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Home Daycare License Requirements by State

Every U.S. state licenses home daycares differently — a different capacity limit, different age-by-age ratios, different training hours, a different application path. Pick your state below for exactly what it requires in 2026, sourced and dated. Then build your prep packet free.

What a “home daycare license” actually is

Caring for other people’s children in your own home is a regulated activity in every state we cover. The credential has a different name almost everywhere — family child care home license, family day care registration, child care home certification — but it always answers the same four questions: how many children you may have at once, who may be alone with them, what you had to prove before you opened, and what a licensor will find when they walk in. The rest is state-specific detail, and that detail is on your state’s page.

The name matters more than it looks. In 50 of the 51 states we cover the state issues a license; in 1 it does not license home providers at all and the pathway is registration instead. Searching for “how to get licensed” in a registration state sends you to the wrong forms, the wrong agency page and the wrong fee schedule — which is why each state page uses that state’s own word rather than a generic one.

The one rule that surprises almost everyone: your own children count

In 46 of the 51 states we cover, the capacity rule explicitly counts children who live in the home — usually the provider’s own children under a stated age — toward the maximum. A provider who reads “six children” as “six paying children” and enrolls six while raising two toddlers of their own is over capacity from the first day, and capacity is the violation licensors find fastest, because it is visible the moment they arrive.

The counting rules are not uniform. States differ on the cut-off age at which a resident child stops counting, on whether school-age or home-schooled children in the house count, and on whether children who are merely present — not enrolled — count while care is being provided. Each state page quotes its own counting rule rather than a summary, because this is the number your whole business plan rests on.

Capacity and ratios are two different limits

Capacity is the ceiling: the largest number of children who may be in your care at one time. Ratios are the interior structure: how many of those children may be infants or under two, and at what point you must add a qualified adult. Meeting your capacity number does not mean you are compliant — most states let you reach the top of your capacity only by adding an assistant who meets the state’s own qualification rules, and most cap the number of the youngest children regardless of how many adults are present.

We publish no national average for either number, because there isn’t one worth having: the limits are written in each state’s regulation with its own age brackets and its own staffing tiers, and a nationwide figure would be wrong everywhere. Your state’s page carries its own table, cited to the regulation and dated.

What every state checks before it lets you open

The specifics differ; the shape does not. Across the 51 states we cover:

CPR and first aid — 51 of 51. Pediatric CPR and first aid certification is required in every state we cover. It is also the requirement most often left to the end, and the one most likely to delay an application, because classes are scheduled, not instant.
A criminal background check — 51 of 51. The check reaches beyond the applicant: states generally screen every adult who lives in the home and anyone who will be present during care. 49 of the 51 states we cover take fingerprints, and 35 run an FBI-level check on top of the state one.
A child abuse and neglect registry check — 49 of 51. This is a separate search from the criminal record check, run against the state’s child protective services registry, and it is frequently the slowest step in the file.
Pre-service training — 51 of 51. Every state requires some training before you may care for children, and every state requires more of it every year afterward. The hours, the approved providers and the required topics are all set state by state.
An on-site inspection — 51 of 51. A licensor visits the actual home before approval, and in nearly every state again afterward, announced or not. The inspection covers the parts of your house children can reach, not a designated “daycare room”.

Postings and enrollment forms — the paperwork that outlives the application

Every state we cover requires two categories of paperwork that a new provider rarely plans for. First, postings: documents that must be displayed where parents can see them — typically the license or registration certificate itself, emergency and evacuation procedures, and the agency’s complaint contact. Second, enrollment forms: a file that must exist for every child on the first day of care, usually including an admission or enrollment agreement, emergency contacts and authorized pick-up, a health and immunization record, and written permissions.

These are the items an unannounced visit checks first, because they take seconds to verify and cannot be produced on the spot. Each state page lists that state’s own postings and forms so you can assemble the binder before you need it.

How to use these pages

Open your state below. Read its capacity rule first — including who counts — because it decides whether the business works at all. Then read the training section, because it is the requirement with a calendar attached and the one that sets your realistic opening date. Background checks and the inspection follow the application; postings and forms need to be ready before your first child arrives, not after.

Every rule on every state page is cited to that state’s statute, regulation or licensing agency and carries the date we last verified it. Where a state’s own rules are genuinely ambiguous, the page says so rather than inventing a number.

