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STEP FOUR:

Your LICENSING ANALYST will call you shortly after your application is received. They will discuss your readiness (i.e., things you may still need to do or get to become licensed).

PRE-LICENSING INSPECTION VISIT

Your Licensing Analyst will call you to arrange a pre-licensing inspection visit of your home/facility. During this visit, the Licensing Analyst will discuss forms you are required to maintain for children and your home/facility. The Licensing Analyst will notify you of any recommendations for improvements to ensure that your home/facility meets regulatory requirements. You will have extra time to fulfill these recommendations. The Licensing Analyst will leave you a written report of everything discussed at this visit.

OPERATING AN UNLICENSED FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME

The Community Care Licensing office may find out that you have been operating an unlicensed home, either because someone reported this or you tell them (sometimes in the licensing process itself). You will be given a Notice of Operation in Violation of the Law and a 15-day grace period in which you must apply for a license. If you don't, the State can stop you from operating. So before this happens, get your application started immediately. You will be allowed to continue operating while your application is being processed.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

You may want to get started right now. You can begin if you take care of just one family's child or children. You can do that while you're waiting for your license. You'll get a feeling of what it is like to take care of someone else's child. You may have plenty of experience informally taking care of a friend's or relative's child for short periods of time, but it may be different trying it with another family and being paid for it..

Another possibility would be to work as an assistant for a Family Child Care provider. This would also give you a good sense of what being a Family Child Care provider is all about.

Family Child Care programs are not all the same. You have many decisions to make. You don't have to decide now and, in fact, these decisions are probably better made after you've gone to an orientation meeting, read the licensing materials and talked with a licensing evaluator.

There is a need for child care providers for children from a few weeks old to middle school. The greatest need is for infant care, but many parents need child care for the hours before and after kindergarten. School-age children do not need as many hours of care as infants. Caring for school-age children, you would work perhaps a few hours before school and more hours after school until parents can pick up their children. The decision on ages you would like to care for is up to you.