Texas daycare inspection records
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s Child Care Regulation department issues permits to daycares across the state, inspects them, and investigates reports about them. We currently cover Houston: 1,468 operations that received 11,509 routine inspections and 18,154 citations in the last five years.
Covered cities
| City | Daycares | Full record pages | Violations, 5 yrs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houston | 1,468 | 977 | 18,154 |
The four kinds of regulated daycare
Texas issues different permits depending on where care happens and how many children are in care. Each follows its own chapter of minimum standards (Texas Administrative Code, Title 26). Source: HHSC, types of child care operations.
| Permit type | What it is | Rules | Routine inspections | Houston avg., 5 yrs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensed child care center 923 in Houston | A child care center outside a private home; includes school-age and before/after-school programs. | Chapter 746 (school-age programs: Chapter 744) | Unannounced, at least once a year | 10.4 |
| Licensed child care home 103 in Houston | Care in the primary caregiver’s own residence, no more than 12 children at a time. | Chapter 747 | Unannounced, at least once a year | 7.0 |
| Registered child care home 355 in Houston | Care in the caregiver’s residence for up to 6 children, plus up to 6 school-age children after school. | Chapter 747 | Unannounced, at least once every two years | 3.4 |
| Listed family home 87 in Houston | Paid care in the caregiver’s residence for up to 3 unrelated children. | Chapter 742 | Not routinely; only during an investigation | 0.1 |
How a violation gets on the record
- Inspections are routine, unannounced visits. Investigations follow a report from a parent or the public, or a serious incident the operation reported itself. Assessments are citations made from paperwork instead of a visit.
- Any failure to meet a rule is a deficiency, which the state also calls a violation. Each rule carries a weight from High to Low based on the risk a violation poses to children.
- The state posts a deficiency to the public record only after the operation has had the chance to dispute it. The rule gives operations 15 days after notice to ask for an administrative review (26 TAC §745.8805).
- The state expanded its search website to five years of history in 2020, and its data files cover about the same span. We use a five-year window, counted back from the day we pull the data.
Sources: HHSC, reports, inspections and enforcement actions; Search Texas Child Care.
What we leave out
The state’s data file also lists 24-hour residential operations and child-placing agencies. They are not daycares, so we remove them: 118 Houston records in the latest pull. Daycares in suburbs with their own city name (for example Pasadena or Katy) are not included yet.