States we cover

State	Max group size
Alabama	Alabama does not operate a 'group size' concept distinct from licensed capacity for home-based care. There is no rule anywhere in ch. 660-5-27 that subdivides a licensed home into groups or classrooms, no maximum-per-room figure, and no requirement to keep age bands physically separate. The binding numbers are the licence caps themselves: not more than six children in a family day care home (r. 660-5-27-.02(9); Ala. Code Sec. 38-7-2(5)), at least seven and not more than twelve in a group day care home with at least two adults present and supervising (r. 660-5-27-.02(15); Sec. 38-7-2(9); operationalised by r. .09(3)), with the infant sub-caps of three and six respectively (r. .03(7)(e); r. .09(4)). Anything above twelve children in daytime care stops being a home at all and becomes a day care centre under Ala. Code Sec. 38-7-2(4) ("Any child-care facility receiving more than 12 children for daytime care during all or part of a day"), governed by a different chapter of the Administrative Code, 660-5-26. Three practical qualifications on the phrase 'no group size': (a) the count that binds is bodies on the premises at any given time, including children on field trips and including the licensee's own pre-school-age resident children (r. .03(7)(c)); (b) the licence also fixes an AGE RANGE, and exceeding it is a violation independent of number (r. .03(7)(d)); and (c) three physical-plant ratios function as de facto size limits - 32 square feet of usable indoor floor space per licensed child (r. .04(2)(c)1), 300 square feet of fenced outdoor play area for the family tier and 600 for the group tier (r. .04(3)(a)3; r. .09(11)), and one crib, playpen, bed or cot per child who rests (r. .04(2)(d)1). A home with 150 square feet of usable child-care space cannot be licensed for six children whatever the definition says.
Alaska	No separate maximum-group-size cap for homes: Alaska's maximum-group-size rule (7 AAC 57.510) applies only to child care centers. A child care home or group home is limited solely by its total-capacity cap (8 and 12 respectively) with the under-30-months and nonambulatory sub-limits in 7 AAC 57.505(a)-(b).
Arizona	Six children present at any one time in a home facility, of whom no more than four may be in care for compensation and no more than two may be younger than age 1 unless they are a sibling group (R6-5-5220(A)(1), (2)). Arizona draws no sub-group inside that six: one provider, one group, one room within sight (R6-5-5201(24); R6-5-5203(6)(c)). The six is a ceiling on presence, not an entitlement - the operative number is whatever DES wrote on the certificate, because 'The Department shall designate on the certificate issued to the provider the total number of children to be allowed in child care at any one time' (R6-5-5206(E)), and DES may set that below four under R6-5-5220(C). Children aged 13 and over are not counted at all, except a child aged 13 or older who is a child with special needs, who is counted (R6-5-5220(A), (D)). The provider's own resident children under 13 ARE counted (CCA-1322A: 'Children in the home under the age of 13 will count in the child care ratio'). For the in-home certificate the equivalent figure is a sibling group of no more than six, all living in that home, plus the in-home provider's own children only with the client's written permission and within the same total of six (R6-5-5220(B)). A seventh child, or a fifth paid child, is not an over-ratio write-up in the ordinary sense: it puts the home outside the DES category altogether and into A.R.S. Sec. 36-897(1) group-home territory, which belongs to ADHS.
Arkansas	Arkansas sets NO group-size limit distinct from capacity for either home tier. Neither PUB-001 nor PUB-003 contains the words 'group size', and neither divides a home into rooms or classroom groups the way a center rulebook does. What actually bounds a home is a stack of four different instruments: (1) THE TIER CEILING — five children for any registered home (PUB-003 103.1-.3), sixteen for a licensed home (PUB-001 102.4). (2) THE CAPACITY ON THE FACE OF THE PERMIT — PUB-001 201.5: 'The home shall not exceed its licensed capacity at any time (see Regulation 801.3).' Your licensed capacity, not the sixteen in the rulebook, is the enforceable number. (3) FLOOR SPACE, licensed homes only — PUB-001 801.3, 35 usable indoor square feet per child excluding kitchens, bathrooms, hallways and closets. This is what converts sixteen from a right into an arithmetic result. (4) THE STAFF-TO-CHILD BLOCK AND ITS AGE SUB-CAPS — PUB-001 301, which regulates by adult count and by how many children under two are present rather than by group. ONE QUASI-GROUPING RULE EXISTS, AND IT IS NOT IN THE RULEBOOK. OEC's Licensing 101 Help Guide, under the critical area 'Staff/Child Ratios & Supervision', instructs that a site shall 'Not mix infants and toddlers with preschool age unless there are eight (8) or less children in care.' That is the closest thing Arkansas has to a group-composition rule for homes, it is an OEC enforcement guide rather than a numbered rule in PUB-001, and it cuts the other way from most states' group rules: it permits mixing BELOW a threshold rather than capping a group above one. Two other numbers behave like soft group limits and are worth planning around because they change what an inspector requires rather than what you may enrol: total attendance above TEN triggers fire approval when you are using the two-school-agers allowance (PUB-001 301.9), and a licensed capacity of ELEVEN or more triggers mandatory fire AND health (food service) inspections (PUB-001 301.4).
California	CALIFORNIA SETS NO SEPARATE GROUP-SIZE CEILING ON TOP OF CAPACITY, BECAUSE IN A FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME CAPACITY IS ALREADY A SIMULTANEOUS-PRESENCE NUMBER. California Code of Regulations, Title 22, section 102416.5(a) defines the licensed capacity as "the maximum number of children for whom care may be provided AT ANY ONE TIME," and section 102352(c)(2) defines the term the same way: "'Capacity' means the maximum number of children for whom care is authorized at any one time." A group-size rule in other states exists precisely because their capacity figures are enrollment figures; California's is not. The ceiling on the group is therefore the ceiling on the license: eight in a small family child care home (section 102416.5(c): "The total licensed capacity for a Small Family Child Care Home shall not exceed eight children"), and fourteen in a large one (section 102416.5(f): "The total licensed capacity for a Large Family Child Care Home shall not exceed fourteen children"). THREE THINGS FUNCTION AS GROUP-SIZE CONSTRAINTS WITHOUT BEING CALLED THAT. FIRST, THE INFANT SUBLIMITS, WHICH TIGHTEN AS THE GROUP GROWS. Four infants alone; or six children with at most three infants; or seven to eight children with at most two infants (Health and Safety Code section 1597.44(b)); or twelve children with at most four infants; or thirteen to fourteen children with at most three infants (Health and Safety Code section 1597.465(b)). The infant cap is the only composition rule California imposes, and it moves in the counter-intuitive direction: the bigger the group, the fewer children under two it may contain. SECOND, THE PRESENCE OF THE ASSISTANT PROVIDER. Section 102416.5(e): "If no assistant provider is present at a Large Family Child Care Home, then the licensee shall comply with the capacity requirements for a Small Family Child Care Home as specified in subsections (b) and (c)." The maximum group in a large home is therefore not a fixed number but a function of who is standing in the house at that minute. THIRD, THE COUNTED-IN CHILDREN. Because the licensee's own resident children under ten -- and, in a large home, the assistant provider's children under ten -- are inside the capacity number (section 102416.5(b) and (d); Health and Safety Code section 1596.78(b), (c)), the maximum group of ENROLLED children is the licensed capacity minus the household's own under-tens. There is no separate allowance for them. WHAT IS NOT A LIMIT. There is no square-footage-per-child requirement, no indoor activity space minimum, no outdoor play area minimum and no toilet-fixture ratio for a California family child care home. Those rules live in Chapter 1 of Title 22, Division 12, which governs centers, and California Code of Regulations, Title 22, section 102351.1 provides that "[t]he provisions of Chapter 1, General Requirements, shall not apply to family child care homes." Article 7 of Chapter 3, headed "Physical Environment," is reserved and contains no sections. The only physical constraint that scales with the number of children is the fire and building treatment of a LARGE home under the State Fire Marshal's Title 24 standards -- see preservice_training and prelicensing_steps for the fire clearance, and note that 2025 California Building Code section 455.6 requires that "[e]very large-family day-care home shall comply with the provisions for Group R-3 occupancies" and that section 455.8 routes exiting to section 1006.2.2.7. A small home is exempted from the state fire-inspection articles altogether by Health and Safety Code section 1597.455(a) and needs no fire clearance at all under section 102371(b).
Colorado	SIX ON A REGULAR LICENCE — TWELVE AT THE ABSOLUTE CEILING, NINE AS AN EXPERIENCED PROVIDER, FOUR OR EIGHT IN AN INFANT/TODDLER HOME — AND YOUR OWN CHILDREN UNDER TEN ARE INSIDE EVERY ONE OF THOSE NUMBERS. Colorado does not set a "group size" separately from capacity, because a family child care home is one group. The licensed capacity is the group size. What varies is which capacity your licence type buys and what age mix it permits inside it. The five numbers, from the rule text: — Regular family child care home, section 2.306(A): six children birth to eighteen, no more than two under eighteen months, plus under (A)(1) "no more than two (2) additional school-age children attending kindergarten through twelfth (12) grade." Eight children may be present; the licensed capacity is six. — Three under eighteen months home, section 2.307(A): six children, no more than three under eighteen months and no more than two of those under twelve months, and under (A)(5) "The care of additional children of school age is not authorized." Six present, hard. — Infant/toddler home, section 2.308(A)(1)-(2): four with one provider aged at least twenty-one, no more than two under twelve months; or eight with two equally qualified providers aged at least twenty-one and eighteen, no more than four under one year. All children birth to three. — Large family child care home, section 2.309(A): twelve children birth to eighteen, no more than two under eighteen months, with a second qualified adult required under (A)(4) "When more than eight (8) children are present." — Experienced family child care provider, section 2.310(A)(3): nine under Options 1 through 4 (7+2, 8+1, 5+4 and 6+3 school-age children respectively), or four under Option 5. THE COUNTING RULE THAT OVERRIDES ALL FIVE. Section 2.305(A): "The providers own birth, adopted, step or foster children ten (10) years of age and older do not count in the provider's license capacity." Section 2.306(A)(2): "Residents of the home under ten (10) years of age who are on the premises and all children on the premises for supervision are counted against the approved capacity, except where specifically indicated otherwise." The options chart at section 2.310(A)(3) restates it for the experienced provider licence in a single closing line: "All options include provider's own children under ten (10) years of age." A provider with a three-year-old and a seven-year-old of her own therefore has four paid places on a regular licence, not six. On the day her seven-year-old turns ten, she has five. On the day her three-year-old turns ten, she has six. Colorado's home capacity is a function of the provider's own family calendar. TWO CEILINGS, NOT ONE. Whatever your licence type permits, section 2.305(A)(1) puts space first: "The capacity for a family child care home ... is determined by the amount of indoor and outdoor space designated for child care, as well as the below factors." Section 2.336(A)(1) requires "at least thirty-five (35) square feet of floor space per child" of open, uncluttered, safe indoor play space, exclusive of hallways, bathrooms, stairways, closets, laundry rooms, furnace rooms and the footprint of built-in cabinets and permanent shelving. Section 2.337(A)(1) requires "At least seventy-five (75) square feet of useable outdoor play space ... for each child in care," fenced to at least forty-two inches under section 2.337(A)(2). The number on your licence is the lower of what your type allows and what your square footage supports. Even children who are not in your care compete for that footage. Section 2.327(E)(2) permits the provider to have other children over periodically only if "The square footage requirements for the family child care home accommodates all children present." CHANGING THE NUMBER. Section 2.124(A)(3)(a) requires written notification and PRIOR Department approval for any "Proposed change in the number or age of children for whom the facility is licensed that differs from that authorized by the license." Section 2.111(C) prices it at "Changes to Licensed Capacity $97.00." Section 2.122(B) requires fresh written zoning approval "any time there is a change to the license, including moving the facility to another location, increasing the capacity, or adding different ages of children." And under section 2.106(A)(2) a change of licence TYPE is not a capacity change at all — it is a "Change in classification of facility or service offered," which deems the licence surrendered and requires a wholly new application under section 2.105(A), sixty days ahead.
Connecticut	There is no separate group-size rule in Connecticut family child care: the licensed capacity IS the group size. RCSA sec. 19a-87b-5(d)(1)(A) defines regular capacity as 'the maximum number of children that a provider may care for together at any one time during the year', and sec. 19a-87b-10(a) makes maintaining it a standing duty - 'The provider shall maintain the family child care home within the license capacity, and in compliance with the regulations.' Six at once, nine with an approved assistant or substitute present and assisting, plus the school age tier of three: that is the whole architecture. Three things can lower the effective number below the licence figure. Age mix, through the two-children-under-eighteen-months bar of sec. 19a-87b-5(e). Space, through sec. 19a-87b-5(d)(6), which lets the commissioner set capacity 'taking into account the indoor and outdoor space and other accommodations available for child care at the facility'; the regulation states no square-foot minimum for an ordinary family child care home - the 35 and 75 square feet per child figures come from CGS sec. 19a-87b(m) and apply only to endorsed large homes. And sec. 19a-87b-9(f)(1), 'There shall be sufficient indoor and outdoor play space to ensure appropriate activities, safety and comfort for the children at the facility', with a written alternate-outdoor-play plan required where the home has no outdoor space. Night care does not change the number: RCSA sec. 19a-87b-12 adds bed, location and sleepwear conditions for care between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. but no separate cap.
Delaware	THERE IS NO GROUP-SIZE RULE IN 14 DE Admin. Code 934 DISTINCT FROM CAPACITY. The chapter contains no per-room maximum, no requirement to divide children into age groups, and no separate 'group' concept at all. The only ceilings are the Section 57 and Section 68 envelopes and whatever number OCCL prints on the licence under Section 13.T ('The maximum number of children allowed to be present at any given time will be determined by the family licensee's or large family provider's experience and qualifications, the ages of the children living in the home, the amount of usable child care space, and fire marshal and zoning limitations'). Any table presenting a Delaware home-based 'group size' separate from capacity is fabricated. FOUR MECHANISMS DO THE WORK A GROUP-SIZE RULE WOULD DO ELSEWHERE. (1) THE AGE SUB-CAPS. At most 2 children under 12 months in ANY family home, Level I or Level II (Sections 57.A.1, 57.B.1, 57.C.1). At most 3 under 24 months in Level I option B (57.B.2) and at most 4 under 24 months at Level II (57.C.2). In large family homes, at most 2 infants with one adult (68.C.1), 4 with two adults (68.D.1), and an absolute ceiling of 6 infants ever (68.E, 'no more than six children under the age of 12 months may be present at any time'); at most 4 under-24-months with one adult (68.C.2) and 6 with two (68.D.2), with seven or more under-24-months forcing a third adult (68.E). (2) THE SPACE DIVISOR. 25 square feet of qualifying indoor child-use space per child in a family home licensed on or after 1 January 2009 (Section 58.B); 35 square feet per child in a large family home (Section 63); plus 50 square feet of outdoor play space per child for the maximum number using the playground at once in a large family home (Section 64.F). Both indoor rules are measured 'from wall to wall with the licensing specialist subtracting areas where furniture restricts children's movement' and both exclude bathrooms, storage, hallways and furnace rooms (large family also excludes kitchen areas). (3) THE STAFFING TRIGGERS in large family homes — seven preschoolers forces a second adult (68.D), five-or-six infants or seven-or-more under-twos forces a third (68.E). (4) THE FIRE MARSHAL AND THE LEVEL. Section 30.B: 'A licensee shall care for children on the ground level of the home or use another level only after meeting the conditions of the designated fire marshal.' Section 30.C: 'A licensee shall ensure each exit door is at least 28 inches wide.' Section 30.H: plans to the designated fire marshal on a Level I → Level II change or a move. Section 61.C: annual fire marshal inspection for large family homes. Section 16.D: OCCL and fire marshal approval before changing the rooms used for care. SLEEPING SPACE IS THE ONE PLACE THE CHAPTER TALKS ABOUT ARRANGEMENT RATHER THAN COUNT — Section 35, Sleeping Accommodations and Safe Sleep Environments, governs cribs, mats and where a child may sleep, and Section 22 requires written parent permission for 'sleeping on a mat as described in subsection 35.C.2, sleeping in another area as described in subsection 35.J.' Even there the regulation speaks of individual children, not groups. CONTRAST, so the boundary is clear: 13 or more children moves you out of 934 entirely and into 14 DE Admin. Code 933, DELACARE: Regulations for Early Care and Education and School-Age Centers, which is a different rule set with its own staffing structure. OCCL's 'Start a Child Care Business' page states the line: centres are 'child care in a commercial (non-residential) setting for thirteen or more children.'
District of Columbia	For homes the rule sets a maximum NUMBER OF CHILDREN ENROLLED rather than a distinct classroom 'group size': 12, 6, or 9 depending on how many children under age 2 are served and the number of caregivers (5-A DCMR §121). Distinct maximum group-size caps (e.g., 8/12/16/20) apply only to Child Development Centers, not homes.
Florida	Florida sets no group-size limit separate from licensed capacity for either home type, and no rule text creates one. The capacity groups of s. 402.302(8), F.S. — four infants; three infants plus others to a maximum total of six; six preschoolers all older than 12 months; or ten children with at most five preschool age and at most two of those under 12 months — and of s. 402.302(11), F.S. — eight children birth to 24 months, or twelve with no more than four under 24 months — are the group size. Handbook 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 restate them without adding any subdivision of the group, and the repeal of Rule 65C-20.009, F.A.C. (Staffing Requirements) on October 25, 2017 removed the only rule in Chapter 65C-20 that had ever carried staffing structure separately from capacity. Three qualifications matter in practice. First, household children under 13 years of age count inside the group whenever they are on the premises or on a field trip with enrolled children (ss. 402.302(8) and (11), F.S.) — the group you must manage is larger than your enrollment list. Second, the group has an internal composition rule, not just a ceiling: you must be inside ONE of the statutory groups at all times, so a change in the age mix during the day can put you over without any change in headcount. Third, one activity does impose a sub-group structure — water. Handbook 6.H fixes 1:1 for every child under three years old in or wading in water and sets mixed-group ratios by the age of the youngest child present, which effectively caps the in-water group at one child whenever an infant or toddler is present in a single-operator home. For large homes only, physical space rather than a group rule constrains the number: Handbook 7.5 requires 35 square feet of usable indoor floor space per child, excluding bedrooms unless demonstrably used as multipurpose activity rooms, and excluding kitchens, offices, laundry rooms, storage areas and hallways; Handbook 7.6.O requires a minimum of 270 square feet of usable outdoor play area on the property. Where a local licensing agency licenses (Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Sarasota), its standards may be stricter, because s. 402.306(1)(a), F.S. permits local designation only where county “licensing standards meet or exceed state minimum standards.”
Georgia	Georgia imposes no separate "group size" limit on top of capacity for family child care learning homes — there is no rule dividing the six children into groups, no maximum number of children per adult in ordinary indoor care, and no requirement to separate age bands. The chapter's ceilings are three, and they are the same three that define capacity: (1) six unrelated children under 13 at one time, for pay or not for pay (Rule 290-2-3-.07(16) and Rule .03(k)), plus the two-children/two-one-hour-periods exception for children three and older "upon approval by the Department"; (2) twelve children under thirteen present in the home whenever Related Children or children who reside in the home are present (Rule 290-2-3-.07(17)); and (3) 35 square feet of usable floor space per child present (Rules .07(17) and .13(1)(a)), which is the constraint that actually binds first in a small house — eleven children present requires 385 square feet of usable child care floor space, and basement areas more than 25 linear feet from a window cannot be counted or used at all (Rule .13(1)(b)). The functional equivalent of a group-size rule in Georgia is Rule 290-2-3-.07(19)'s second-person trigger, which forces an additional Employee or Provisional Employee (minimum age sixteen) into the house at more than three children under 12 months, more than six children under 3 years, or more than eight children under 5 years present. That paragraph does the work a group-size table does elsewhere: it caps how many very young children one adult may hold responsibility for, by age band, without naming a ratio. Two ancillary spacing rules read like group-size rules and are not. Rule 290-2-3-.19(1)(d) governs the arrangement of sleeping equipment: "There shall be a minimum of twenty-four inch (24") corridor between each row of sleeping or resting equipment. There shall be a minimum of twelve inches (12") between each piece of sleeping or resting equipment in each row of equipment. Children shall be placed on cots and mats so that one child's head is toward another child's feet in the same row," with all equipment "arranged to avoid obstructing access to exit doors, to provide the caregivers access to each child, and to prevent children's access to cords hanging from window treatments and other hazardous objects." Rule 290-2-3-.12(8) governs table space: "There shall be table space provided for each child who is able to sit at a table unassisted. An appropriately sized chair or bench shall be provided for each child who is not an infant and who is able to use a chair or bench." Both are per-child physical standards, not group caps — but in a modest house they set the real limit on how many children can nap or eat at once, and an inspector measures them with a tape.
Hawaii	6 children maximum at any one time (HAR §17-891.1-18(a)). The home never exceeds six regardless of how many adults are present; a second qualifying adult only raises the under-18-months sub-limit from two to four (§17-891.1-18(b)) — it does not raise the total above six.
Idaho	NO OPERATIVE STATEWIDE GROUP-SIZE CAP. This is a trap in the other direction: Idaho DEFINES group size but never limits it. §39-1102(10) defines the term — “‘Group size’ means the maximum number of children in one (1) group or classroom” — and §39-1102(11) and (16) define “mixed age group” and “single age group.” All three definitions were added by the 2025 acts. I then read every remaining section of Title 39 Chapter 11 as it stands on 2026-08-25 (§§39-1101, 1102, 1103, 1104, 1105, 1106, 1107, 1109, 1110, 1110A, 1111, 1112, 1112A, 1113, 1114, 1115, 1116, 1118, 1119) and the phrase “group size” appears in NO section other than the definitions. There is no “maximum group size shall be” sentence anywhere in the chapter. IDAPA 16.06.03 likewise contains no group-size provision. The HB 243 Statement of Purpose explains the design choice: the bill “Recognizes the diverse types of providers by allowing for age-appropriate, community-appropriate and provider-appropriate approaches to ratios of adults to children.” Idaho deliberately regulates the ADULT:CHILD budget, not the size of the room. So the effective ceiling on a group is the product of three independent limits, whichever bites first: 1. THE LICENCE TIER. A home-based group daycare facility is 7–12 children (§39-1102(9)). Above 12 you are a daycare center (§39-1102(4)) with a different fee and, in most Idaho cities, a conditional use permit. 2. THE 12-POINT BUDGET per staff member (§39-1109(4)(a)) — which for an all-infant group means six children per staff, half the licence tier. 3. THE FIRE OFFICIAL’S OCCUPANT LOAD, computed only over “those areas used for daycare purposes” (IDAPA 16.06.03.361.01), plus the two-exit and basement/upper-story egress rules of IDAPA 360.03. A few size-triggered thresholds do exist in the fire rules and are worth knowing because they mark where a home operation becomes a building project: IDAPA 362.04, “Each daycare facility over three thousand (3,000) square feet is required to have additional fire extinguishers as approved by the local fire official”; 362.05, “Each daycare facility with over fifty (50) children, must have an approved fire alarm system installed”; 361.02, facilities with an occupancy load of fifty or more must have exit doors that “swing in the direction of egress” and panic hardware on latched room exit doors; 362.07, automatic sprinklers required “in all daycare facilities greater than twenty thousand (20,000) square feet in area or when the number of children under the age of eighteen (18) months exceeds one hundred (100).” None of these can be reached by a 7–12-child home. LOCAL SPACE STANDARDS CAN CAP YOU BELOW THE STATE NUMBERS. Boise, for example, requires “Minimum 100 sq ft outdoor play area per child” and “Minimum 35 sq ft indoor floor area per child” for in-home daycare at every size tier (cityofboise.org, Requirements for Child Daycare, read 2026-08-25). Twelve children in Boise therefore implies 1,200 sq ft of outdoor play area and 420 sq ft of indoor care area — a real constraint that no state rule imposes. Check the city before you promise a parent a slot.
