhood education, child development, nursing or a related field, or a DFS-recognized professional credential.

Staff who provide direct care or count in ratio must be at least 16.

Within three months of starting and before any unsupervised direct care, staff complete pre-service training, facility orientation and Wyoming Early Learning Standards training worth 8 credits.

Staff working 24 or more hours a month in direct care or counted in ratio complete 32 training credits every two years, directors owe them regardless of hours, and all staff hold current DFS-approved pediatric and adult CPR and first aid with an in-person skills demonstration.

Staff, household members, substitutes and volunteers also clear a fingerprint-based national criminal history check plus state checks, repeated every five years.

Your staffing starts from Table 4-1 of the licensing rules.

For infants, birth to 12 months, one staff member covers a 1:4 ratio with a maximum group of 10; for 4- and 5-year-olds the ratio is 1:12 with a maximum group of 30.

In a mixed-age group, the youngest child's age dictates the ratio.

At nap time a center may relax to one staff member in the sleeping area while all children sleep, as long as overall facility ratios are maintained.

Read the full table before you set enrollment caps by room, and confirm the current figures with DFS.

Chapter 2 of the licensing rules sets a $50 licensing fee, paid by all applicants at the time of application, and a $25 renewal fee.

Those are the only Wyoming dollar figures our research confirmed, so facility build-out, equipment, insurance, food and payroll costs come from your own quotes — our research found no state schedule of startup costs.

Our research did not surface a published processing or inspection timeline either.

Ask DFS Child Care Licensing what its process currently takes before you sign a lease or set an opening date.

Our research surfaced staff-development funding for Wyoming operators, not startup grants.

WY Quality Counts, a program of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, is 100% state-funded, and its scholarship and grant resources depend on available funds.

Scholarships pay up to $1,500 toward college degrees and $2,300 toward CDA credential programs, paid directly to the institution, with a required work commitment in a Wyoming-licensed child care program afterward and a 150-credit-hour lifetime cap.

Applications are due 45-110 days before the semester or training starts, and separate professional development grants cover conference and training costs up to $1,000 per recipient per state fiscal year.

Wyoming STARS, the early childhood registry funded by DFS and administered by Align, approves all training and trainers for licensed providers and records completed training credits.

Wyoming does not appear on the T.E.A.C.H. national center's Programs by State list as of October 2026.