How Texas child care permits work, in plain English
Where Texas Daycare Report’s numbers come from: the Texas Health and Human Services Commission records, what each one means, how fast it posts and what it can’t tell you.
Who has to be permitted
Every Texas day care that cares for children for pay needs a permit from Texas Health and Human Services Child Care Regulation (CCR). That covers child care centers, licensed child-care homes, before and after-school programs, and registered child-care homes.
Initial permit: the new-operation signal
A new operation gets an Initial permit when the state says it is ready to care for children. That makes the Initial permit the clearest public sign that a day care is opening now or about to. The state inspects it during the initial period.
Full permit: about six months later
After the initial period the Initial permit is converted to a full permit. That usually means the operation has been running six months or more, so we label it “full permit” and never call it brand new.
What the record shows, and what it doesn’t
HHSC publishes each operation, its permit type and date, its capacity and the ages it serves, every day, and its inspection and deficiency history. A permit date is the state’s date, not an opening day: some centers open a week later. The record doesn’t show enrollment or prices.
Homes stay private
Registered child-care homes are someone’s own house, usually filed under the owner’s name, so we only ever show how many were registered. Licensed homes appear only when they have a business name, and our blog posts don’t name homes at all.
What these records added up to, last 30 days
155 child care permit records: 89 new operations got their first state permit (an Initial permit) and 66 moved from an Initial permit to a full permit. By type, 117 were child care centers and 38 were licensed child-care homes (counted, never named).
By source
October 13 to November 11, 2026
Separately, Texas HHSC registered 23 new child-care homes in the same window. A registered home is a small day care in someone’s own house, usually filed under the owner’s name, so we give the count only, never names or addresses. They aren’t in any other count here. Source: Texas HHSC Child Care Regulation.
Going deeper: How to read a Texas day care's inspection record.
Counts window: October 13 to November 11, 2026 (record dates). Counted from the same records and filters as the site’s map and home page on November 12, 2026; recent posts are recounted as late records arrive. A record is a signal, not a promise. How we read these records.