Illinois	THE SHORT ANSWER IS THAT ILLINOIS DID NOT ENACT A GROUP-SIZE RULE FOR FAMILY CHILD CARE, AND YOU SHOULD NOT LET ANYONE SELL YOU ONE. In a licensed Illinois day care home and in a licensed Illinois group day care home there is no maximum "group" that is smaller than, or legally distinct from, the licensed capacity. There is no rule that says a caregiver may serve twelve children but must divide them into two groups of six; there is no rule that says infants must be kept in a group of no more than four while older children form a separate group; there is no per-room, per-class or per-group ceiling of any kind. What Illinois enacted instead is a single section in each rule, headed "Number and Ages of Children Served", that fixes one total for the home and then nests age sub-limits inside that total and ties the whole structure to how many qualified adults are physically present. The total, the age bands and the staffing tier are one rule, not three, and they live in one section: Section 2007.13 for a day care home and Section 2009.65 for a group day care home. If a consultant, a template licensing packet or a national "child care regulations" database hands you an Illinois "maximum group size" number, they have almost certainly imported it from the Illinois DAY CARE CENTER rule, which does contain a real group-size column, and it does not apply to your house. The proof of both halves of that answer is set out below, and before any of it you need to fix the citation you were given, because the Parts you were told to read no longer contain any rules at all. FIRST, THE CITATION. As the JCAR index of Title 89 stands today, the entry reads "PART 406 LICENSING STANDARDS FOR DAY CARE HOMES (TRANSFERRED)", and the only text left under it is a source note whose final clause reads "transferred to 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2007 (Illinois Department of Early Childhood) pursuant to P.A. 103-594 at 50 Ill. Reg. 9832". The companion entry reads "PART 408 LICENSING STANDARDS FOR GROUP DAY CARE HOMES (TRANSFERRED)", ending "transferred to 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2009 (Illinois Department of Early Childhood) pursuant to P.A. 103-594 at 50 Ill. Reg. 9838". Neither Part 406 nor Part 408 has an operative sentence in it any more. The live text sits in TITLE 23: EDUCATION AND CULTURAL RESOURCES, SUBTITLE A: EDUCATION, CHAPTER XI: DEPARTMENT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD, as PART 2007 LICENSING STANDARDS FOR DAY CARE HOMES and PART 2009 LICENSING STANDARDS FOR GROUP DAY CARE HOMES, and the SOURCE line at the head of Part 2007 reads in full "SOURCE: Transferred from the Department of Children and Family Services (89 Ill. Adm. Code 406) to the Department of Early Childhood (23 Ill. Adm. Code 2007) pursuant to P.A. 103-0594, and recodified at 50 Ill. Reg. 9917", with the parallel line at Part 2009 citing 89 Ill. Adm. Code 408 and 50 Ill. Reg. 10183. Every individual section closes with the same recodification parenthetical, so Section 2007.13 ends "(Recodified from the Department of Children and Family Services (89 Ill. Adm. Code 406) pursuant to P.A. 103-0594, at 50 Ill. Reg. 9917)" and Section 2009.65 ends "(Source: Recodified from 89 Ill. Adm. Code 408 (Department of Children and Family Services) pursuant to P.A. 103-0594, at 50 Ill. Reg. 10183)". Public Act 103-0594 was effective 25 June 2024 and the Chapter XI index of rules in effect now serves Parts 2005 through 2010 to the Department of Early Childhood, Part 2008 being LICENSING STANDARDS FOR DAY CARE CENTERS. On top of that, Public Act 104-0480, effective 7/1/2026, rewrote the definitions in the Child Care Act of 1969: 225 ILCS 10/2.18 now reads "Sec. 2.18. 'Early care and education homes' means family homes which receive more than 3 up to a maximum of 12 children for less than 24 hours per day. The number counted includes the family's natural or adopted children and all other persons under the age of 12. The term does not include locations that receive only children from a single household", and 225 ILCS 10/2.20 now reads "Sec. 2.20. 'Group early care and education home' means a family home which receives more than 3 up to a maximum of 16 children for less than 24 hours per day. The number counted includes the family's natural or adopted children and all other persons under the age of 12". The statutory ceilings of 12 and 16 did not move; the statutory NAMES did. So the statute now calls you an early care and education home while the rule you will be inspected against still says "day care home", and neither instrument, old name or new, contains the words "group size" anywhere in the family-home context. SECOND, THE ACTUAL TEXT FOR A DAY CARE HOME, QUOTED SO YOU CAN SEE THAT NO GROUP LIMIT EXISTS INSIDE IT. Section 2007.13(a) opens: "The maximum number of children under the age of 12 cared for in a day care home by a caregiver alone shall be 8. The maximum number includes the caregiver's own children, related children and unrelated children under age 12 living in the home." Subsection (b), headed "A Caregiver Alone", then says a caregiver alone may care for "A mixed age group consisting of: A) Up to 8 children under the age of 12, of which B) Up to 5 children may be under the age of 5, of which C) Up to 3 children may be under 24 months of age", or in the alternative "A mixed age group consisting of: A) Up to 8 children under the age of 12, of which B) Up to 6 children may be under the age of 5, of which C) Up to 2 children may be under 30 months of age", or "A school age group consisting of 8 school age children, as defined in Section 2007.2". Read the grammar: the words are "of which". The five-under-five figure is a SUBSET of the eight, and the three-under-24-months figure is a subset of the five. Nothing in that structure creates a second, smaller unit of children that must be kept apart. The rule is a nested set of ceilings on the one attendance figure, and Section 2007.2 defines "Attendance" as "the total number of children under the age of 12 present at any one time" — one number, for the whole house, at any one instant. Section 2007.2 also defines "School age" as "children from 6 to 12 years of age and 5 year olds who are in full-day kindergarten", which is the definition that governs the school-age groupings. THIRD, WHERE THE AGE SUB-LIMITS ACTUALLY BITE, AND WHAT ILLINOIS DID NOT WRITE ABOUT INFANTS. The finest age bands in the day care home rule are twenty-four months and thirty months. There is no band at twelve months, none at fifteen months, none at six weeks, and no separate infant rule anywhere in Part 2007 that caps the number of babies. Section 2007.22 is titled "Children Under 30 Months of Age", and an applicant who assumes it hides a numeric infant cap will be wrong: it is a practice section about safe sleep, positioning, feeding and hygiene — "To minimize the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, children shall be placed on their backs when put down to sleep", "No infant shall be put to sleep on a sofa, soft mattress, car seat or swing", "Bottles shall never be warmed or defrosted in a microwave oven" — and it contains no number of children at all. So if you are asked "how many children under 2 may an Illinois family child care provider serve", the correct, citable answer is that Illinois does not regulate "under 2": it regulates under 24 months and under 30 months, and in a day care home the answer is a maximum of THREE children under 24 months when the caregiver is alone and takes the (b)(1) grouping, or TWO children under 30 months if she takes the (b)(2) grouping, which is a different and slightly narrower band than "under 2". Anyone who publishes an Illinois "under 12 months" or "infant" limit for a day care home has invented it. FOURTH, HOW A SECOND ADULT CHANGES THE NUMBERS, AND EXACTLY WHAT THAT PERSON MUST BE. This is the part the trade press gets wrong most often, because Illinois distinguishes an assistant UNDER 18 from an assistant 18 OR OLDER and gives them different consequences. Section 2007.13(c), "Caregiver and an Assistant under 18 Years of Age", provides that such a pair "may care for: A) One of the groupings in subsection (b) and 4 additional children who are attending school full-time; or B) A total of 8 children under 5 years of age, of which up to 5 children may be under 24 months of age." Section 2007.13(d), "A Caregiver and an Assistant 18 Years of Age or Older", provides that they may care for "A) The groupings in subsection (b), and 4 additional children who are attending school full-time; or B) Eight children under 5 years of age, of which up to 5 children may be under 24 months of age, and 4 additional children who are attending school full-time." Compare (c)(1)(B) with (d)(1)(B) word for word: the under-18 pathway gives you eight children under five with up to five under 24 months and STOPS there, while the 18-or-older pathway gives you the same eight plus the four full-time school-age children on top, for twelve. That single trailing clause, "and 4 additional children who are attending school full-time", is worth four paying places and it is the only thing the adult assistant's age buys you. Both (c)(2) and (d)(2) add the same condition on the school-age addendum: "When a licensee or permitholder has been granted the extended 4 school-age capacity addendum in writing, a caregiver's own full-time school age children shall be counted in the additional 4 school-age children provided that, when there are more than 8 children in care, a qualified assistant is present." The addendum must be in writing; assume nothing informal. Subsections (c)(3) and (d)(3) then restrict when those four extra children may be present: "Care provided for the additional before and after school children is limited to children who attend school full-time and to before and/or after school, holidays, weekends, during unforeseen school closings, when the provider's own children come home sick, and during the summer." You may not park four school-age children in the home on a random Tuesday morning in October. FIFTH, WHAT THE ASSISTANT MUST BE QUALIFIED AS. Section 2007.10, "Qualifications for Assistants", sets it out: "Assistants shall have passed the background check in Section 2007.9(a)", which routes to 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2010 (Background Checks); "Assistants shall be at least 14 years of age and at least 5 years older than the oldest child they supervise. Minor assistants shall be employed in accordance with 56 Ill. Adm. Code 250 (Illinois Child Labor Law)"; "Assistants under age 18 shall work under the direct personal supervision of the caregiver at all times. Direct personal supervision means the caregiver maintains audible or visual contact with the assistant and children on the premises at all times"; "An assistant 18 years of age or older may accompany children playing outdoors, and may transport children, if the assistant possesses a valid driver's license for the vehicle classification that is being used to transport children and insurance"; and "Assistants shall provide medical evidence as required by Section 2007.24(i) that they are free of reportable communicable disease and physical or mental conditions that could interfere with child care responsibilities." Two traps follow from that text. The five-year rule is relative to the OLDEST CHILD SUPERVISED, so a 14-year-old assistant cannot lawfully supervise your nine-year-olds. And an assistant under 18 can never be left with the children, because the caregiver must keep audible or visual contact with the assistant AND the children at all times, which means the under-18 assistant is an extra pair of hands and never a relief adult. An assistant is also not a substitute: Section 2007.11 says "A substitute caregiver shall be at least 18 years of age", that a substitute "may be used in the home up to 25 child care hours per month and for an additional period of up to 2 weeks in a 12 month period", and that "A person who functions as a substitute caregiver on a regular or scheduled basis shall be qualified as a caregiver in accordance with Section 2007.9." Section 2007.9(i) is the one that keeps you at home: "The licensee shall be present in the home when day care children are in attendance unless a qualified substitute caregiver per Section 2007.11 is present." Section 2007.9(k) sets the floor for the caregiver herself: "The caregivers in a day care home shall be at least 18 years of age." SIXTH, THE GROUP DAY CARE HOME, WHERE THE NUMBERS ARE BIGGER AND STILL NOT A GROUP RULE. Section 2009.65 opens with a single orienting sentence — "Appendix H includes a chart of the number and ages of children who can be served" — and then reproduces the same architecture. Subsection (a)(1): "The maximum number of children under the age of 12 cared for in a group day care home by a caregiver alone shall be 8 except when all the children are school age. The maximum number includes the caregiver's own children, related children and unrelated children under age 12 living in the home. When determining capacity, the home must meet square footage requirements listed in Section 2009.30(c)." Subsection (a)(2) allows a caregiver alone four groupings: "Up to 8 children under 12 years of age, of which up to 5 children may be under 5 years of age, of which up to 3 children may be under 24 months"; or "Up to 8 children under 12 years of age, of which up to 6 children may be under 5 years of age, of which up to 2 children may be under 30 months"; or "Up to 8 pre-school children if no child is under age 3"; or "Up to 12 school age children as defined by Section 2009.5". Subsection (b) is the one that matters commercially: "The maximum number of children under the age of 12 cared for in a group day care home by a caregiver and one assistant 18 years of age or older who meets the qualifications listed in Section 2009.50 shall be 12", and the permitted groupings are "12 children between 3 and 6 years of age. The assistant must be present when more than 8 such children are present", or "A mixed age group consisting of: A) No more than 12 children under 12 years of age of which B) No more than 6 children may be under 30 months of age, of which C) No more than 4 children may be under 15 months of age." That under-15-months clause is the ONLY sub-limit anywhere in Illinois family child care that reaches below 24 months, and it is still not an infant group size; it is a nested subset of the twelve. Subsection (c), "Extended Capacity", says "A caregiver and two assistants who meet the qualifications in Section 2009.50 may care for four additional children, for a total capacity of up to 16 children", subject to "A caregiver and two assistants shall be present at all times when there are more than 12 children in the home"; the four extra may be "four additional school-age children" where the second assistant is part-time, or, "When a caregiver and two adult assistants (age 18 and older) who meet the requirements listed in Section 2009.50 are present, care may be provided for two additional children who are 30 months of age or older, as well as two additional children who are attending school full-time", with the express condition "Both adult assistants shall be present at all times when providing care for two additional children who are 30 months of age or older", and the closing cap "The total capacity of the group home with an approved extended capacity shall not exceed 16 children." Appendix H, "Chart of Number and Ages of Children Served", is the same content in tabular form and its column headings are "Caregiver Alone", "Caregiver & Assistant (Assistant must be 18 or older)", "Extended Capacity (2 Assistants must be present)" and "Total" — note that the last column is headed Total, not Group. SEVENTH, WHAT THE GROUP-HOME ASSISTANT AND CAREGIVER MUST BE QUALIFIED AS, WHICH IS NOT THE SAME AS IN A DAY CARE HOME. Section 2009.50 provides that "Part-time assistants shall be at least 14 years of age and 5 years older than the oldest child they supervise", that "Full-time assistants shall be at least 18 years of age", that "Assistants under age 18 shall work under the direct, personal supervision of the caregiver at all times", and that assistants "shall provide medical evidence that they are free of reportable communicable disease... The medical report shall be valid for 3 years." Because Section 2009.65(b) requires the assistant to be "18 years of age or older who meets the qualifications listed in Section 2009.50", a part-time 14-to-17-year-old assistant cannot unlock the jump from eight to twelve; only a full-time adult assistant can, and the extended sixteen requires two assistants of whom at least one, and for the two extra 30-month-old-plus children both, must be adults. The caregiver standard is materially higher than in a day care home: Section 2009.45 requires that "The caregivers in a group day care home shall be at least 21 years of age", that "The caregivers shall have a high school diploma or equivalency certificate", and that the caregiver have achieved one of "One year (1560 clock hours) child development experience in a licensed day care home, nursery school, kindergarten, or licensed day care center plus 6 semester or equivalent quarter hours in courses related directly to child care and/or child development from an accredited college or university"; "One year (30 semester hours or 45 quarter hours) of credit from an accredited college or university with 6 semester or equivalent quarter hours related directly to child care and/or child development"; or "Completion of a credentialing program approved in accordance with Appendix F". Section 2009.55(b) then sets a different substitute floor than the day care home rule: "A substitute caregiver shall be at least 21 years of age." And Section 2009.35(k) closes the loophole that most often ends an inspection badly: "Persons, including members of the household, counted in the staff-to-child ratio required by Section 2009.65 must be present, awake and free from responsibilities other than those directly related to the care and supervision of children when children are present, except as allowed by Section 2009.115 for night care. Responsibilities that are directly related to the care and supervision of children may include light housekeeping to maintain the areas wherein child care is provided." A spouse asleep upstairs, or working a remote job in the next room, is not an assistant and does not raise your number. EIGHTH, THE CONTRAST THAT EXPLAINS WHERE THE FALSE "ILLINOIS GROUP SIZE" NUMBERS COME FROM. Illinois DOES impose maximum group size — on day care CENTERS, in a different Part. Section 2008.190, "Grouping and Staffing", states "The group sizes and ratio of child care staff to children present at any one time shall be as follows", and then prints a three-column table whose headings are "AGE OF CHILDREN", "STAFF/CHILD RATIO" and "MAXIMUM GROUP SIZE", giving infants 6 weeks through 14 months a 1 to 4 ratio and a maximum group of 12, toddlers 15 through 23 months 1 to 5 and 15, two-year-olds 1 to 8 and 16, three-year-olds 1 to 10 and 20, four-year-olds 1 to 10 and 20, five-year-old preschoolers 1 to 20 and 20, and school-age with kindergartners present 1 to 20 and 30, with the exception at subsection (b) that "An early childhood teacher aided by an early childhood assistant may supervise a group of up to 30 children if all of the children are at least five years of age" and the mixing rule at subsection (c) that "Whenever children of different ages are combined... the staff/child ratio and maximum group size shall be based on the age of the youngest child in the group." That table is a real group-size rule, it uses the phrase in terms, and it belongs to 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2008, recodified from 89 Ill. Adm. Code 407. It has no application to a day care home or a group day care home. When a template, a national comparison chart or a "start a daycare in Illinois" course tells you that Illinois caps your infant group at four or your toddler group at twelve, you are looking at Section 2008.190 misfiled under the wrong facility type, and building your business plan on it will either cost you paying places you were entitled to fill or, worse, put you over capacity on a band the home rule actually does police. NINTH, THE THINGS THAT DO CONSTRAIN YOUR NUMBERS, SO YOU KNOW WHAT TO PLAN AGAINST INSTEAD OF A PHANTOM GROUP LIMIT. Your own children count: both Section 2007.13(a) and Section 2009.65(a)(1) say the maximum "includes the caregiver's own children, related children and unrelated children under age 12 living in the home". Home-schooled children in the house count: Section 2007.13(f) says "Any children under age 12 living in the home who are receiving home schooling shall be counted in the maximum of 8 children in subsections (b), (c), and (d), unless another parent or caregiver is providing the schooling apart from the day care area and the caregiver has no responsibility for care or supervision or schooling of the children during the hours home day care is provided." Floor area constrains you, and it constrains a group home harder: Section 2007.8(k) triggers only above eight — "When the licensed capacity of the home exceeds 8 children, there shall be: 1) A minimum of 35 square feet of floor space per each child in care; and 2) An additional 20 square feet of floor space for each child under 30 months of age when the play area is the same as the sleep area" — whereas Section 2009.30(c) applies the same 35 and 20 square feet with no threshold at all, and Section 2009.30(m) adds "There shall be a minimum of 75 square feet of outdoor space per child for the total number of children using the area at any one time", while Section 2009.30(l) requires "one toilet for each 10 persons or portion thereof who are present", counting caregivers, assistants and household members, not just children. A child with a disability is counted at the age he functions at, not his birthday: Section 2007.20(c) and Section 2009.100(d) both provide that "In determining license capacity, children who have special needs due to physical, mental, and/or emotional disabilities shall be considered at the age level at which they function", with the functional level set by the supervising agency or the Department. Night care has its own ceiling, and note the drafting quirk: Section 2007.13(e) says "The maximum number of children receiving night care shall be 8 children and the groupings shall be consistent with subsections (b) and (c)" — it cites (b) and (c), NOT (d), so do not assume the adult-assistant plus-four school-age structure carries into overnight care; Section 2009.65(d) sets the group-home night maximum at 12 "and groupings shall be consistent with subsections (a) and (b)", again excluding the extended-capacity subsection (c). One extra child is forgiven on an unforeseen school-closing day and only then: Section 2007.13(g) permits "one additional school-age child... as long as the total number of children under age 12 in the home does not exceed the maximum of 12 children", with a record of "the dates, names and ages of the children for whom this care was provided", and Section 2009.65(e) is identical with a sixteen-child ceiling. If a sibling arrival would break an age band, you do not simply absorb it: Section 2007.13(h) and Section 2009.65(f) let you submit a written transition plan to the licensing representative, approvable only where "The licensee is not currently operating under a transition plan and is in full compliance with all the licensing standards", "At least one of the siblings has been in care for 30 days or more", and "The transition plan will bring the home back into compliance with the established age groupings within 6 months after the date the plan is approved". Finally, the numbers you are actually allowed to serve are the ones printed on your licence, not the ones in the rule: Section 2007.6(c) states that "The number and age of children under age 12 cared for in the day care home at any one time shall be in compliance with provision in Section 2007.13. Increases in the license capacity or the ages of children served shall be with written approval of the supervising agency", and Section 2007.6(d) adds that "The age limits specified on the license shall be observed, unless the licensee has submitted a transition plan to the Department in accordance with Section 2007.13(h)... and the Department has approved the plan". Being under the regulatory maximum is no defence if you are over the number on your own certificate. SO WRITE IT DOWN THIS WAY WHEN YOU BRIEF A LANDLORD, AN INSURER OR AN ACCOUNTANT: Illinois family child care has a licensed capacity, nested age sub-limits inside that capacity, and a staffing tier that unlocks the higher tiers of it — and it has no maximum group size. The sentence "Illinois limits group size in a day care home to N" is not in 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2007, not in 23 Ill. Adm. Code 2009, not in the emptied Parts 406 and 408, and not in the Child Care Act of 1969. Publishing such a sentence would be inventing a rule that Illinois never enacted, and the number a reader would plan against would be somebody else's — the day care centre table at Section 2008.190.
Indiana	Indiana does not regulate "group size" the way most states do. There is no rule anywhere in 470 IAC 3-1.1 that says a room may hold only so many children, and no separate group-size table sitting beside the ratio table. What Indiana does instead is stack THREE INDEPENDENT CEILINGS on top of each other, and you must satisfy all three at every moment of the day, not the most generous of them. The first is the class ceiling written into your licence — twelve plus three for a Class I home, sixteen for a Class II. The second is a house ceiling that almost nobody outside the licensing office knows about — fifteen children under eleven physically present in the building, INCLUDING YOUR OWN. The third is the child-to-staff ratio, which is not a group-size rule but functions as one because a single caregiver can never hold more than the ratio allows. Adding a caregiver relaxes only the third ceiling. It does nothing to the first two. That is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Indiana family child care: providers hire an assistant expecting the capacity to rise, and it does not. Start with the class ceiling, because it is the number printed on your licence. IC 12-7-2.1-68 provides: "(a) As used in this chapter, 'class I child care home' means a child care home that serves any combination of full-time and part-time children, not to exceed at any one (1) time twelve (12) children plus three (3) children who are enrolled in at least full-day kindergarten. (b) A child: (1) for whom a provider of care in the child care home is a parent, stepparent, guardian, custodian, or other relative and who is at least seven (7) years of age; or (2) who is at least fourteen (14) years of age and does not require child care; shall not be counted in determining whether the child care home is within the limit set forth in subsection (a)." IC 12-7-2.1-69 provides: "(a) As used in this chapter, 'class II child care home' means a child care home that serves more than twelve (12) children but not more than any combination of sixteen (16) full-time and part-time children at any one (1) time," with the identical subsection (b) exclusions. Note the phrase "ANY COMBINATION OF FULL-TIME AND PART-TIME CHILDREN." Indiana counts bodies present at a moment, not enrolments and not full-time equivalents. Two half-day children who overlap for forty minutes are two children for those forty minutes. If you enrol fourteen children on staggered schedules and they collide once a week at 3:15 p.m. when the school-age children arrive, you are over capacity once a week, and over capacity is a licensing violation on the day it is observed. Both those definition sections were relocated on 1 July 2026. If you are looking for them at IC 12-7-2-33.7 and IC 12-7-2-33.8, they are gone: the 2026 Indiana Code prints "IC 12-7-2 Chapter 2. Repealed. Note: This version of chapter repealed by P.L.145-2026, SEC.62," with a Revisor's Note reading "P.L.145-2026 repealed IC 12-7-2 and relocated the chapter to IC 12-7-2.1, effective July 1, 2026." The numbers did not change in the move; the citations did. Use IC 12-7-2.1-68 and IC 12-7-2.1-69 on anything you file after that date. Now the trap, and it is a live one because the administrative rule and the statute disagree in writing. The rule says your three extra seats are for children "enrolled in at least GRADE ONE" and only "during the school year." 470 IAC 3-1.1-7.2(a) reads: "As used in this rule, 'Class I child care home' means a child care home that serves any combination of full-time and part-time children, not to exceed at any one (1) time twelve (12) children plus three (3) children during the school year only who are enrolled in at least grade one (1). The addition of three (3) school aged children may not occur during a break in the school year that exceeds four (4) weeks." The statute says FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN and says nothing about the school year or a four-week break. That statutory wording arrived with P.L.74-2022, SEC.2 — the amendment trail on the predecessor section reads "As added by P.L.136-1993, SEC.3. Amended by P.L.106-1996, SEC.1; P.L.247-2001, SEC.5; P.L.124-2007, SEC.2; P.L.197-2011, SEC.38; P.L.74-2022, SEC.2" — and the rule has not been touched since it was "Readopted filed 11/13/2019, 11:56 a.m.: 20191211-IR-470190490RFA," almost three years before the change. The gap costs money in both directions. A kindergartener in a full-day programme is a lawful thirteenth, fourteenth or fifteenth child under the statute and is not one under the rule. And the "school year only" and "four (4) weeks" restrictions exist only in a rule the legislature has overwritten. The safe operational reading, and the one a consultant will enforce on site, is the rule's; the correct legal reading is the statute's. Get the answer in writing from your licensing consultant before you fill those three seats over a long summer break, and keep the e-mail. The three extra seats are also not free. IC 12-17.2-5-6.3(b) provides that "A class I child care home may serve three (3) school age children under IC 12-7-2.1-68 if the child care home meets the following conditions: (1) Provides at least thirty-five (35) square feet for each child. (2) Maintains the child to staff ratio required under rules adopted by the division for each age group of children in attendance. (3) Has an illuminated exit sign over each required exit or emergency lighting for each required exit." Thirty-five square feet PER CHILD across the areas used for child care, ratio maintained for every age band actually present, and lit exits. If your exits are not signed or emergency-lit, the fifteen-child number is not available to you at all and your ceiling is twelve. Now the ceiling that catches everybody: the fifteen-child house cap. 470 IAC 3-1.1-24 reads, in full: "A maximum of fifteen (15) children who are less than eleven (11) years of age may be present in the Class I child care home at any one (1) time during any part of the day. This number includes the caregiver's own children, related children, unrelated children, and any part-time child care children present." Read the second sentence twice. YOUR OWN CHILDREN COUNT. Related children count. Part-time children count. This is the mirror image of the licensing trigger at IC 12-7-2.1-57, where your own children are expressly excluded, and of the class definitions at IC 12-7-2.1-68(b) and -69(b), where your own children aged seven or over are excluded. Under 470 IAC 3-1.1-24 there is no seven-year-old carve-out and no relative carve-out: the only qualifier is the age band, "less than eleven (11) years of age." If you have three children of your own aged four, seven and nine, you begin every day at three of fifteen. If your assistant caregiver brings her two children to work, FSSA's own interpretive practice counts them as unrelated children — the Interpretative Guide for Child Care Home Rules is explicit that "All the children of the other child care staff are counted just as all other unrelated children." Two more seats gone. The eleven-year threshold in that rule is itself a fossil, and FSSA knows it. The agency's own interpretive guide prints, under section 24, the note: "The eleven years of age is not the threshold; Effective 7-1-07, new statue has defined a child in care as less than 14 years of age unless the child needs care." That is the agency telling you in writing that its own rule text is superseded — and the guide it appears in has been "Effective February 2016" for a decade. In practice the operative counting instruction, drawn from the same guide's assessment method for sections 24 and 36.5, is this: "Children over seven years but less than 14 years must be counted unless the child is the licensee's child, step-child, grandchild, niece or nephew, brother, sister, foster child, or first cousin. Children over 14 that require child care should be counted." That is the sentence a licensing consultant will hold a clipboard against. It aligns with the statute at IC 12-7-2.1-57(c) and IC 12-7-2.1-68(b) rather than with the rule's eleven-year line. Do not build a business plan on either the eleven-year line or the seven-year line without confirming which your consultant applies, because they produce different answers for a licensee's own eight-year-old. Now the ratios, which are set at 470 IAC 3-1.1-36.5 and which govern how many caregivers you need for the children you are permitted to have. Subsection (a) restates the class ceiling: "The maximum capacity in a Class I child care home shall be twelve (12) children at any one (1) time plus three (3) children during the school year who are enrolled in at least Grade 1. The addition of three (3) school age children may not occur during a break in the school year that exceeds four (4) weeks." Subsection (b): "Children shall not be left unattended and shall be supervised at all times." Subsection (c): "Only direct child care providers shall be counted in determining the child to staff ratio." Subsection (d): "The ratio shall include all unrelated children present in the home." Subsection (e) then sets three bands, and the footnotes are the whole game: Infant/Toddler Mixed, birth through twenty-four months — six children to one caregiver, but only if "Two (2) of the six (6) children must be at least sixteen (16) months of age and walking. Otherwise the ratio is 4:1." Mixed Age Groups, birth through six years — ten children to one caregiver, but "No more than three (3) of the ten (10) children may be under sixteen (16) months of age and must be walking." Three years and older, ages three through ten — twelve children to one caregiver. Translate that into the day you will actually run. If every child in your care is under two, your ratio is four to one until you have two children who are at least sixteen months AND walking, at which point it becomes six to one. Sixteen months is not a typo for twelve: a fourteen-month-old walker does not unlock the six. If you run a genuinely mixed room from newborns to six-year-olds, one caregiver holds ten, but no more than three of those ten may be under sixteen months, and the guide adds that those under-sixteen-month children must be walking. If you run an all-preschool-and-school-age room with nobody under three, one caregiver holds twelve — and the agency's threshold note is explicit that this band applies only when "No children under 3 years are present." One two-year-old walking through that room drops you from the twelve-to-one band into the ten-to-one band instantly. That is how mixed ages change the number in Indiana: not by a weighted formula, but by which band the YOUNGEST child in the room puts you in. The interaction between the ratio and the fifteen-child cap is where providers overreach. A Class I licensee with two adult caregivers and twelve preschoolers is fine on ratio — twelve to one is satisfied twice over — but adding a thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth child is only lawful if all three are school-age children within IC 12-7-2.1-68 and the section 6.3(b) conditions are met. Ratio capacity does not create licence capacity. Conversely, a licensee alone with six infants who has satisfied the two-walkers-at-sixteen-months condition is at ratio, at six children, and eleven seats short of her licence — and if she has three children of her own under eleven at home during those hours, her real remaining headroom under 470 IAC 3-1.1-24 is six, not nine. Run all three ceilings, always, and take the lowest. Who counts as staff for ratio purposes is defined narrowly, and this is where money is lost on paper. 470 IAC 3-1.1-7.1 provides that "'child to staff ratio' means the maximum number of children permitted per direct child care provider." 470 IAC 3-1.1-8 defines the term: "'direct child care provider' means any individual who provides child care services to children. This term includes the following: (1) Licensee, when acting as caregiver. (2) Caregiver, assistant caregivers, and student assistants. (3) A volunteer." So a volunteer and a fourteen-year-old student assistant both count toward ratio — but not toward everything. 470 IAC 3-1.1-2 defines "assistant caregiver" as "a person eighteen (18) years of age or older who works in a child care home under the direct supervision of the caregiver," and 470 IAC 3-1.1-20 defines "student assistant" as "an individual fourteen (14) years of age through seventeen (17) years of age who works in a child care home under the direct supervision of the caregiver." 470 IAC 3-1.1-33 then limits what those people may do: "(a) The licensee may be the caregiver for no more than one (1) child care home," and if you operate more than one you must maintain or employ a caregiver at each additional location; "(b) The assistant caregiver shall work under the direct supervision of the caregiver," with written notice to parents when an assistant under twenty-one takes charge; and "(c) Student assistants and volunteers shall work under the direct supervision of a caregiver and shall not be left in charge of a child care home." You may count a sixteen-year-old in your ratio. You may not leave her alone with the children, and if you do, the ratio she was propping up collapses retroactively for the whole period. Two more counting rules from subsection (c) and the agency's threshold guidance that get cited on inspection reports. A caregiver counted in ratio must actually be caring: the guide states that "The caregiver(s) may be engaged in activities such as meal preparation or cleaning up after children's activities. A caregiver should not be engaged with activities unrelated to the care of the children such as mowing the grass or scrubbing the floor. A caregiver engaged in those types of activities may not be counted in the child to staff ratio. A caregiver outside the home while the children are inside the home may not be counted in child/staff ratios." And, flatly: "Providers may not sleep during the time they are counted in child/staff ratios." That last line ends the common family-home arrangement in which the licensee naps while an assistant covers the afternoon and both are counted. Supervision under subsection (b) is enforced at a level of detail that effectively constrains group size in the physical house. The agency's threshold guidance requires that "Children must be in the sight or hearing of the child care staff at all times," that "Sound monitors alone are not acceptable a means of supervision," that "Children must be on the same floor of the home as the caregiver(s)," and that "During mealtimes, children shall remain in the caregiver's line of sight." Sleeping children may be out of the line of vision only if "the doors to the rooms where the children are sleeping remain open and the caregiver visually monitors and checks the children's breathing periodically; children younger than 15 months must be checked every 15 minutes," with the guide adding that "'Open' means the door is completely open not ajar, not ½ way open" and that the provider "must be able to see the rise and fall of the child's chest." A child in grade one or older may be out of direct supervision with written parental permission only "if the child is on the premise and the caregiver physically checks on the child every 15 minutes." The licensee's own children may sleep in their own bedrooms outside observation. In practice these rules mean your usable group is bounded by how many children one adult can see and hear on one floor, which is often smaller than fifteen regardless of what your licence says. IC 12-17.2-5-17.5 puts the same duty in statute: "A licensee shall ensure that a child in the licensee's care is continually supervised by a caregiver." Class II homes are the answer to sixteen children, and they are a building project rather than a staffing decision. 470 IAC 3-1.3-1 provides that "A Class II child care home serves more than twelve (12) children but not more than sixteen (16) full-time and part-time children at any one (1) time," and the licensee otherwise complies with the child care home rules, with the statute prevailing where the two conflict. IC 12-17.2-5-6.5 sets the price of those four extra seats: all child care services on the first story unless the Indiana building code's exceptions are met; a smoke detection system "hard wired to the building's electrical system" and "wired in a manner that activates all of the detector devices in the building when one (1) detector device is activated"; "a fire extinguisher in each room that is used to provide child care services"; the exit requirements for an E-3 building occupancy classification plus the illumination requirements of section 6.3(b)(3); "a minimum of thirty-five (35) square feet for each child"; fire drills under article 37 of the Indiana fire prevention code; application "before July 1, 1996, or after June 30, 2001"; compliance with the class II rules; and the division's safe sleeping course. Note the thirty-five square feet: at sixteen children that is at least 560 square feet of child care area, and the same thirty-five-square-foot figure drives the fire occupant load calculation. Note also that the ratio bands at 470 IAC 3-1.1-36.5(e) do not change for a Class II home. Sixteen three-to-ten-year-olds still require two direct child care providers, because twelve to one is the widest band Indiana offers. Exceeding any of these ceilings is not treated as a paperwork correction. IC 12-17.2-5-7.5(b) provides that a Class I licensee who "at any time serves a number of children greater than the number allowed under IC 12-7-2.1-68 ... is subject to sanctions under section 33 of this chapter, a civil penalty under section 34 of this chapter, and the criminal penalty set forth in section 35 of this chapter," and subsection (c) says the same of a Class II licensee who exceeds IC 12-7-2.1-69 "or fails to comply with the requirements for class II child care homes set forth in section 6.5." Section 34 permits "a civil penalty of not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000) for the violation of this article." Section 35: "A person who knowingly or intentionally violates this chapter commits a Class B misdemeanor." FSSA's own guide states the enforcement posture without hedging: "Over capacity and non-compliance with child/staff ratios are always cited. Repeat citations may result in probation or revocation of a license." ALWAYS CITED. There is no technical-assistance grace for a capacity or ratio finding in Indiana; the consultant writes it up, and the report is published on the state's inspection-report portal where parents read it. Two structural points that change the arithmetic before you ever count a child. First, infants. IC 12-7-2.1-57(a) makes a residential structure a licensable child care home at "at least eight (8) children, OR AT LEAST FOUR (4) CHILDREN UNDER TWELVE (12) MONTHS OF AGE" — so four unrelated infants triggers licensure by itself, whatever your total. 470 IAC 3-1.1-10 defines "infant" as "a child from birth to twelve (12) months of age" and 470 IAC 3-1.1-21 defines "toddler" as "a child from twelve (12) months of age through twenty-four (24) months of age," and a licensee serving either group must additionally meet the whole of 470 IAC 3-1.2, which provides at section 1 that "A licensee who provides child care services for infants or toddlers shall meet all the requirements of this rule. If there is any difference in requirements, the specific information contained in this rule shall prevail." Second, vouchers. If you take CCDF money you do not escape the home group-size arithmetic by staying unlicensed. IC 12-17.2-3.5-5.5(b) provides that a provider caring for "not more than sixteen (16) children at a facility where the provider operates a child care program shall maintain: (A) a ratio of children to caregivers in the same proportions as specified in the child to staff ratio requirements; and (B) the same group sizes as specified in the group size requirements; that apply to a child care home under IC 12-17.2-5," and above sixteen children the centre requirements under IC 12-17.2-4 apply instead. IC 12-17.2-3.5-1(a) makes that chapter applicable "to all child care providers regardless of whether a provider is required to be licensed or registered under this article." A legally licensed exempt provider with seven children — lawfully unlicensed since P.L.134-2024 raised the trigger to eight, effective 1 July 2024 — is nonetheless bound to the home ratios the moment a voucher child walks in. There is one lane in Indiana with NO group-size ceiling at all, and you should know it exists before you conclude that fifteen is the state's answer. A registered child care ministry under IC 12-17.2-6 is exempt from licensure, and the rule that governs it, 470 IAC 3-4.5, contains exactly six sections — definitions, registration, water supply and plumbing and sewage disposal, buildings and grounds and equipment, food service sanitation, and general sanitation. There is no ratio, no group size, no capacity limit and no supervision standard anywhere in it, and FSSA's own Interpretative Guide for Unlicensed Registered Child Care Ministries, built around the ministry sanitation checklist, contains none either. The only headcount constraint on a registered ministry is the fire occupant load computed under IC 12-17.2-6-5, "determined by dividing the total square footage of the area used by the child care ministry by thirty-five (35) and rounding any result that is not a whole number up to the next whole number," which at fifty or more triggers either a compliant fire alarm system or a written notice to every parent that the ministry "does not have the same level of fire safety protection as a licensed child care center." If a competitor down the road is running forty children with three staff, that is why, and it is lawful. To put the whole thing on one line for the day you are counting heads: a Class I licensee may have twelve children plus three full-day-kindergarten or older school children present at any one time, never more than fifteen children under eleven in the building counting her own, staffed at four to one for children under two (six to one once two of them are at least sixteen months and walking), ten to one for a birth-to-six mixed group with at most three under sixteen months, and twelve to one only when no child under three is present; a Class II licensee may have sixteen, on the same ratios, in a building with hard-wired interconnected smoke detection, an extinguisher in every care room, E-3 exits, lit exits and thirty-five square feet per child. Every other number you will be told — six, twelve, sixteen, "eight plus two" — belongs to a different state or a repealed Indiana rule.
Iowa	Iowa sets no group-size limit distinct from capacity. There is no rule in 441 IAC Chapter 110 dividing children into groups, no per-room maximum, and no requirement to separate age bands; the only numeric ceilings are the category totals (441 IAC 110.13(1), 110.14(1), 110.15(1)) and the number printed on the certificate, which 441 IAC 110.6(1) makes binding: 'no greater number of children shall be received for care at any one time than the number authorized on the registration certificate.' Three things do the work a group-size rule would do elsewhere. (1) THE AGE SUB-CAPS — at most 4 children aged 24 months or under in categories A and B (3 of them 12 months or under), at most 6 under-24-month-olds in category C with two providers (441 IAC 110.13(1)'b', 110.14(1)'b', 110.15(1)'b'). (2) THE SECOND-ADULT TRIGGERS — an approved assistant aged 14+ above 8 children for more than two hours in category B (110.14(1)'e'); both providers above 8 children, and whenever four infants under 12 months are in care, in category C (110.15(1)'b','e'). (3) THE SPACE DIVISOR — 35 square feet of child-use indoor floor space and 50 square feet of outdoor space per child in categories B and C (110.14(3)'a', 110.15(3)'a'), which under Iowa Code 237A.3A(3)'b' caps authorised capacity below the category maximum whenever the house is small. Category A is exempt from the square-footage rule entirely. An emergency school closing is the one lawful way to exceed the ordinary total: up to 8 in category A, 12 in category B, 16 in category C (110.13(1)'d', 110.14(1)'d', 110.15(1)'d'), and only where each parent has given prior written approval, each extra child is one who normally attends under two hours or would otherwise be unattended or is a sibling of an enrolled child, and the provider keeps 'a written record including the date of the emergency school closing, the reason for the closing, and the number of children in care on that date' (110.6(3)). Comm. 143 p. 31 is blunt about the boundary: 'This exception does not apply for in-service days, vacations, conferences, etc.'
Kansas	12 children - and the phrase 'maximum group size' is now the regulation's own term of art, not a paraphrase. K.A.R. 28-4-114(e) is captioned 'Maximum group size for family child care homes' as amended effective August 2, 2024, and each of the three tables is headed 'MAXIMUM GROUP SIZE'. The figure is not a single number; it is a function of (i) how many providers are present and (ii) the age of the youngest child present. THE FOUR ANSWERS, RANKED. (1) ONE PROVIDER, ANY CHILD UNDER 12 MONTHS PRESENT: 10 with zero or one infant, 9 with two, 8 with three (Table I). (2) ONE PROVIDER, YOUNGEST CHILD AT LEAST 2.5: 10. (3) ONE PROVIDER, YOUNGEST AT LEAST 3: 11. (4) ONE PROVIDER, YOUNGEST AT LEAST 5 (all under 10): 12 (Table II). With TWO providers the answer is 12 in every lawful configuration, up to a maximum of five children under twelve months (Table III), and 12 as well where all enrolled children are at least 2.5 and under 10 (K.A.R. 28-4-114(e)(2)). WHEN THE SECOND PROVIDER BECOMES LEGALLY REQUIRED. The footnote to Table III: '*A second provider shall be present when the number of children exceeds the maximum number allowed for one provider. See Table I.' Note the trigger is 'exceeds the maximum number allowed for one provider' - which is the Table I / Table II figure for the mix actually present, not a flat ten. A home with three infants and a lone provider is already at its cap of 8; the eleventh child is not the trigger, the ninth is. WHAT CHANGED AGAINST THE PRIOR ENTRY. The prior entry answered '12 children total (Group Day Care Home, requiring a second qualified provider present unless all children are at least 5 years old); a single-provider Day Care Home is capped at 10.' Three defects. (a) 'Group Day Care Home' is not a separate license any more - K.A.R. 28-4-113(i) makes it a synonym. (b) The 'unless all children are at least 5 years old' carve-out is now only one of three single-provider ladder rungs; a single provider also reaches 10 at 2.5-and-up and 11 at 3-and-up. (c) 'A single-provider Day Care Home is capped at 10' is true only where an infant is present; where the youngest is three, one provider may hold 11, and where the youngest is five, 12. COUNTED INTO THE GROUP SIZE, ALWAYS: the provider's (and any other provider's) related children under 10 (K.A.R. 28-4-114(h)(1),(2)); unrelated children 10-15 receiving care where that age group as a whole exceeds five hours a week (K.A.R. 28-4-114(e)(3)); any resident found to need a guardian or conservator (K.S.A. 75-7719(c)); and any child counted at a developmental rather than chronological age (K.A.R. 28-4-114(f)). OUTSIDE THE GROUP SIZE, BY EXPRESS PERMISSION ONLY: the three narrow 'additional children' allowances at K.A.R. 28-4-114(i) - two part-day preschool/kindergarten children aged 2.5+ for the noon meal between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. on school days; two children aged 5 to under 10 between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. in the defined school-calendar windows; and two visiting children aged 10+ unrelated to the licensee, for not more than two hours a day, only if they are not there to receive care, are visiting the licensee's own child, and are supervised by a provider if they have access to the children in care.
Kentucky	Kentucky sets no separate group-size limit for a certified family child-care home. The certified home is one group and its size is the capacity rule: not more than six unrelated children at any one time and not more than ten children in total counting up to four related children (922 KAR 2:100 Section 10(4)), further capped by whatever maximum number of unrelated children is printed on your certificate (Sections 10(2) and 2(10)(a)2.b.). Inside that single group the only sizing instruments are the assistant thresholds of Section 10(3) - more than four infants including your own or related infants, or more than six children under age six including your own or related children - and the physical constraint of Section 12(12), which requires at least thirty-five square feet per child of indoor area used for child care, furnishings included, bathroom and storage area excluded. Age-banded group sizes do exist in Kentucky, but they live in the centre rule book (922 KAR 2:090 and 922 KAR 2:120), which is what governs a Type II child-care center operating in the licensee's primary residence for seven to twelve children including related children (922 KAR 2:090 Section 2(2)). Overnight and nontraditional-hours care does not create a second, larger group: Section 13(12) regulates the sleeping arrangements rather than the number, and Section 10(5) requires an assistant during the eight-hour respite that follows sixteen consecutive hours of work.
Louisiana	Group size and capacity are the same number in Louisiana, which is unusual and worth stating plainly to applicants who arrive expecting a two-number system. LAC 28:CLXV.309.A.15 is titled 'Group Size' and provides that 'A provider may care for a maximum of six children'; §309.A.2 states the same six as a certification condition; §309.A.16 sets the ratio at 6:1. There is no smaller sub-group requirement, no rule that infants must be separated from preschoolers, no cap on how many children under two may be in the single group, and no square-footage-per-child standard in Bulletin 139 that would bind below six. The physical constraint, such as it is, comes from outside the education rules: the Office of State Fire Marshal must inspect and approve the residence under R.S. 17:407.64(B), and its family child day care standards cover means of egress, smoke detection, extinguishers, heating equipment, window and burglar-bar restrictions, electrical and plumbing systems, sanitation and food storage. A home that cannot satisfy those standards will not be approved for six regardless of what the ratio rule permits. For a licensed early learning centre the group-size question is likewise answered by ratio rather than by a separate group cap: the LDOE ratio sheet for LAC 28:CLXI.1711.C lists only child-to-staff figures by age.
Maine	See capacity & ratios
Maryland	There is no separate group-size concept in COMAR 13A.15. The home is one group and the number is the child capacity printed on the certificate of registration, which may not exceed eight (13A.15.04.03A and D). Inside that eight, no more than four children may be younger than 2 (13A.15.04.03D), no more than two unless OCC has affirmatively approved a higher infant-toddler capacity (13A.15.04.03B), and no more than two at all if the provider also operates an approved educational program (13A.15.04.03E). Residents of the home under 6 are inside the count, and visiting children under 8 who are unaccompanied or cannot be sent home may be counted (13A.15.04.03F). Age group matters as well as number: 'a provider may enroll a child for care at the home only if the child's age group is approved for care, as indicated on the provider's current certificate of registration' (13A.15.04.02), so an eight-child capacity approved for preschoolers does not authorise an infant. Three practical limits sit underneath the number: the room used for care must be approved by the office and have 'sufficient floor area for the number and ages of the children approved for care in the home to allow the children to engage in active play without overcrowding' (13A.15.05.04A(1) and (6)); the outdoor space must be 'ample' and free from dangerous conditions (13A.15.05.05A); and rest furnishings must be individual, with a crib, portable crib or playpen for every child under 12 months (13A.15.05.06B and C). Maryland states no square-foot-per-child figure for family child care. Group size in the true sense appears only if you move to COMAR 13A.18, where 13A.18.08.03 sets maximum group sizes of 6, 9 or 12 depending on age mix.
Massachusetts	Massachusetts does not put a group-size number in a single sentence you can quote, and that is the first thing to understand before you plan a room, hire an assistant or sign a family. The cap that binds you is built from four instruments that have to be read together: the licensed capacity EEC prints on your license under 606 CMR 7.03(2), the multi-age grouping table at 606 CMR 7.10(4), the assistant regime at 606 CMR 7.09(15)(c), and the capacity-counting rule at 606 CMR 7.03(5)(c) that pulls your own children into the count. Miss any one of the four and your arithmetic will be wrong in the direction that costs you money. Start with the instrument that overrides all the others. 606 CMR 7.03(2), "Licensed Capacity," provides: "Programs will be licensed for the maximum number of children who may be in the care of educators at any one time, taking into consideration the size and layout of the physical facility, the number and qualifications of educators, the equipment and resources available to the children, the individual needs and characteristics of the children served, and the building certificate capacity, if applicable. At no time shall a program admit, supervise or provide care for more than the maximum number of children indicated on the license." Two words in that rule do most of the work. "At any one time" means the cap is instantaneous, not daily: if you run a morning cohort and an afternoon cohort, the overlap at handoff is the moment you are measured, and two half-day families whose pickup and drop-off touch will put you over. "At no time shall a program admit, supervise or provide care for more than the maximum number of children indicated on the license" means the licensed number is a hard ceiling that no ratio calculation can lift. Even where the group-size table would permit a larger group, you may not exceed the number on your license without EEC first amending it. The definition at 606 CMR 7.02 says the same thing from the other side: "Licensed Capacity - Determination by the Department of the number of children that a program can care for at any one time under 606 CMR 7.00." For family child care that number is 6, 8 or 10, and nothing else. EEC's Family Child Care Licensing technical assistance sheet on determining capacity states it flatly: "There are no longer separate categories of Family Child Care, i.e. FCCP and LFCC. However, the requirements of experience and additional pre-service training for increased capacity still exist. Family Child Care Educators now will have a license capacity of 6 or 8 or 10. (This is the maximum number of children allowed for that type of care.)" The ceiling of ten also appears in the regulation's own definition at 606 CMR 7.02: "Family Child Care - Temporary custody and care provided in a private residence during part or all of the day for no more than ten children younger than 14 years old or children younger than 16 years old if such children have special needs." Understand that the ten is now purely regulatory. The statutory cap that used to sit in M.G.L. c. 15D, s. 1A, the words ", but the number of children under the age of 16 in a large family child care home shall not exceed 10, including participating children living in the residence," was struck out by SECTION 25 of the fiscal year 2025 General Appropriations Act, St. 2024, c. 140, an outside section captioned "Large Family Child Care Cap." Since then the Legislature imposes no numeric ceiling on a home program at all; EEC does. That is exactly why EEC was able to announce, on June 22, 2026, a Family Child Care Capacity Expansion Pilot to test raising licensed home enrollment from ten to twelve, seating roughly 25 to 30 programs out of about 1,379 identified eligible providers, limited to licensees in good standing already enrolled at ten and licensed at a capacity of ten continuously for at least three years, applications closing June 30, 2026. Unless you were invited and selected into that pilot, your ceiling is ten. And if a commercial licensing directory tells you Massachusetts large family child care homes may serve "up to 12 to 14 children," it is inventing a number that has never existed in Massachusetts law. Now the group-size table itself, which is where the real limits live. 606 CMR 7.10 opens: "The following requirements apply to all programs, including family child care, small group and school age and large group and school age child care. Additional requirements for family child care are found at 606 CMR 7.10(6) and (7). Additional requirements for small group and school age child care are found at 606 CMR 7.10(7) and (8). Additional requirements for large group and school age child care are found at 606 CMR 7.10(8) and (9)." There is no separate family child care ratio table. A family child care home is governed by the Multi-age Grouping provisions at 606 CMR 7.10(4), which begin: "A group of children ranging in age from birth through 13 years (or 16 years, if such children have special needs), may be assigned on an ongoing basis to a single group, provided all provisions of 606 CMR 7.10(4) are met. The Multi-age Grouping ratios and group sizes specified at 606 CMR 7.10(4)(d) through (h) may be used by: (a) family child care and small group and school age child care programs; (b) large group and school age child care programs during the initial two hours and final two hours of the program day, if: 1. the program operates more than seven hours per day, and 2. educators meet the qualifications required of educators in large group and school age child care programs; (c) large group and school age child care programs during the entire program day when approved by the Department." The supporting definition at 606 CMR 7.02 fixes the absolute ceiling of any such group: "Multi-age Grouping - Ten or fewer children from birth through 13 years (or 16 years, if such children have special needs) assigned to a single group." Ten is the maximum size of a multi-age group, and in a family child care home the whole program is one multi-age group, because 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Group - Two or more children who participate in the same activities at the same time and are assigned to the same educator for supervision, at the same time." The five rows of the table at 606 CMR 7.10(4)(d) through (h) are the operative caps and are worth memorising exactly. 606 CMR 7.10(4)(d): group size "six or fewer children," minimum number of educators present "one educator," limits on ages of children "No more than three children younger than two years old, including at least one toddler who is walking independently. Additional children must be older than 24 months." 606 CMR 7.10(4)(e): group size "seven or eight children," "one educator," "No more than three children younger than two years old, including at least one toddler who is walking independently. Additional children must be older than 24 months. All children over capacity of six must be school age." 606 CMR 7.10(4)(f): group size "six or fewer children," "two educators," "No more than six children younger than two years old." 606 CMR 7.10(4)(g): group size "seven - ten children," "two educators," "No more than six children younger than two years old, including no more than three infants." 606 CMR 7.10(4)(h): group size "seven-ten children," "three educators," "No more than six infants. Additional children must be 15 months of age or older." Read those five rows as a decision tree rather than as a list, because that is how a licensor reads them. If you have one educator on the floor, your group may be six, or it may be seven or eight, and the difference is entirely made of school-age children: at seven or eight, "All children over capacity of six must be school age." Massachusetts defines that term narrowly at 606 CMR 7.02: "School Age Child - A kindergarten child, or a child who is attending a public or approved private elementary school," where "Approved Private Elementary School - A program that has documentation of approval by the local education authority pursuant to M.G.L. c. 76, s. 1." A four-year-old is not a school-age child no matter how mature. A five-year-old in half-day kindergarten is, and EEC's technical assistance sheet confirms the useful corollary that "The 5 year old child who may be attending 1/2 day kindergarten can be counted as a school aged child for a FCC provider with a capacity of '8', but is still a participating child." A six-year-old attending a private school that has no local approval under M.G.L. c. 76, s. 1 is not, and that is a genuine and expensive edge case in communities with unaccredited religious schools. The infant and toddler limits inside those rows are stricter than most applicants expect, and the wording is precise enough that it traps people twice. First, "No more than three children younger than two years old" is a headcount of children under 24 months, not of infants; 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Infant - A child who is younger than 15 months old" and "Toddler - A child who is at least 15 months of age, but younger than 33 months old," so a nineteen-month-old is not an infant but is certainly "younger than two years old" and consumes one of your three slots. Second, the qualifying clause "including at least one toddler who is walking independently" means the three cannot all be non-ambulatory. EEC's determining-capacity sheet explains what the words mean operationally: "A FCC Educator with a capacity of '6' can care alone for 3 children under the age of 2 years so long as at least one of the three is 15 months and walking unassisted. (If there are more infants, or more than 3 under 2 years, a second Educator must be present.) 'Walking unassisted' means that the child is capable of walking without holding hands or needing assistance in exiting the home." The reason for the rule is evacuation, which is also why 606 CMR 7.07(15)(b) requires that "Family child care homes must have at least two separate exits to the outside, approved by the Department." Third, and this is the row that quietly costs an enrollment, 606 CMR 7.10(4)(d) and (e) both end with "Additional children must be older than 24 months." Older than 24 months, not "at least" 24 months. A child on their second birthday is 24 months, not older than 24 months, and if you already have three under two you cannot lawfully seat that child in a solo group until the following day. Fourth, at 606 CMR 7.10(4)(h) the phrase is different again: with three educators, "Additional children must be 15 months of age or older," which is an at-least formulation. Do not carry one row's wording into another. Now the assistant regime, which is what actually converts a capacity of ten into ten children on the floor, and where the Massachusetts trap lives. EEC's determining-capacity sheet states the operating rule: "FCC Providers with a capacity of '10' children must work with a second Educator at any time there are more than 6 pre-school aged children. A FCC Educator with a capacity of 10 can care for up to 8 children by her/himself if two of the children are school-aged. The second Educator can be another Provider, a Certified Assistant, or a Regular Assistant." Mass.gov's applicant-facing "Learn about Family Child Care" page says the same: "Up to 8 children: A licensed Family Child Care provider may enroll up to 8 children in their program without an assistant if at least 2 of the children are school age ... Up to 10 children: A licensed Family Child Care provider may enroll up to 10 children in their program if there is an approved assistant working with them." Set that against the statute. M.G.L. c. 15D, s. 1A defines "Large family child care home" and provides, in a sentence the 2024 budget did not touch, that "A large family child care home shall have at least 1 approved assistant when the total number of children participating in child care exceeds 6." The statute says an approved assistant is required above six. The regulation and EEC's own guidance say you may run seven or eight alone if the children above six are school age. Both instruments are in force. EEC licenses and inspects to 606 CMR 7.10(4)(e), and solo capacity-of-eight licenses are ordinary, but the statutory sentence has never been repealed. If your business plan depends on running eight children without paying an assistant, get your licensor's position in writing before you hire, lease or enroll, because the difference between eight solo and eight with an assistant is the whole margin of a home program. The two assistant types are defined at 606 CMR 7.02 and governed at 606 CMR 7.09(15)(c), and they are not interchangeable. "Certified Assistant - A person who holds a certified assistant certificate issued by the Department; who, at minimum, meets the qualifications of a provider licensed to care for six children; and who works with or substitutes for the licensee in a family child care home, depending on his/her level of qualification." "Regular Assistant - A person who holds a regular assistant certificate issued by the Department; does not meet the qualifications of the licensee for whom they are working; and who may replace a licensee or certified assistant on a limited basis in a family child care home as allowed under 606 CMR 7.09(15)(c)2.a." The operative text is 606 CMR 7.09(15)(c): "Assistants. All assistants must demonstrate the ability to implement the provider's curriculum, activities and routines. 1. Certified Assistant. a. An educator who meets the qualifications of the licensee may replace the licensee at any time, provided notice is given to parents in advance, in accordance with 606 CMR 7.08(8)(c). b. An educator who meets the qualifications of a family child care educator licensed to serve six or fewer children may substitute for a provider licensed to care for up to ten children for up to 25 hours in a 12 month period. 2. Regular Assistant. An educator whose qualifications are neither equal to nor greater than the licensee's qualifications may provide care under the general supervision of the licensee. a. A regular assistant may be alone on the premises with up to six children for up to 25 hours in a 12 month period, or up to eight hours in a seven day period, provided s/he is currently certified in first aid and CPR. b. In programs licensed to care for seven or more children, a regular assistant may provide care only under the supervision of a licensee or certified assistant." That block contains three separate ceilings that people routinely conflate. A certified assistant who matches your qualification level may replace you for any length of time, with advance parent notice. A certified assistant qualified only at the six-child level may substitute for a ten-capacity licensee, but only "for up to 25 hours in a 12 month period," which is roughly three working days a year, not a staffing plan. A regular assistant may be alone with up to six children, capped simultaneously at "25 hours in a 12 month period" and "eight hours in a seven day period," and only if currently first aid and CPR certified. Mass.gov restates the same limits on its "Learn about Family Child Care Assistant requirements" page: a regular assistant may "Care for up to 6 children alone in a licensed Family Child Care provider's home for a limited time period (25 hours in 12 months, or 8 hours in 7 days)," while a certified assistant "may provide substitute care for up to 25 hours in a twelve month period" unless certified at the same level as the provider, in which case they "may care for children in that provider's absence for any length of time." The trap that costs money is the annual number. Twenty-five hours in twelve months is your entire budget of solo assistant coverage for the year. A provider who plans vacation, a medical procedure or jury duty around a regular assistant will exhaust that budget in one week and will be operating unlawfully for the rest. The only durable answer is a certified assistant qualified at your own capacity level, which means that person must climb the same 606 CMR 7.09(15)(b) experience ladder you did: for six or fewer children, one year of experience as a parent or the equivalent in child care experience and approved training; for seven or eight children, a Department-approved pre-service training completed within one year prior to application plus "two years of experience as a family child care licensee or certified assistant" or one year plus an additional year in a group setting; for nine or ten children, "a five hour pre-service training approved by the Department" plus "three years of experience as a family child care licensee or certified assistant" or one year plus two additional years in a group setting. M.G.L. c. 15D, s. 8(c) is the statutory source of that ladder, directing that regulations for large family child care homes include "a prerequisite that a provider have at least 3 years of experience in licensed family child care and have completed at least 5 hours of specialized training before licensure as a large family child care provider and at least 10 hours of training each subsequent year." Who may be counted as the second educator is itself restricted. 606 CMR 7.10(3) provides: "(a) For purposes of calculating staff: child ratios, staff shall include only those EEC-qualified persons who are assigned to care for children for specific hours of the day. (b) Volunteers and student interns shall not be included in staff: child ratios unless they are at least 16 years of age (in Small and Large Group and School Age Child Care) or at least 18 years of age (in Family Child Care) and are assigned to the program for at least three months." Your teenage son helping in the afternoon does not lift your group size. 606 CMR 7.09(15)(a) states the floor without exception: "All educators must be at least 18 years of age." And 606 CMR 7.09(15)(e) requires that "All licensees, certified assistants, and any educator who may be alone with children must maintain current certification of training in basic first aid and CPR, in accordance with EEC policy." The count that fills the group is not the count of your enrolled families. 606 CMR 7.03(5)(c) determines which children occupy a slot: "The following children will be considered to be in the care of educators: 1. every child who lives in the family child care home who is younger than a school age child; 2. every child who lives in the family child care home who is home schooled, regardless of age; 3. every child younger than ten years old who lives in the residence and is present for more than three consecutive hours on each of five consecutive days, excluding weekends and holidays; 4. every person younger than 14 years old who does not live in the residence and is present during the time that child care is being provided; 5. during overnight care, every person younger than 18 years old who is present in the home." Your own preschooler occupies a slot whenever they are in the house. Your home-schooled twelve-year-old occupies a slot regardless of age. Your school-age child under ten occupies a slot only when both halves of clause 3 are true, more than three consecutive hours and on each of five consecutive days, which is why EEC's guidance says "A provider's own school aged child/ren who are under the age of 10 years old and home during the summer months do count in a provider's capacity. Provider must adjust enrollment accordingly." Clause 4 is the one that catches people mid-inspection: a visiting thirteen-year-old who lives elsewhere counts for every minute they are present during care hours, even though nobody pays you for them. If you are licensed for eight and your niece drops in after school, you have seven paid slots that day, not eight. Overnight care changes the staffing answer entirely. 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Regular Overnight Care - Care provided to any child care child between the hours of 11:30 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. more than one day per week for more than eight weeks in a 12-month period," "Occasional Overnight Care - Child care provided between the hours of 11:30 P.M. and 6:00 A.M. that is not provided on a regular basis," and "Evening Care - Child care provided between the hours of 8:00 P.M. and 11:30 P.M." 606 CMR 7.11(17)(d)3 then requires that "Whenever regular overnight care is provided for seven to ten child care children two educators must remain on the premises, one of whom must remain awake during the entire overnight shift," and 7.11(17)(d)2 that "The educator must have adequate sleep to ensure alertness while caring for children. As provided at 606 CMR 7.09(7), no educator may regularly care for child care children more than 12 hours in any 24-hour period." Combine that with the counting rule that during overnight care every person under eighteen in the home counts, and a ten-capacity overnight program is a two-adult operation with a smaller usable group than the license number suggests. Supervision rules narrow effective group size further at both ends of the age range. 606 CMR 7.10(5)(a): "Children younger than six months of age at the time of enrollment must be under direct visual supervision at all times, including while napping, during the first six weeks they are in care." 606 CMR 7.10(7)(d), which applies to family child care and small group and school age: "The educator must visually observe napping children at least every 15 minutes. When children are placed in a separate room for naps, the door must remain ajar." 606 CMR 7.10(7)(a): "Except as provided at 606 CMR 7.10(5)(j), children must always be on the same floor level as the educator." That last rule is the quiet killer of two-floor home layouts: your approved activity space may sit on two adjacent floors under 606 CMR 7.07(15)(c)2, but the children may not be on a different floor from you, so a two-floor program with one educator is really a one-floor program at any given moment. The relief at 7.10(5)(j) is age-gated and paperwork-gated: "Children age seven or older may, with written parental consent, participate in activities within the approved indoor space without constant visual supervision by the educator," subject to the educator being aware of location, monitoring at regular intervals, being readily available and being "able to respond immediately to an emergency situation." Outdoors, 606 CMR 7.10(6)(a) permits children five or older to play unaccompanied only if "the outdoor play space is located on the family child care premises of a single family or first floor residence, and is enclosed by a fence at least four feet high," the children "are observed by the caregiver every 15 minutes," "the time unaccompanied by the provider does not exceed one hour," and "the parents have given written permission." Square footage is a group-size constraint applicants discover too late. 606 CMR 7.07(15)(c) requires "a minimum of 150 square feet of approved activity space for one or two children; a minimum of 225 square feet of approved activity space for three to six children; 35 square feet of approved activity space for each child when serving seven to ten children." At ten children that is 350 square feet, and 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Approved Activity Space" as space that "shall include only usable floor space exclusive of hallways, bathrooms, and portions of rooms or areas that contain furniture or equipment suitable only for adult use." Measure before you apply for a capacity increase; the licensor will. If your program is not in a private residence the group-size rules change shape. 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Small Group and School Age Child Care" as "Any program that receives on a regular basis ten or fewer children who are unrelated to their caregivers and are younger than 14 years old, or 16 years, if such children have special needs, during all or part of the day for non-residential care and education outside their own homes, when such services are not provided in a private residence." A small group program uses the same 606 CMR 7.10(4) multi-age table as a home, so its group ceiling is likewise ten, but it carries two additional obligations a home does not. 606 CMR 7.10(8)(c) provides that "Notwithstanding the staff: child ratios provided at 606 CMR 7.10(4), there must always be a second adult trained in the program's health care and emergency procedures immediately available in case of an emergency," and 7.10(8)(b) requires a written, posted staff schedule showing "compliance with at least the minimum educator ratios at all times, including during breaks and planning time." The qualification ladder mirrors family child care at 606 CMR 7.09(16)(a): "At least one educator in each small group and school age child care program must meet the qualifications for a family child care provider for the number of children in care; or 1. be teacher or site coordinator qualified by EEC, if caring for six or fewer children; 2. be lead teacher qualified, or have two years of experience as a teacher or site coordinator if caring of seven or eight children; or 3. have three years of experience as a teacher or site coordinator, or be lead teacher or program administrator qualified, if caring for nine or ten children." Note that 606 CMR 7.09(16)(b) drops the age floor for additional staff to "at least 16 years of age and in high school, or at least 18 years of age," which is lower than the eighteen required in a home. Above ten children outside a residence you are a large group and school age child care program, and the multi-age table stops being your default. 606 CMR 7.10(9)(b) sets the fixed age group maxima: infants up to 15 months old, full or half day, maximum group size 7, ratio "1: 3, one additional educator for four - seven infants," with "At least one Infant/Toddler Teacher, per 606 CMR 7.09(18)(c)2."; toddlers 15 to 33 months, group size 9, ratio "1:4, one additional educator for five - nine toddlers"; preschoolers 33 months to school age, full day, group size 20, ratio 1:10; preschoolers 33 months to school age, half day, group size 24, ratio 1:12; kindergarten, meaning children "attending first grade the following year," group size 30, ratio 1:15; school age, group size 26, ratio 1:13, with "At least one Group Leader, per 606 CMR 7.09(19)(a)2." The mixed age group table at 606 CMR 7.10(9)(c) is the one that answers "how do mixed ages change it": infant/toddler group, maximum size "9; no more than three infants," ratio "1:3; one additional educator for four - nine children"; toddler/preschool group, maximum size 9, ratio "1:5; one additional educator for six - nine children"; preschool/school age group, maximum size "20; maximum age is eight," ratio 1:10; kindergarten/school age group, maximum size 26, ratio 1:13. Mixed is not a free-for-all: 606 CMR 7.02 defines "Mixed Age Group - A group of children within two consecutive age groups, such as Infant/ Toddler, Toddler/Preschool, Preschool/School Age or Kindergarten/School Age," so you may bridge two adjacent bands and no more, and the preschool/school age band is additionally capped at "maximum age is eight," which quietly forbids putting ten-year-olds with four-year-olds in a twenty-child group. A large group program may use the ten-child multi-age table only in the circumstances 606 CMR 7.10(4)(b) and (c) allow: "during the initial two hours and final two hours of the program day, if 1. the program operates more than seven hours per day, and 2. educators meet the qualifications required of educators in large group and school age child care programs," or "during the entire program day when approved by the Department," where the Department may approve "a single full day Multi-age Group when it can demonstrate that a. the developmental needs of every child in the Multi-age Group can be met in that setting; b. the program's physical environment is sufficiently self-contained to allow the benefits of a 'family setting' within a larger, center based program," and may approve additional such groups only after the first "has operated successfully for at least one year." Opening and closing multi-age grouping is what makes an early-morning and late-afternoon staffing plan affordable in a center, and it is limited to programs open more than seven hours. Two provisions bound how far you can bend an age group. 606 CMR 7.10(9)(a)4 permits assigning a child "to fixed age groups outside their chronologically defined age group," but only with parental approval, documented reasons, placement in "the next younger or next older chronologically defined age group," and documented monthly review. 606 CMR 7.10(9)(a)6 then caps it absolutely: "No more than two children outside the chronologically defined age range may be assigned to a fixed age group." That is the rule that stops a preschool room from becoming a de facto toddler room one child at a time. Finally, remember what does not change any of this. Ratios and group sizes are minimums layered under a general duty, stated at 606 CMR 7.10(1): "The licensee must maintain sufficient numbers of qualified staff to promote the health, safety, growth and development of each child. Assignment of staff must take into account the physical environment, requirements of the activities children are engaged in, and the developmental levels and behavioral traits of children in care," and under 7.10(2) the program "must have the number of educators necessary to (a) ensure adequate supervision of the group at all times." A licensor who finds a group at the table maximum but visibly unsupervised will cite 7.10(1), not the table. Variances exist under 606 CMR 7.03(4)(b), but only "upon written request," on "clear and convincing evidence," and "for a specified period of time not to exceed the term of the license." Plan to the table, staff above it, and never let the number of bodies in the house exceed the number printed on your license.
Michigan	Michigan sets no group-size ceiling underneath capacity for homes: the home is one group and the maximum present at one time is the licensed capacity — 6 unrelated children for a family home, 12 for a group home, 7 and 14 with approved increased capacity (R 400.1925(1), (2)) — subject to the 1:6 ratio and the infant sub-caps of R 400.1927 and R 400.1928. For a group home the consequence is arithmetic, not a separate rule: at 1:6, serving 7 to 12 children needs a second adult in ratio at all times. The building can cap you below the legal number: not less than 35 square feet per child of usable indoor floor space excluding bathrooms and storage, and only space with prior department approval for child use may be used at all (R 400.1909(1), (2)), a room counting only if available throughout the hours of operation; an outdoor play area of not less than 400 square feet for a family home and 600 for a group home (R 400.1912(2)), plus at least 2 remotely located exits for every floor level occupied by children (R 400.1947(1)).
Minnesota	There is no group-size limit in Minnesota family child care that is separate from licensed capacity. Nothing in Minn. R. 9502.0300 to 9502.0445 divides children into groups, sets a per-room maximum, or requires age bands to be kept apart. Minn. R. 9502.0367 is titled 'CHILD/ADULT RATIOS; AGE DISTRIBUTION RESTRICTIONS' and its columns are 'Licensed Capacity', 'Adults', 'Total children under school age' and 'Total infants and toddlers' - there is no group column. Anyone drafting a Minnesota 'maximum group size' figure is inventing it. Four instruments do the work that a group-size cap does elsewhere. (1) THE CLASS CEILING, which is binding because the licence says so: Minn. Stat. 142B.10, subd. 14(a)(5) - the licence states 'the maximum number and ages of persons that may receive services from the program' - and Minn. R. 9502.0335, subp. 9(A) - the licence indicates 'the number and age groupings of children who may receive care at any one time'. Ten for Class A, 14 for Class C3, 9 for Class D, and so on. (2) THE AGE-DISTRIBUTION SUB-CAPS inside 9502.0367 - at most 6 under school age on a Class A, of whom at most 3 are infants-plus-toddlers and at most 2 are infants; at most 4 infants on a Class D. These are what actually stop a Minnesota home from becoming an infant room. (3) THE SQUARE-FOOTAGE DIVISOR - Minn. R. 9502.0425, subp. 1: 'A minimum of 35 square feet of usable indoor space is required per child', and subp. 2: 'an outdoor play space of at least 50 square feet per child in attendance'. The opening words of subp. 1 make it a capacity rule, not a comfort rule: 'The licensed capacity of the day care residence must be limited by the amount of usable indoor space available to children.' (4) THE SIGHT-OR-HEARING SUPERVISION STANDARD - Minn. R. 9502.0315, subp. 29a, quoted in 'home_type_definition'. A single caregiver who cannot see or hear every infant, toddler and preschooler at once is out of compliance regardless of how the numbers add up. Two structural limits are worth knowing because they read like group-size rules and are not. Minn. R. 9502.0425, subp. 6, 'Vertical separations': 'For group family day care homes with a licensed capacity of more than ten children, a 1-3/4 inch solid wood core door or a door and frame with at least a 20-minute fire protection rating, must be provided whenever more than two floors of the residence are connected. These doors must be equipped with self-closing devices.' And Minn. R. 9502.0335, subp. 2(C) makes a fire marshal inspection a CONDITION OF LICENSURE for, among others, 'new applicants for licensure with a licensed capacity of more than ten' and 'day care residences which use the basement for child care' and 'residences in mixed or multiple occupancy buildings'. Crossing ten children is therefore a building event as well as a paperwork event. One behaviour-guidance rule does use the word 'group', and it is a time limit rather than a size limit: Minn. R. 9502.0395, subp. 2(F) - 'A child shall not be separated from the group for a period longer than ten minutes' - with (E) 'An infant shall not be separated from the group for disciplinary reasons' and (G) requiring any separation area to be 'well-lighted, free from hazards, ventilated, and open to the view of caregivers' and (H) 'No child shall be placed in a locked room to separate the child from the group.' From 1 July 2027 the position is unchanged in kind: Minn. Stat. 142I.07 still regulates by capacity class and age distribution, with no group-size column.
Mississippi	SMALL HOME: 5 children to 1 staff (Rule 3.8.3). LARGE HOME: no separate classroom group-size cap — the operative limit is the whole-home licensed capacity of 12 (Rule 2.8.2); ratios by age band apply within that 12.
Missouri	THERE IS NO GROUP SIZE LIMIT ON A MISSOURI FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME, AND THAT IS A DELIBERATE STRUCTURAL CHOICE RATHER THAN A GAP IN THE DRAFTING. WHAT THE RULE ACTUALLY CONTAINS. 5 CSR 25-400.010(13) supplies a definition: "Group size is the maximum number of children assigned to a specific staff member or group of staff members, occupying an individual classroom or well-defined physical space within a large room." That definition then goes unused. Nowhere in 5 CSR 25-400.010 through 5 CSR 25-400.220 does any operative provision impose a group size, assign children to a specific caregiver, or require children to be divided into groups occupying defined physical spaces. The staffing rule for the tier, 5 CSR 25-400.105(2)(A), is headed "Licensing Capacities and Staff/Child Ratios" and consists of one table with three columns — caregivers present, children present, and maximum children under age two — and no fourth column for group size. The word "group" appears elsewhere in the chapter only in the ordinary-language sense, as in 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)9. ("Children shall be encouraged, but not forced, to participate in group activities"), 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(C)5. (brief supervised separation "from the group" as a discipline technique), and 5 CSR 25-400.175(2)(B)3. ("individual and group activities"). WHY THE DEFINITION IS THERE ANYWAY. When child care licensing was recodified out of Title 19 and into Title 5 Division 25 effective 30 August 2021, DESE carried a single shared definitional block across the three new chapters. Compare 5 CSR 25-400.010, 5 CSR 25-500.010 and 5 CSR 25-300.010(1) and the same definitions recur nearly word for word — adult, child care, child care facility, child care staff member, group size, homeless children and youths, infant, legal entity, licensee, night, parent, premises, preschool child, school-age child. Group size is one of those shared terms. In the group-home-and-centre chapter it does real work; in the family home chapter it is inert. The correct reading of an unused definition is that it defines a term the operative rules never invoke, not that it silently imports a limit. THE FUNCTIONAL CEILING IS THE CAPACITY, AND THE CAPACITY IS TEN. Because a family child care home may be licensed for no more than ten children (5 CSR 25-400.010(11) and 5 CSR 25-400.105(2)(A)), the largest possible undivided group in a Missouri family home is ten. In practice it is smaller, and it is smaller for reasons that have nothing to do with a group size rule: thirty-five square feet of qualifying indoor floor space per child under 5 CSR 25-400.085(2)(B)1., seventy-five square feet of outdoor play area per child under 5 CSR 25-400.085(3)(A)2., the under-two column of the ratio table, the Division of Fire Safety's capacity-specific annual inspection under 5 CSR 25-400.086(2)(A), and the six-hour one-third trough imposed by 5 CSR 25-400.105(2)(B). Ten children in one room with one adult is lawful in Missouri provided no more than two of them are under two and the room measures at least three hundred fifty qualifying square feet. WHAT REPLACES GROUP SIZE — SUPERVISION RULES THAT ARE WRITTEN AS PROXIMITY RULES. Missouri regulates the family home not by carving children into groups but by keeping the adult close. 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)1.: "Child care providers shall not leave any child without competent adult supervision." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)2.: "The provider or an assistant personally shall admit each child upon arrival and personally shall dismiss each child upon departure. Children shall be dismissed only to the parent(s), guardian, legal custodian, or to the individual(s) approved by the parent(s), guardian, or legal custodian." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)3.: "Caregivers shall provide frequent, direct contact so children are not routinely left unobserved on the premises." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)4.: "Children under three (3) shall be supervised and assisted while in the bathroom." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)5.: "Caregivers shall check on the children frequently during napping or sleeping and shall remain in close enough proximity to the children to be able to hear them if they have difficulty during napping or when they awaken. Home monitors or commercial devices marketed to reduce the risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) shall not be used in place of supervision while children are napping or sleeping." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)6.: "If children are napped with no caregiver in the room, the door to the room cannot be closed." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(A)7.: "All children shall nap on the same floor and a caregiver shall remain on the floor where children are napping at all times." 5 CSR 25-400.175(1)(D)1.: "Infants and toddlers shall have constant care and supervision." Nighttime care adds its own proximity standard rather than a group size. 5 CSR 25-400.145(2)(F): "During sleeping hours, the provider or assistant(s) shall be in close proximity to sleeping areas in order to respond to children needing attention. Close proximity means that the provider shall be close enough to the children to be able to hear any sounds they might make that would indicate a need for assistance." The same defined phrase governs care of an ill child under 5 CSR 25-400.185(2)(H): "The caregiver shall be in close proximity to the child until the parent(s) arrives. Close proximity means that a caregiver is close enough to hear any sounds a child might make that would indicate a need for assistance." Missouri's chosen instrument in the family home is audibility, not partitioning. THE ONE PLACE MISSOURI DOES SET GROUP SIZE, FOR CONTRAST. It is the other chapter. 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(A), as amended by a rule filed 7 June 2023 and effective 30 January 2024, sets a "Maximum Group Size" column alongside the minimum staff/child ratio: 8 for infants, toddlers and two-year-olds taken together at 1:4; 16 for groups composed solely of children twenty-four to thirty-six months at 1:8; 20 for groups composed solely of three- and four-year-olds at 1:10; 32 for groups composed solely of children five years or older at 1:16; 20 for a Type 1 mixed group (no more than four children aged twenty-four to thirty-six months plus at least one child older than thirty-six months) at 1:10; and 16 for a Type 2 mixed group (more than four children aged twenty-four to thirty-six months plus at least one older child) at 1:8. That chapter then supplies the exceptions the family home chapter has no need for, because it has no group size to except from: 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(B), multiple groups may share the same physical space in a group child care home licensed for a maximum of four infants/toddlers or a centre licensed for a maximum of twenty children including no more than four infants/toddlers; 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(C), ratio need not be maintained inside the napping area for children two and older although group size still applies and ratio must be maintained on the premises; 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(D), group size does not apply during outdoor play, indoor gross motor activities in a gymnasium or multi-purpose room, meals, field trips, and special events including guest speakers, assemblies and celebrations; 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(E), group size does not apply during transport; 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(F), multiple groups may share space in programmes licensed exclusively for school-age children; and 5 CSR 25-500.112(1)(G), outdoor ratios may be one and one-half times the indoor ratios where no child two or under is in the outdoor play space. THE PRACTICAL UPSHOT FOR AN APPLICANT. Do not go looking for a Missouri group size number for a family child care home, and be sceptical of any summary that supplies one — the number it supplies will almost certainly have been lifted from 5 CSR 25-500.112, which governs group child care homes and centres, not family child care homes. The correct answer is that the family home tier has no group size limit at all; the binding constraints are the licensed capacity of ten, the ratio table's under-two column, the two square-footage rules, and a set of supervision rules that require the caregiver to be able to see or hear every child rather than to sort them into groups. The absence is meaningful: it is what makes a ten-child single-adult Missouri family home lawful in the first place, and it is also why the state compensates with a comparatively tight infant column and an unusually strict set of napping and proximity rules.
Montana	For a registered family or group facility the operative limit is the registered CAPACITY — 8 and 15 — not a separate group-size cap. "Group size" is defined as the number of children in a defined space or intentionally grouped around an activity (ARM 37.96.101(15)), but the numeric maximums of 12, 12, 16, 20 and 40, and the duty to maintain group sizes except at mealtimes, outdoor play, rest periods and large group activities, sit in ARM 37.96.106(2), the subsection addressed to child care centers and licensed drop-in facilities; the 40-child group in 37.96.106(4) belongs to licensed school-age providers. The family and group subsection, 37.96.106(5), sets ratios and an under-two limit and says nothing about group size. What actually pulls a home below its category ceiling is space: 35 square feet of usable indoor floor space per child present in a room at one time, still required when play and sleep share a room except during large group activities and while children are on rest equipment (ARM 37.96.407(1), (3)); 75 square feet of outdoor play space per child using it (37.96.408(1)); and the ban on using third stories of private homes (37.96.407(9)).
Nebraska	NEBRASKA DOES NOT REGULATE GROUP SIZE IN FAMILY CHILD CARE HOMES. I read 391 NAC Chapter 1 and 391 NAC Chapter 2 end to end; neither chapter contains a "group size," "maximum group," "grouping" or "class size" provision, and neither requires children to be separated into groups by age. The only numerical ceilings on how many children may be together are the licensed capacity (1-006.08A: eight, or ten with the two additional school-age children; 2-006.08A: twelve) and the staff-to-child ratio tables (1-006.08B, 2-006.08B). For a family child care home those two are the same thing in practice: the home is one group. WHAT SUBSTITUTES FOR A GROUP-SIZE RULE, and it is worth naming because it does constrain layout: (1) SPACE. 391 NAC 1-007.01 (identical at 2-007.01): "The child care home must have space for children's activities, napping, and free play. The child care activity space must: 1. Have furnishings to accommodate all activities and age-appropriate needs of all children in care; 2. Be available for all children; and 3. Have at least 35 square feet of activity space per child. Rooms not used for child care do not count in the square footage total." Note item 2 - "Be available for all children" - which is the closest thing in the chapters to a rule about how children may be divided: the activity space is not to be partitioned off from part of the enrolment. The chapters do define "Room" (1-002: "an area with four walls flush from the floor to the ceiling and at least one passageway or doorway. A partition is considered a wall if the partition is at least four feet high and is flush to the floor and to the other walls"), which matters for counting square footage, not for capping a group. (2) OUTDOOR SPACE. 1-007.03: an outdoor play area must "Have at least 50 square feet per child of age-appropriate play space," be "kept clean and safe and contain no accident hazards, debris, or stagnant water," "Contain no barnyard animals or fowl," and be "free of animal waste." Same at 2-007.03. (3) FIRE MARSHAL CAPACITY. As quoted under capacity_max, 1-006.08A/2-006.08A subordinate licensed capacity to "the capacity authorized by the State Fire Marshal or delegated authority," and "Whichever number is smaller will be the licensed capacity." In practice this, not a group-size rule, is what shrinks a home below its class ceiling. (4) THE SWIMMING RATIOS. 1-006.18H(3) imposes the only per-adult sub-group numbers in the chapters (1 infant, 2 toddlers, 4 preschoolers or 6 school-age children per staff member at a pool). If you need a Nebraska "group size" figure for a home, that pool table is the only place the rules subdivide children by age at all. CONTRAST WITH CHILD CARE CENTERS. Above twelve children a Nebraska program is a Child Care Center under 391 NAC Chapter 3, a different chapter with its own ratio structure. I did not read Chapter 3 in this pass (the DHHS host serving CCC391-3.pdf refused connection on 2026-08-25), so this entry makes no claim about whether centers have group-size caps. Do not import a center number into a home entry. PRACTICAL UPSHOT FOR A PROVIDER. If someone asks "what is Nebraska's maximum group size for a family child care home," the honest answer is: there is no separate group-size rule; the answer is the licensed capacity printed on your license, which is the smaller of (a) your class maximum - 8 (or 10 with the two additional school-age children) for Home I, 12 for Home II - (b) the number your indoor activity space supports at 35 square feet per child, and (c) the Fire Marshal's authorised capacity. And whatever that number is, the ratio tables still have to be met "at all times" (1-006.08B).
Nevada	For home-based care the license capacity is the ceiling: family home = 6, group home = 12. Nevada does not set a separate 'group size' cap distinct from the licensed capacity for family/group homes (the caregiver-ratio limits in NAC 432A.534/432A.536 govern); separate group-size caps exist only for centers/institutions.
New Hampshire	MAXIMUM GROUP SIZE IN A NEW HAMPSHIRE FAMILY OR FAMILY GROUP CHILD CARE HOME: THERE IS NONE, AND HERE IS THE PROOF FROM THE TEXT ITSELF (read on 26 August 2026 against the codified rule as the Office of Legislative Services serves it today — Part He-C 4002 as readopted with amendment by Document #14356, effective 22 September 2025, EXPIRES 22 September 2035 — and against the 2026 session laws) THE ANSWER, STATED FLATLY. New Hampshire imposes no maximum group size on a family child care home or a family group child care home. There is no number in He-C 4002, and none in RSA chapter 170-E, that caps how many children may be together in one room, one group or one activity in a licensed home, separately from the licence capacity and the age sub-caps. Whatever number you are looking for does not exist, and the reason it does not exist is structural rather than accidental: New Hampshire regulates the home by LICENCE CAPACITY — a single point-in-time headcount printed on the licence document — and regulates the centre by GROUP SIZE. He-C 4002.01(an) defines the home's controlling concept: "'License capacity' means the number and ages of children specified on the license or permit allowed to be in care at any one time." That definition contains no notion of a group, a room or a class. It is one number, or rather one number qualified by ages, for the whole household at any instant. The home rule that operationalises it, He-C 4002.33(m) to (o), likewise never uses the word "group". It says how many children a named adult, or a named pair of adults, may "care for" — six plus three school-agers alone, six plus three with a second adult, twelve plus five for a family group licensee with a second adult — and then applies two age sub-caps. Capacity and ratio, nothing else. THE EXHAUSTIVE SWEEP, BECAUSE A NEGATIVE HAS TO BE PROVED AND NOT ASSERTED. The phrase "maximum group size" appears in Part He-C 4002 exactly eighteen times, and every single occurrence sits inside a paragraph whose subject is a centre-based programme. Four of them are in He-C 4002.31(p), which opens "Center-based programs shall staff water activities in accordance with the following" and then sets, for water, "(1) For children ages 24 to 35 months the maximum group size shall be 8 children, with a ratio of one staff to 2 children; (2) For children ages 36 to 47 months the maximum group size shall be 12 children, with a ratio of one staff to 4 children; (3) For children ages 48 to 59 months the maximum group size shall be 18 children, with a ratio of one staff to 6 children; and (4) For children ages 56 months and older, if licensed as a school age program, the maximum group size shall be 24 children, with a ratio of one staff to 8 children." Five more are in He-C 4002.31(q), which opens "Center-based programs shall staff field trips in accordance with the following" and runs from "(1) For children 18 months and younger the maximum group size shall be 6 children, and the ratio shall be one staff to 3 children" through "(5) For children ages 56 months and older, if licensed as a school age program, the maximum group size shall be 24 children, with a ratio of one staff to 10 children." Two further mentions in the same rule likewise name the centre: He-C 4002.31(s), "In a center-based program, the staff to child ratio and maximum group size for a mixed age group of children participating in any field trip or water activity shall be based on the age of the youngest child in the group", and He-C 4002.31(t), "Center-based programs may exceed the maximum group size specified in (p) above for water activities, and (q) above for all other field trips only: (1) During transportation to the field trip or water activity; (2) At snack or mealtimes during the field trip or water activity; and (3) During water activities where certified lifeguards or water safety instructors are present and exclusively supervising the water activities of the children in care of the program." Three are in He-C 4002.35, headed "Group Child Care Centers": "(c) For children ages 36 months up to 47 months, the maximum group size shall be 24 with one teacher for every 8 children. (d) For children ages 48 months up to 59 months, the maximum group size shall be 24 with one teacher for every 12 children. (e) For children ages 60 months and over, the maximum group size shall be 30 with one teacher for every 15 children." Three are in He-C 4002.36, headed "Infant and Toddler Programs": "(c) For children ages 6 weeks up to 12 months, the maximum group size shall be 12 with one teacher for every 4 children. (d) For children ages 12 months up to 24 months, the maximum group size shall be 15 with one teacher for every 5 children. (e) For children ages 24 months up to 36 months, the maximum group size shall be 18 with one teacher for every 6 children." And one is in He-C 4002.38, headed "School-Age Programs": "(g) The maximum group size shall be 45 with one staff for every 15 children." He-C 4002.33 — the one rule written specifically for homes, titled "Family Child Care Programs, Family Group Child Care Programs, and Small Child Care Centers", and the section to which He-C 4002.33(a) adds only the general rules "He-C 4002.01 through He-C 4002.32" — contains not one instance of the phrase. Nor does He-C 4002.39, the night care rule, which for a home programme simply routes back to the home rules: "(c) Night care programs operating in private homes shall comply with all of the requirements for family and family group child care homes but shall not be required to comply with the requirements specified in He-C 4002.34." Nor does He-C 4002.21, the rule that computes licence capacity from floor area, plumbing and local approvals. The word "group" in the phrase "family group child care home" is part of a licence NAME — it distinguishes the seven-to-twelve-child tier from the up-to-six tier — and is not a regulatory unit of children. THE STATUTE DOES NOT SUPPLY ONE EITHER, AND THE DEPARTMENT'S OWN AUTHORITY TABLE SAYS SO. RSA 170-E:11, I(c) is the only place in the statute that uses the words "maximum group size", and it uses them three times: "(1) For children ages 6 weeks to 12 months, the maximum group size shall be 13"; "(2) For children ages 13 to 24 months, the maximum group size shall be 16"; "(3) For children ages 25 to 35 months, the maximum group size shall be 19." Each of those numbers is attached to staffing levels expressed exclusively in centre job titles — "One associate teacher with up to 4 children", "One associate teacher and one assistant teacher with 5 to 9 children", "One lead teacher and 2 assistant teachers with 9 to 13 children" — and none of those titles exists in a New Hampshire home programme, whose roles under He-C 4002.33 are family child care provider, child care worker, child care assistant and junior helper. Appendix A of He-C 4002, the table headed "RULES / STATUTE", confirms the split with unusual precision. It maps the centre ratio rules onto the staffing paragraph — "He-C 4002.35 — RSA 170-E:11, I(a) and (c)"; "He-C 4002.36 — RSA 170-E:11, I(a) and (c)"; "He-C 4002.38 — RSA 170-E:11, I(a), (c), and (e)"; "He-C 4002.39 — RSA 170-E:11, I(a), (c), and (e)" — and maps the home rule onto a different paragraph entirely: "He-C 4002.33 — RSA-170-E:11, I(b); 45 CFR 98.41(d)", paragraph I(b) being the commissioner's power over "The character, qualifications, mental and physical ability and competence of the applicant". The department, in its own filed table, does not claim the staffing-numbers power when it regulates your home. It claims the qualifications power. A group-size cap for homes would have had to come from I(c), and I(c) was not used. THE FEDERAL HOOK MAKES THE GAP VISIBLE RATHER THAN CLOSING IT. The second citation in that Appendix A line, 45 C.F.R. § 98.41(d), is the Child Care and Development Fund provision that requires a Lead Agency to "describe in the Plan standards for child care services for which assistance is provided under this part, appropriate to strengthening the adult and child relationship in the type of child care setting involved… that address: (1) Group size limits for specific age populations; (2) The appropriate ratio between the number of children and the number of caregivers, in terms of age of children in child care; and (3) Required qualifications for caregivers". New Hampshire cites that regulation as authority for He-C 4002.33 even though He-C 4002.33 sets no group size limit at all. The federal duty is to ADDRESS group size in the CCDF Plan, not to legislate a number for every setting, and New Hampshire's answer for the home setting is the capacity-and-sub-cap architecture. But the citation is worth knowing, because it is the reason a national comparison table will insist New Hampshire "has" home group sizes: the comparison is being drawn from CCDF plan language, not from the rule. WHAT APPLICANTS WRONGLY BELIEVE, AND WHERE EACH BELIEF COMES FROM. The first and commonest error is to import the infant-and-toddler centre numbers. A prospective home provider reads He-C 4002.36(c) — maximum group size 12, one teacher to four — decides that her six-child home is capped at four infants "per group", and either turns away business she could lawfully take or, worse, believes she may take four infants when He-C 4002.33(m)(2) allows a solo provider only two children younger than 24 months. He-C 4002.36 applies to a programme LICENSED as an infant and toddler programme, a centre category defined by RSA 170-E:2, IV(d) as "a child day care agency in which child day care is provided for any part of a day, for 5 or more children under the age of 3 years", and He-C 4002.36(a) confines it: "Infant and toddler programs shall comply with He-C 4002.01 through He-C 4002.32, He-C 4002.34, He-C 4002.40 through He-C 4002.44, and this section." He-C 4002.34 is the centre-staff rule. Your home is not in that list. The second error is to read the school-age figure of forty-five as a ceiling that somehow interacts with the home's school-age add-on. He-C 4002.38(g)'s "maximum group size shall be 45" belongs to a school-age programme licence; the home's school-age allowance is the "plus 3 school-age children" of He-C 4002.33(m) and (n) and the "plus 5" of He-C 4002.33(o), which are add-ons to capacity, not group sizes. The third error is to mistake a mixed-age paragraph for a group cap. He-C 4002.18(h) prohibits centres from combining children younger than 24 months with children older than 47 months except, among other cases, "(2) When there are 17 or fewer children present in the program, including 5 children enrolled in a full day school program, and a maximum of 12 preschool children, of which no more than 4 children shall be younger than 36 months of age". Those numbers look exactly like the family group home's twelve-plus-five, and providers cite them as their group size. Read the opening words: "Center-based programs shall not combine children younger than 24 months in a mixed age group which includes children older than 47 months, except…". It is a permission for centres to run a mixed-age room, not a cap on a home. The fourth error is to treat the small child care centre limit as a home group size. He-C 4002.33(c) provides that "A small group child care center shall operate in a location that is not the residence of the licensee, and shall not provide care for more than 12 children" — a capacity ceiling for a distinct, non-residential licence type defined at RSA 170-E:2, IV(i). The fifth error is to convert the square-footage rule into a group size. He-C 4002.21(c) requires "a minimum of 35 feet of net floor area per child, inside the rooms used by children", and He-C 4002.21(d) directs the department to "determine the license capacity by adding the number of children each room can accommodate based on (c) above". Because the calculation is performed room by room, providers conclude that each room carries its own enforceable cap. It does not: the room-by-room arithmetic is an input to a single licence capacity number, and once that number is on the licence you may distribute the children through the house as the supervision rules allow. The floor-area analysis belongs to the capacity_max entry for New Hampshire and is not re-argued here. The sixth error is imported from commercial state-comparison pages, which print a "Max Group Size" column against New Hampshire with an em-dash for infants and toddlers and "45" for school age, and assert in prose that "New Hampshire does not set a separate group size limit for infants" — a statement that is wrong for centres, since He-C 4002.36(c) sets twelve, and irrelevant for homes, which is the licence the reader is usually applying for. WHAT ACTUALLY BINDS YOU INSTEAD, IN ONE PLACE. Four numbers do the work a group-size cap would do elsewhere. The first is licence capacity itself, which He-C 4002.02(j) requires to reflect the lowest of five independent approvals: "The license issued in accordance with (i) above shall reflect the maximum number of children approved by the local fire inspector, health officer, and zoning officials, and in accordance with the available floor space as measured by the department in accordance with He-C 4002.21(c) and (d) and the number of available toilets and sinks in accordance with He-C 4002.21(b)." The second and third are the age sub-caps in He-C 4002.33(m)(1) and (m)(2) — no more than four children younger than 36 months, and, when the provider is working alone, no more than two younger than 24 months — which He-C 4002.33(n) and (o) carry forward in modified form. The fourth is the supervision duty in He-C 4002.19(a), "Child care staff shall supervise every child in care at all times", as relaxed for a solo home provider by He-C 4002.19(e). Those, plus the water-activity ratios that He-C 4002.31(u) writes specifically for "a family or family group child care home and small child care centers", are the whole of the numerical law that governs how many children may be around you at once. Note the drafting of He-C 4002.31(u) as the exception that proves the rule: when New Hampshire wanted a per-activity numerical limit for homes it wrote one, and it wrote it as a RATIO — "There shall be one staff member for every 2 children, 35 months and younger" — with no accompanying maximum group size, while the parallel centre paragraphs at (p) and (q) carry both a ratio and a maximum group size for every band. The omission in (u) is deliberate, consistent, and visible in the same rule. THE ENFORCEMENT CONSEQUENCE, WHICH IS THE PART THAT COSTS MONEY. Because there is no group-size rule for a home, there is no group-size citation for a home. What a licensing coordinator writes up instead is a breach of the licence itself, and He-C 4002.44(g)(1) prices that: "For failure to comply with the provisions of a license or permit, in violation of He-C 4002.05(a)(1), the fine shall be $200.00, plus $100.00 per day for each day for which the department has evidence that the program continues to fail to comply with the provisions of a license or permit… after receipt of written notice of non-compliance from the department", rising on a repeat citation under (g)(2) to "$500.00, plus $100.00" per day. The relief valve is capacity-shaped as well: He-C 4002.05(e) entitles you to exceed licence capacity for up to twenty workdays a year subject to five findings, of which the binding ones for a home are "(1) More than 4 children younger than 3 years of age being cared for at the same time in a family or family group child care home or small child care center; (2) More than 2 children younger than 24 months of age in a family child care home or small child care center, without an additional child care worker or child care assistant present and assisting in the care of the children; (3) More than 2 children over license capacity in a family or family group child care home or small child care center". Every lever New Hampshire gives you and every penalty it imposes on you is expressed in capacity and in age, never in group size. If a consultant, a software vendor or an insurer asks you for your "maximum group size", the accurate answer for a New Hampshire home is that the state does not set one, that your binding numbers are the capacity printed on your licence and the age sub-caps in He-C 4002.33(m) to (o), and that the only age-banded ratio table New Hampshire writes for a home is the water-activity table at He-C 4002.31(u). ONE THING TO WATCH, RECORDED IN VERIFY_FLAG. RSA 170-E:11, I(c) — the statutory group-size ladder for the youngest children, together with its no-fee, renewable, annually-granted waiver in I(c)(4), which is drafted in words wide enough to read on their face as covering "Any licensed child care provider" — was scheduled to lapse on 31 December 2026 under 2024, 197:3, I, and that prospective repeal was itself repealed by HB 1771, enacted as 2026 Chapter 98, signed 28 May 2026 and effective 27 July 2026, section 2 of which provides that "2024, 197:3, I, relative to the prospective repeal on December 31, 2026, of RSA 170-E:11, I(c) relative to child care staffing ratios and the waiver system, is repealed." The statutory group sizes are therefore permanent. The General Court's own codified text of RSA 170-E:11 still carried the bracketed note "[Paragraph I(c) effective until December 31, 2026; see also paragraph I(c) set out below.]" when read on 26 August 2026 — the codified layer is the stale one, and the session law is the current one. None of this creates a group size for a family home; but if a future department reads I(c)(4)'s "Any licensed child care provider" as reaching home licensees, the ladder it waives is one the home was never subject to, and the department's own Appendix A is the evidence.
New Jersey	NEW JERSEY DOES NOT IMPOSE A MAXIMUM GROUP SIZE ON A FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME THAT IS DISTINCT FROM THE HOME'S TOTAL NUMBER OF CHILDREN. There is no rule anywhere in N.J.A.C. 3A:54, the Manual of Requirements for Family Child Care Registration, that divides the children in your home into "groups" and caps each group; there is no per-room cap, no partition requirement, no square-foot-per-child figure, and no "primary caregiver" assignment rule. What New Jersey limits instead is a single number of children present at any one time, plus a set of age-based sub-limits that do not cap a group but instead decide whether a SECOND CAREGIVER must be standing in the house with you. If you have been told that New Jersey caps family child care groups at some figure, or that adding a helper lets you take more children, you have been told something the State did not enact, and this field exists precisely to stop you acting on it. Two structural facts have to be fixed before the numbers make sense. First, the citation itself: the chapter that governs family child care in New Jersey is N.J.A.C. 3A:54, not 3A:53. As of 26 August 2026 the Department of Children and Families' own Laws and Regulations index at nj.gov/dcf/providers/licensing/laws serves, under the heading "Family Day Care Provider Registration Act", a link labelled "N.J.A.C. 3A:54 Manual of Requirements for Family Child Care Registration" pointing to FCCmanual.pdf, while the link labelled "N.J.A.C. 3A:53" on that same page is the "Manual of Standards for Children's Shelter Facilities and Homes" pointing to ShelterManual.pdf. Cornell's Legal Information Institute index of New Jersey Title 3A, checked the same day, lists Chapter 53 as "MANUAL OF STANDARDS FOR CHILDREN'S SHELTER FACILITIES" and Chapter 54 as "MANUAL OF REQUIREMENTS FOR FAMILY CHILD CARE REGISTRATION". A checklist, a consultant or an AI answer that cites "3A:53" for family child care is citing the shelter rules and can be discarded on sight. Second, and far more consequential for how you read every number below: New Jersey family child care registration is VOLUNTARY. N.J.A.C. 3A:54-1.1(a) states that the chapter "is promulgated pursuant to the Family Day Care Provider Registration Act of 1987, N.J.S.A. 30:5B-16 et seq. (P.L. 1987, Chapter 27), which became effective April 27, 1987", and 3A:54-1.1(b) gives the Department authority to "Adopt regulations for the: i. Operation and maintenance of family child care sponsoring organizations; and ii. Voluntary registration of family child care providers". You do not get a licence; you get a Certificate of Registration issued by a private sponsoring organization under contract, not by the State directly, and 3A:54-1.1(d)2 authorises the sponsoring organization to "Issue new and renewal Certificates of Registration to family child care providers". The numbers in this field therefore bind you as a condition of holding and keeping that certificate, and they bind you absolutely as the outer edge of the statutory definition of what a family day care home even is — cross that edge and you are no longer an unregistered-but-lawful home, you are an unlicensed child care center. That distinction is where the money is lost, so take the statute first. Section 3 of P.L.1987, c.27, codified at N.J.S.A. 30:5B-18, defines the term verbatim as follows: "'Family day care home' means a private residence in which child care services are provided for a fee to no less than three and no more than five children at any one time for no less than 15 hours per week; except that the department shall not exclude a family day care home with less than three children from voluntary registration. A child being cared for under the following circumstances is not included in the total number of children receiving child care services: (1) The child being cared for is legally related to the provider; or (2) Care is being provided as part of an employment agreement between the family day care provider and an assistant or substitute provider where no payment for the care is being provided." That text was read on 26 August 2026 in the official introduced text of Senate Bill S304 of the 2026-2027 session, which sets out Section 3 of P.L.1987, c.27 in full with proposed deletions in brackets and proposed additions underlined; in that document the word "five" appears in brackets and the numeral "10" is underlined, which is how a New Jersey bill says that five is what the law says today and 10 is what the sponsor wishes it said. The statutory ceiling is FIVE. Now the other half of the statutory frame, because you cannot understand the five without it. Section 3 of the Child Care Center Licensing Act, N.J.S.A. 30:5B-3, read in the same S304 document, defines a "'Child care center' or 'center'" as "any facility which is maintained for the care, development, or supervision of six or more children who attend the facility for less than 24 hours a day", and adds that "In the case of a center operating in a sponsor's home, children who reside in the home shall not be included when counting the number of children being served." The exclusion list in that section, at subparagraph (10), currently exempts "A family day care home ... that is registered pursuant to the 'Family Day Care Provider Registration Act,' P.L.1987, c.27 (C.30:5B-16 et seq.)" — and in S304 the qualifier "providing child care services to no more than 10 children at any one time" is underlined, meaning that qualifier is NOT in today's law. Put the two definitions side by side and the architecture is plain: six or more children in a facility is a licensed child care centre; a registered family day care home is carved out of that; and the family day care home is defined as three to five children. The five is not a comfort limit set by a sponsoring organization. It is the boundary between a registration you can obtain from a county sponsoring organization for a twenty-five dollar fee and a full centre licence under N.J.A.C. 3A:52 with staff qualifications, thirty-five square feet of usable indoor activity space per child, physical plant approvals and an Office of Licensing inspection. THE OPERATIVE REGULATION IS N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.1, "MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CHILDREN", AND IT READS IN FULL: "(a) The provider shall care for no more than five children at any one time, except as specified in (b) below. (b) The provider shall be permitted to care for up to three additional children, up to a maximum of eight children at any one time, only if: 1. The additional children reside with the provider and are below six years of age. Children six years of age or older who reside with the provider shall not be included in the limit of eight children; or 2. The additional children reside with the alternate provider, the substitute provider or the provider assistant, and receive care in the family child care home for no payment. The alternate provider, the substitute provider or the provider assistant shall be present when any child who resides with that person is present. (c) The sponsoring organization may restrict the maximum number of children who may be in care on a specific date or time in a family child care home when: 1. The useable indoor and outdoor space does not permit safety and comfort; 2. There is insufficient equipment to meet the needs of the children; 3. The number and ages of the provider's own children limit the ability to provide adequate supervision; 4. There are additional responsibilities of the provider to care for another household member who may require special attention or care including, but not limited to, an elderly person or a child with a serious medical, physical, emotional or behavioral condition; 5. There are restrictions regarding the fire, zoning, health, environmental or other codes; or 6. Other factors that may cause a risk to a child's health, safety or welfare, such as damage to the home, construction or renovations." That is the entire numeric ceiling New Jersey imposes, and the eight in 6.1(b) is the single most misread number in the chapter. THE EIGHT IS NOT A CAPACITY. You cannot enrol eight paying children. The three children above five are only ever children who RESIDE in the home — yours, under six, or the resident children of your alternate provider, substitute provider or provider assistant receiving care "for no payment" and only while that person is physically present. A provider who reads "up to a maximum of eight children at any one time" and takes a sixth, seventh and eighth enrolled child has by that act stepped outside N.J.S.A. 30:5B-18's definition of a family day care home and into N.J.S.A. 30:5B-3's definition of a child care centre, and the exemption at 30:5B-3(b)(10) no longer shelters her. Note also the counting quirk that runs the other way and that providers routinely get wrong in their own disfavour or favour: under 6.1(b)1, your own resident children aged six and over are not counted at all — "Children six years of age or older who reside with the provider shall not be included in the limit of eight children" — while your own resident children under six ARE counted toward the eight. Your eight-year-old home from school does not consume a slot. Your four-year-old does. THE AGE SUB-LIMITS LIVE IN A SEPARATE SECTION, N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.2, "AGES OF CHILDREN", AND THEY ARE NOT GROUP-SIZE CAPS — THEY ARE SECOND-CAREGIVER TRIGGERS. The section reads in full: "(a) The provider shall care for no more than the following numbers of infants and toddlers unless a second caregiver is present: 1. Three children below one year of age; or 2. Four children below two years of age, of whom no more than two shall be below one year of age. (b) Both the provider and a second caregiver (either the alternate provider, substitute provider or provider assistant) shall be present whenever one or more children below six years of age are present in addition to the maximum number of infants or toddlers specified in (a) above. (c) All children present who are below six years of age, including those who reside with the provider, alternate provider, substitute provider or provider assistant, shall be included in the provisions in (b) above for determining when a second caregiver shall be present." Read that with care, because the brief you were probably working from and every commercial guide gets it wrong in the same two ways. FIRST TRAP: NEW JERSEY DOES NOT USE EIGHTEEN MONTHS ANYWHERE IN THE FAMILY CHILD CARE RULE. The thresholds in 3A:54-6.2 are "below one year of age" and "below two years of age". Eighteen months is a CENTRE threshold, not a family child care threshold: N.J.A.C. 3A:52-4.3(c) sets centre staff/child ratios of 1:4 for "Under 18 months", 1:6 for "18 months up to 2 1/2 years", 1:10 for "2 1/2 years up to 4 years", 1:12 for "4 years" and 1:15 for "5 years and older", and N.J.A.C. 3A:52-4.4(a) defines a centre infant as "under 18 months of age" and a toddler as "18 months to 2 1/2 years of age". If a source hands you an eighteen-month sub-limit for a New Jersey family child care home, it has silently imported the centre rule. Plan your enrolment against ONE YEAR and TWO YEARS, and remember that 6.2(a)2 contains an internal cap that is easy to skip on a fast read: four children below two is permitted alone ONLY IF "no more than two shall be below one year of age". Three under-ones alone is permitted under 6.2(a)1; three under-ones plus a one-year-old is not, because the moment you are at three infants you have exhausted (a)1 and any additional child below six triggers (b). SECOND TRAP, AND THE ONE THAT COSTS REAL MONEY: THE SECOND CAREGIVER DOES NOT BUY YOU CAPACITY. Nothing in 3A:54-6.2 lifts the ceiling in 3A:54-6.1. The two sections operate on different axes. 6.1 fixes how many children may be present, full stop; 6.2 fixes what MIX of ages you may hold with one adult versus two. Bring in an approved alternate provider, a substitute provider or a provider assistant and you are still capped at five enrolled children, and still capped at eight bodies counting only resident children who qualify under 6.1(b). What the second caregiver unlocks is the age mix: with two caregivers present you may hold the infants and toddlers of 6.2(a) plus additional children below six, which you may not do alone. New Jersey is one of the states where a provider hires help expecting to grow the business and discovers the help was a compliance cost with zero revenue upside. Understand also who counts as that second caregiver, because the chapter is precise and the labels are not interchangeable. N.J.A.C. 3A:54-1.2 defines "'Approved caregiver'" as "a person at least 18 years of age who has met all applicable requirements for a substitute provider or an alternate provider, as specified in N.J.A.C. 3A:54-5 and 6"; "'Alternate provider'" as "a person who shares child care responsibilities with a registered provider at the provider's residence and meets all applicable requirements"; "'Substitute provider'" as "a person at least 18 years of age designated by the provider and approved by the sponsoring organization who is readily available to provide child care on a temporary basis in the provider's home when the provider cannot be present", adding that "When the substitute provider cares for enrolled children for more than five consecutive days, or more than five days per month, a substitute provider shall meet the qualifications of an alternate provider"; and "'Provider assistant'" as "a person at least 14 years of age who has been designated by the provider and approved by the sponsoring organization to assist the provider in caring for children in the home". Three points follow. One, a provider assistant may be as young as fourteen and still counts as the "second caregiver" for 3A:54-6.2(b) — but N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.19(g)3 requires that "An assistant under 18 years of age is not left alone with the children except in an emergency", and 6.19(g)4 that an assistant under sixteen "Does not work in the home at any time when his or her school is in session", "Does not work an excessive number of hours to the detriment of his or her health or schoolwork", and "Obtains working papers as required by State law". A fourteen-year-old satisfies the infant-mix trigger while you are present and satisfies nothing at all when you are not. Two, none of these people is self-appointed. Each must be "designated by the provider and approved by the sponsoring organization", must be named on the application under N.J.A.C. 3A:54-5.2(a)6 with "The name, address and telephone number of the provider assistant and the alternate provider, if any, and the substitute provider", must be covered by the health care provider's statement required by 3A:54-5.2(b) based on "a medical examination conducted within the six months immediately preceding the submission of the application", and must be swept into the criminal-conviction disclosure at 3A:54-5.2(a)10. An unapproved adult in your kitchen is not a second caregiver for purposes of 6.2(b), however competent, and the mix you are running is out of compliance the moment the sponsoring organization looks. Three, if you are counting a caregiver's own resident children toward the eight under 6.1(b)2, that caregiver must actually be there: "The alternate provider, the substitute provider or the provider assistant shall be present when any child who resides with that person is present." Their children may not stay after they leave. The supervision rules that surround these numbers are worth reading in the same breath because they constrain the same arithmetic without adding a single group-size figure. N.J.A.C. 3A:54-1.2 defines "'Supervision'" as "having awareness of and responsibility for the ongoing activity of each child, knowledge of activity requirements, children's needs, and accountability for their care. Adequate supervision requires the provider, substitute provider, provider assistant or alternate provider, if any, to be awake and have immediate access to children as needed." N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.19(c) provides that "The provider shall not leave the premise of the family child care home unless an approved caregiver is present with the children" — which is where the defined term "approved caregiver" does its real work, and note that a fourteen-year-old provider assistant is not an approved caregiver, since that definition requires "at least 18 years of age". N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.19(d) requires that "The provider shall be scheduled to care for children at least 75 percent of the home's operating hours. When a provider and an alternate provider share child care responsibilities, the provider shall be scheduled to care for children at least 50 percent of the home's operating hours." N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.19(e) provides that "When a family child care home operates 24 hours a day, an alternate provider is required. No caregiver may work more than 16 consecutive hours." And 6.19(f)3 provides that "When the provider is absent for six or more consecutive weeks and enrolled children continue to receive care in the home, another registered provider or the alternate provider, if any, shall temporarily assume the provider's responsibility for operating the home." Night-time care, defined at 3A:54-1.2 as "child care provided in the evening or overnight between the hours of 8:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M.", adds no numeric cap either; N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.22(a) requires only that "The provider, substitute or alternate provider shall be awake and alert to meet the needs of the children at all times", and 6.22(e) that "The provider shall ensure that no enrolled child shares a sleeping room with an adult". NOW THE PROOF THAT THE ABSENCE OF A GROUP-SIZE RULE IS DELIBERATE AND NOT AN OVERSIGHT IN MY READING, BECAUSE THAT IS THE ASSERTION MOST WORTH FALSIFYING. New Jersey knows exactly how to write a group-size rule, and it wrote one — for centres, in the neighbouring chapter, and nowhere in the family child care chapter. N.J.A.C. 3A:52-4.4 is titled "Grouping of children" and provides at (a) that for early childhood programmes serving infants and toddlers "A particular staff member shall be assigned as the primary caregiver to each specific group of children, in accordance with applicable staff/child ratios", that "A group shall consist of four infants or six toddlers to whom a primary caregiver has been assigned", and that "If more than 12 infants or 20 toddlers occupy an individual room or a specific area within a large room, areas for up to 12 infants or 20 toddlers shall be defined by visible barriers, partitions, or any other room dividers or separations having a height above the eye level of the children who use those areas"; at (b)2 that for children two and a half and older "Each group shall be limited to a maximum of 20 children except during meals, naptime, outdoor activities, specially-scheduled events ... and daily information sharing sessions ... which shall not exceed 15 minutes in duration"; and at (c)2 that for school-age child care programmes "Each group shall be limited to a maximum of 30 children except during meals, outdoor activities, and specially-scheduled events." Centres also carry, at N.J.A.C. 3A:52-4.8(a)3, an orientation-training topic of "Implementing group size limits and primary caregiver responsibilities", and physical space minima of thirty and thirty-five square feet of usable activity indoor floor space per child under N.J.A.C. 3A:52-5.3. N.J.A.C. 3A:54 contains no counterpart to any of it. Its space provision, N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.3(a)1, says only that "Adequate floor space is available for the children's activities", that "The provider shall arrange the play space and the furniture within the family child care home in order to allow adequate room for active and quiet play and for individual and group activities", and that "Program space shall not include the food preparation areas within the kitchen, bathrooms, hallways, stairways, closets, laundry rooms or areas, furnace rooms and storage spaces" — a qualitative standard with no number attached, and a full-text search of the chapter returns no occurrence of "square feet" at all. The phrase "group size" does not appear in N.J.A.C. 3A:54. The only two sections in the chapter that set numbers of children are 6.1 and 6.2, and I have quoted both in full above. That is the proof, and it is the whole of the proof: the absence is verifiable by enumeration, not by inference. One further consequence of that absence deserves flagging because applicants assume the opposite. YOUR CERTIFICATE OF REGISTRATION DOES NOT STATE A CAPACITY NUMBER. N.J.A.C. 3A:54-5.4(d) provides that "The Certificate of Registration shall be issued to a specific provider at a specific location and shall not be transferable", and 5.4(c) that it "shall be posted in a prominent location within the family child care home during the hours enrolled children are in the home"; nothing in 5.4, 5.5 or 5.7 directs the sponsoring organization to inscribe an approved number of children on the document, and the Information to Parents Statement mandated by N.J.A.C. 3A:54-4.9(a) contains twelve required disclosures, none of which is a capacity figure. Unlike a licensed centre, you have no "licensed capacity" to point to. Your ceiling is whatever N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.1 says on the day, as narrowed by any restriction the sponsoring organization imposes under 6.1(c) — and that restriction is discretionary, unnumbered, and can be applied "on a specific date or time", which in practice means an evaluator can tell you at a two-yearly monitoring visit under 3A:54-5.4(g) that your usable space, your equipment, your own children's ages or a local fire or zoning condition will not support five, and you have no certificate figure to argue against. Do not build a business plan on five without asking your sponsoring organization, in writing and before you enrol, whether it intends to restrict you under 6.1(c). FINALLY, THE STALENESS SWEEP, BECAUSE A NUMBER THIS SIMPLE IS EXACTLY THE KIND THAT GOES OUT OF DATE QUIETLY. The version of the chapter relied on here is the one the Department's own index serves today: the file FCCmanual.pdf carries the cover legend "EFFECTIVE - January 19, 2024" and "EXPIRES - January 19, 2031", eighty-eight pages, headed "CHAPTER 54 MANUAL OF REQUIREMENTS FOR FAMILY CHILD CARE REGISTRATION". The Department's Public Notices page, whose Rule Adoptions table is ordered newest first and whose visible entries on 26 August 2026 run from a readoption of N.J.A.C. 3A:10 effective 25 March 2026 back to a readoption of N.J.A.C. 3A:70 effective 1 May 2024, contains no adoption touching 3A:54 in that window, and the Rule Proposals table's recent entries concern 3A:10, 3A:51 and 3A:51A, 3A:26 and 3A:52-5.3 — a proposal to amend the CENTRE manual, not the family child care manual. Independently, the LexisNexis-sourced rendering of the code published through Cornell's Legal Information Institute returns for N.J.A.C. 3A:54-6.1 text identical word for word to the Department's PDF, with a history note ending "Amended by R.2009 d.355, effective 12/7/2009. See: 41 N.J.R. 1368(b), 41 N.J.R. 4438(b). Added (c)", and for 3A:54-6.2 a history note ending "Amended by R.2004 d.211, effective 6/7/2004. See: 36 N.J.R. 925(a), 36 N.J.R. 2884(a). Rewrote (a) and (b)". Two independent renderings agreeing verbatim, with the last substantive amendments to the two numeric sections dated 2004 and 2009 and the chapter readopted in January 2024, is as firm as this gets. On the legislative side, the sweep matters more than usual, because New Jersey has a live, perennial bill to raise the number. Senate Bill S304 of the 2026-2027 session, "An Act concerning family day care providers, amending P.L.1983, c.492 and P.L.1987, c.27", would strike "five" and insert "10" in N.J.S.A. 30:5B-18, would add to that definition the sentence "A family day care home providing child care services to more than five children shall meet all applicable health and safety code requirements in addition to all of the provisions of the 'Family Day Care Provider Registration Act,' P.L.1987, c.27 (C.30:5B-16 et seq.), and shall have at least one additional person who has completed training required pursuant to section 6 of P.L.1987, c.27 (C.30:5B-21) present at all times providing care to the children", and would insert the qualifier "providing child care services to no more than 10 children at any one time" into the centre-licensing exemption at N.J.S.A. 30:5B-3(b)(10). Its own sponsor statement concedes the present state of the law: "This bill increases, from five to 10, the number of children that may be cared for by a registered family day care provider." As of 26 August 2026 the bill's last recorded action is "Introduced in the Senate, Referred to Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee (on 01/13/2026)", with companions A592 and A2910 sitting in the Assembly Children, Families and Food Security Committee and a predecessor, S4778, having died in committee in the prior session. IT IS NOT LAW. Five is the number. If a trade-press article, a Facebook group or a sponsoring organization's staffer tells you New Jersey now allows ten, they are describing a bill that has never left its first committee across at least two consecutive sessions, and acting on it would put you six or more children deep in an unlicensed child care centre. Practically, then: plan for a maximum of five enrolled children at any one time, plus your own resident children under six and the unpaid resident children of an approved and present caregiver, to an absolute ceiling of eight bodies; your own resident children aged six and over are free; alone you may hold three children below one year, or four below two of whom at most two are below one, and any additional child below six anywhere in that house requires a second approved caregiver alongside you; the second caregiver never raises the five; the certificate carries no capacity number and the sponsoring organization may narrow you below five at any time under 3A:54-6.1(c); and there is no group-size cap, no per-room cap and no square-foot standard to comply with, because New Jersey did not write one for family child care homes and writing one into your plan would be inventing an obligation the State never imposed.
New Mexico	12 children — the group child care home cap; a family child care home is capped at 6. New Mexico sets no separate 'group size' subdivision within a licensed home beyond these overall capacity limits.
New York	New York does not impose a separate "maximum group size" on home-based care on top of capacity. In the home-based Parts, capacity IS the group — a family day care home and a group family day care home are single-group settings by definition, and neither Part 416 nor Part 417 contains a grouping section analogous to the centre-based tables. The operative ceilings, therefore, are: Registered family day care home — six children, or seven to eight where no more than six are below school age and OCFS has inspected for the extension (18 NYCRR Sec. 413.2(b)(2) and (b)(2)(ii); SSL Sec. 390(1)(e)). Licensed group family day care home — twelve children of all ages, plus up to four additional school-age children served only outside school hours, i.e. sixteen present at one time (Sec. 413.2(b)(3); SSL Sec. 390(1)(d)). Grandfathered multi-programme residence — ten per group family day care home within the residence, and twenty across all homes in the residence (Sec. 416.15(a)(8) / Sec. 417.15(a)(8)). Small day care center, for the non-residential three-to-six case that people mistake for a home — six when all children are at least two; five when any child under two is present; and never more than two children under two at one time (Sec. 413.2(b)(5)(iii)-(v)). And, controlling all of the above for any individual programme, the number printed on the instrument: Sec. 417.15(a)(9) / Sec. 416.15(a)(9) — "The number and age range of children specified thereon are the maximum number and age range of children who may be in the care of the [group] family day care home at any one time." The one place New York does speak about group size in a way that touches homes is indirectly, through the definition of "shift" at Sec. 413.2(d)(17): "Shift means an eight to ten hour period during which care is provided to a group of enrolled children." A programme approved for one shift and running a second, differently-composed group of children later in the day is operating an unapproved shift, and Sec. 417.15(b)(2)-(3) requires prior written OCFS approval for it. Capacity is measured "at any one time," so a second shift does not add capacity — it adds an approval requirement.
North Carolina	There is no separate group-size ceiling underneath the family child care home capacity, and the rules do not contain one. The home is a single group cared for by the operator, and the three configurations of G.S. 110-91(7)b — eight (five birth-to-five plus three school-age), nine (three under twenty-four months, three aged two to five, three school-age), or ten (all older than twenty-four months) — are simultaneously the capacity and the maximum group. The definition at 10A NCAC 09 .0102(24) confirms that "group" is a concept borrowed from the centre rules: "'Group' means the children assigned to a specific caregiver or caregivers, to meet the staff/child ratios set forth in G.S. 110-9(7) and this Chapter, using space the Division has identified for each group." (The statutory citation in that definition is mistyped in the code as "G.S. 110-9(7)"; the provision meant is G.S. 110-91(7).) The maximum group sizes published in G.S. 110-91(7)a — fifteen for children 0 to 12 months, eighteen for 12 to 24 months, twenty for 2 to 3 years, and an absolute "[n]o child care center shall care for more than 25 children in one group" — apply to child care centres, including centres located in a residence, and the requirement that "[c]hild care centers providing care for 26 or more children shall provide for two or more groups according to the ages of children and shall provide separate supervisory personnel and separate identifiable space for each group" is by its terms about centres. Nothing in Section .1700 divides a family child care home into groups or requires separate identifiable space for sub-groups. What can nevertheless hold a home below the statutory maximum is not a group-size rule but three external constraints, and the status of two of them changed in the last thirteen months. Local zoning ordinances. G.S. 110-91's opening sentence subjects all facilities to "local ordinances that pertain to child health, safety, and welfare"; 10A NCAC 09 .1702(b)(8) makes "copies of any inspections required by local ordinances" part of the application; and DCDEE tells operators seeking a capacity increase to verify "there are no local zoning ordinances or homeowner association bylaws/covenants that prohibit the increase." Since 7 July 2026 that layer is partially preempted as against municipalities by G.S. 160A-205.8, added by Session Law 2026-51, which bars a city from prohibiting a "no-impact home-based business" or requiring any permit, licence, variance or approval to operate one, and specifically forbids a city to require a rezoning petition for commercial use or the installation of fire sprinklers in a structure subject to the North Carolina Residential Code. Whether a particular home qualifies is fact-specific — the definition at G.S. 160A-205.8(d)(3) requires among other things that "[t]he total number of on-site employees and clients do not exceed the city's occupancy limit for the residential property" and that the activities "[d]o not generate on-street parking or a substantial increase in traffic through the residential area" and "[a]re not visible from the street" — and the statute is a Chapter 160A city statute, which does not on its face reach county zoning. Private covenants. G.S. 160A-205.8(c) is explicit that the new municipal preemption "shall not apply if the operation of a no-impact home-based business is prohibited by the terms of: (1) Any deed, covenant, or agreement restricting the use of the land. (2) Any master deed, bylaws, or other documents applicable to a homeowners association." An HOA restriction therefore remains a complete answer, exactly as DCDEE has always said. The physical structure. This is where a widely repeated figure has to be retired. The DCDEE Family Child Care Home Handbook, Chapter 1, states under "Building Codes": "If you live in a single-wide manufactured home, you will be limited to caring for a maximum of five children and no more than three of these may be preschool-age children. Of the three preschool-age children, no more than two children may be two years of age or younger." No such limit appears anywhere in G.S. Chapter 110, Article 7 or in 10A NCAC Chapter 09 as the Office of Administrative Hearings publishes them today. Nor is it consistent with the current statutory treatment of manufactured homes: Session Law 2025-36, s. 17(c) provides that "a family child care home located within a dwelling subject to the State of North Carolina Regulations for Manufactured Homes shall be treated as a Residential Group R-3 occupancy," that the dwelling "shall be permitted to comply with the North Carolina Regulations for Manufactured Homes," and that such a home "must meet only" the same five conditions imposed on stick-built dwellings — level of exit discharge, a 2A:10B:C extinguisher within forty feet travel distance of every room used by children, a Section 404 Fire Safety, Evacuation and Lockdown Plan, carbon monoxide alarms under Residential Code R315, and smoke alarms under Residential Code R314. The handbook chapter is itself demonstrably obsolete on its face — it states that a family child care home is "where care is provided for three to eight children," which is the pre-2023 capacity; it cites "NC General Statute 110-91(8), (8a)" for operator qualifications, and (8a) expired by its own terms on July 1, 2011; it cites "Child Care Rule .1702(c)(1)" and ".1702(c)(3)" for building code and ground level, when those subparagraphs today govern the issuance of temporary and one-star licences and the building rule is .1707; and it directs manufactured-home operators to "NC Manufactured/Mobile Home Regulations published by the NC Department of Insurance," an office whose fire-prevention functions G.S. 110-91(5) has since reassigned to the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The single-wide five-child figure should be treated as unsupported by any current published text and confirmed with a licensing consultant if it is asserted; see `verify_flag`. One quality-linked sub-limit does exist inside a rated licence, and it is not a group size either. 10A NCAC 09 .3206(e)(1) provides that a home pursuing a five-star rating through the Classroom and Instructional Quality Pathway and operating under capacity option G.S. 110-91(7)(b)(1) may have "no more than four children ... under the age of twenty-four months of the children who are birth to five years of age," and the same subparagraph immediately adds: "This requirement shall not reduce the licensed capacity of the family child care home." It is a condition of a voluntary rating, forfeitable by declining the rating, and it does not exist in the Program Assessment Pathway rule for homes (.3204) at any star level.
North Dakota	FAMILY CHILD CARE: no more than seven children at any one time, plus up to two additional school-age children (children at least five and under twelve) - a functional maximum of nine bodies under the roof at any single instant, with the provider's own children under twelve counted in that nine. Authorities: NDCC 50-11.1-02(7) (definition of the licence); NDCC 50-11.1-02(26) ('school-age children' = at least five, less than twelve); NDCC 50-11.1-02.1(1)-(2) (all children present under twelve are counted; only the provider's own child, foster child or grandchild over eleven is exempt); NDAC 75-03-08-09(1) ("the number of children physically in care... at any given time, rather than total enrollment"). There is NO separate 'maximum group size' concept at the family tier - no sub-group cap, no room cap, no infant-cluster cap. The licensed capacity IS the group size. That is not true one tier up: group child care under NDAC 75-03-09-09(2)(b)(7) caps a mixed-age group at four children under eighteen months per staff member, and centres under NDAC 75-03-10-08 carry explicit maximum group sizes of 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 40 by age band. The mix inside the nine is constrained only by the licence-trigger arithmetic in NDCC 50-11.1-03(1): a family home running six or seven children through age eleven may include "no more than three children under twenty-four months of age," while a home serving four or more children twenty-four months and under is on the other statutory branch entirely. Two further ceilings can bite before the ninth child does. First, space: NDAC 75-03-08-14(1) requires "a minimum of thirty-five square feet [3.25 square meters] of space per child indoors," excluding bathrooms, pantries, exit passageways, furniture footprints and any space children may not occupy - 315 net square feet for nine children - plus 75 square feet of outdoor play space per child unless the provider supplies 75 square feet of separate indoor recreation space per child instead (and see NDCC 50-11.1-19, which forbids the department from requiring outdoor space where indoor recreation space suffices). Second, developmental age: NDAC 75-03-08-09(2) requires that a child with special needs be counted at "the child's developmental age level," which can convert a school-age add-on slot back into an ordinary slot. GROUP CHILD CARE extends the same residence to "at least eight and no more than thirty children at any one time" (NDCC 50-11.1-03(2); definition at 50-11.1-02(9), "thirty or fewer children"), subject to the decimal staffing table in NDAC 75-03-09-09(2)(b) and to 35 sq ft indoor / 75 sq ft outdoor per child under NDAC 75-03-09-19. The Legislative Council's September 2025 memorandum adds the brake the state rules do not contain: group providers may serve up to thirty "depending on local ordinance." More than thirty at any one time requires a child care centre licence (NDCC 50-11.1-03(3)).
Ohio	Ohio's group size ceiling is the same number as the capacity ceiling: seven children at one time in a type B home, fourteen in a type A home, counted per OAC 5180:2-13-18(B) (all children under six present in the home, including the provider's own, plus the related and publicly funded categories listed above), and always subject to the license capacity written on the license, which may be lower than the statutory maximum. Each group must have a tracking method carrying each child's name and date of birth, kept with the group at all times including outdoor play, evacuations and when groups are combined (OAC 5180:2-13-18(C)(2)).
Oklahoma	There is no group-size rule in Oklahoma family child care that is distinct from capacity. The home is one group and the number is seven, or twelve in a large home (OAC 340:110-3-84(a)(1); 340:110-3-97.1(d)). Nothing in Part 5 requires age-banded groups, assigns a group to a caregiver, or sets a per-room maximum; the sizing instrument is the combination list of 340:110-3-84(b) and 340:110-3-97.1(f), a ceiling on the whole house at one moment, "on or off of the premises" (340:110-3-84(a)). Four things pull the effective number below the licensed one. Household children, foster children 12 and younger and the assistant's or substitute's children occupy places inside the ceiling (340:110-3-84(a)(2)). Space caps it - 35 square feet indoors per child excluding hallways, bathrooms, kitchen and nap-only rooms, and 75 square feet of outdoor play area per child (340:110-3-86(a)(2), (12)). Age mix caps it, through the under-2 limits in the combination lists. And building geometry caps it: no care, including naptime, for children 3 and younger above ground level, and no care above the second storey (340:110-3-97(b)(3), (4)). One expansion exists rather than a restriction: "Additional staff provisions are made for enrollment of children with disabilities requiring individual attention" (340:110-3-84(d)) - extra adults, not extra children.
Oregon	Oregon sets NO group-size number distinct from capacity and ratio in either home regime — there is no rule in OAR 414-210 or 414-360 that caps a 'group' the way center rules in other states do. For the REGISTERED home the binding numbers are the capacity sub-caps themselves: 10 total, of which at most 6 are preschool-age or younger and at most 2 are under 24 months, plus up to 4 school-age (OAR 414-210-0400(1),(2)). Since one provider may lawfully hold that whole mix, 'group size' and 'capacity' are the same number in an RF home. For the CERTIFIED home the binding number is the licensed capacity written on the certificate, which is itself derived from floor area: 'A certified family child care's licensed capacity is based on the home's indoor activity area' and 'A provider must not exceed the licensed capacity at any time, including the total number of children in care both at and away from the child care home' (OAR 414-360-0800(1),(4)), with 35 sq ft per child up to 12 children and 50 sq ft per child for each of the four children above 12 (414-360-0800(5)). Staffing for whatever total is present then comes from Table A under 414-360-0400(4), or 1:15 if every child is school-age (414-360-0400(5)). The only true 'grouping' constraints in the rules are about mixing ages, not counting heads: a CF provider must have a written plan when infants share space with older children — 'If infants are in care and sharing the same activity area as older children, a provider must have a written plan that addresses how caregivers will ensure safety of infants who are not yet crawling. The plan must be implemented when infants that are not yet crawling share the same activity area as older children' (OAR 414-360-0400(7)) — and the RF/CF supervision rules force physical presence outdoors with under-36-month children (414-210-0500(1)(d); 414-360-0500(3)). One more capacity-shaped condition that is enforceable like a group-size cap: 'A provider must comply with the conditions of the registration when admitting children, including, but not limited to, capacity, hours of operation, age range, and special conditions' (OAR 414-210-0150(1)). Exceeding licensed capacity is expressly a SERIOUS violation — the definition of serious violation includes '(b) There are more children in care than allowed by licensed capacity' (OAR 414-210-0100(46)) — which matters because a serious valid complaint must be POSTED for parents for 12 months (414-210-0260(1)(b)) and carries a civil penalty up to $750 per violation (414-210-1620(3)).
Pennsylvania	For a family child care home, Pennsylvania sets NO group-size cap of any kind. There is no number in 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3290 that limits how many of your six children may occupy one room, one activity, one table or one adult's attention at a time. The chapter does not contain the words "group size" anywhere, and that is not an inference — it is a property of the text as the Pennsylvania Code serves it today, currency stamped "56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)." The subchapter that would hold such a rule is headed "STAFF-CHILD RATIO" and it contains exactly two sections and nothing else: "3290.51. Maximum number of children." and "3290.52. Ratio requirements." That is the whole of it. There is no § 3290.53, no group-size table, no maximum-per-group column, no square-footage divisor, no naptime spacing capacity. Everything Pennsylvania has to say about how many children may be in your home, and in what age mix, is contained in those two sections, and both are quoted in full in the capacity and ratio entries for this state. This matters because the neighbouring chapter does have a group-size cap, expressed as its own column, and applicants routinely read it across. If you are applying for a GROUP child care home rather than a family child care home you are under 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3280, and there the answer is completely different. § 3280.52, headed "Ratio requirements," provides at subsection (b): "When children are grouped in similiar age levels, the following child group sizes and ratios of staff persons apply" — the Commonwealth's own typographical error in "similiar" is in the codified text — and then sets out a three-column table whose middle column is headed "Maximum Group Size" and whose third column is headed "Total Number of Staff Required for the Maximum Group Size." The values are: infant, staff 1 to children 4, maximum group size 12, total staff required for the maximum group size 3; young toddler, 1 to 5, maximum group size 12, three staff; older toddler, 1 to 6, maximum group size 12, two staff; preschool, 1 to 10, maximum group size 12, two staff; young school-age, 1 to 12, maximum group size 12, one staff; older school-age, 1 to 15, maximum group size 15, one staff. Subsection (c) then supplies the mixing rule: "When children are grouped in mixed age levels, the age of the youngest child in the group determines the staff:child ratio and maximum group size in accordance with the requirements in subsection (b)." So Pennsylvania knows perfectly well how to write a group-size cap. It wrote one, for group homes, in 1992, and left it there through the May 2008 rewrite ("The provisions of this § 3280.52 amended May 23, 2008, effective September 22, 2008, 38 Pa.B. 2437"). The December 2020 rulemaking that rewrote large parts of all three child care chapters did not touch § 3280.52 and did not add an equivalent to Chapter 3290. Read the enacting order of that rulemaking at 50 Pa.B. 7133 and you will find § 3290.51 and § 3290.52 in the list of amended sections and no new section added to the family home ratio subchapter. The absence in Chapter 3290 is deliberate drafting, not an oversight you can talk a certification representative out of. WHY THE GROUP-HOME NUMBER IS ALMOST INVISIBLE, AND WHY IT IS STILL REAL. In a group child care home the group-size column looks redundant at first glance, because § 3280.51 already caps the facility: "No more than 12 children unrelated to the operator may simultaneously receive care except in a facility serving older school-age children. In a facility serving only older school-age children, a certificate of compliance may be issued for up to 15 children unrelated to the operator." Twelve unrelated children, and a maximum group size of twelve — the numbers coincide, so a group home that serves only unrelated children can never form an unlawful group without also breaching capacity. But the two numbers count different populations, and that is where the group-size column bites. § 3280.51 counts children "unrelated to the operator." § 3280.53 then provides: "(a) The related or foster children of an operator and the children or foster children of a staff person shall be counted for the purpose of satisfying the staff/child ratio requirements in § 3280.52 (relating to ratio requirements). (b) The related or foster children of an operator and the children or foster children of a staff person shall be counted for the purpose of satisfying the allocated space capacity requirements set forth in § § 3280.61 and 3280.62." Related children are outside the twelve of § 3280.51 but inside the ratio and space arithmetic of §§ 3280.52, 3280.61 and 3280.62. A group home with twelve unrelated preschoolers plus the operator's own two preschoolers has twelve for capacity purposes and fourteen bodies in the room, and fourteen exceeds the maximum group size of twelve for the preschool age level. You would have to physically split them into two groups, in two spaces, with the space capacity of § 3280.61(c) satisfied for each: "Indoor child care space is measured within permanent, stationary partitions or walls. The allowable number of children in a space is determined by dividing the total square feet in a space by 40." The clearest proof that group size is a legally distinct object in Chapter 3280, and not a restatement of capacity or ratio, is that Pennsylvania switches it off independently. § 3280.173, headed "Transportation ratio," provides at subsection (a): "The staff-child ratios specified in § 3280.52 (relating to ratio requirements) shall apply when infant, young or older toddler and preschool children are transported. The maximum group size requirements at § 3280.52 do not apply during transportation." Ratio survives the van ride; group size does not. A rule that can be suspended on its own is a rule that exists on its own. Nothing of the kind appears in Chapter 3290, because there is nothing there to suspend. WHAT APPLICANTS WRONGLY BELIEVE, AND WHAT IT COSTS. The first false belief is that a second adult raises the six. It does not. § 3290.51 reads: "The number of children in care may not exceed six children at any one time who are unrelated to either the legal entity or the staff person." Nothing in Chapter 3290 scales the number of children with the number of staff. Where a group home buys children by hiring — three staff for twelve infants, per the third column of the § 3280.52(b) table — a family home cannot buy a seventh child at any price. Applicants who hire a second caregiver expecting to serve eight or ten children discover at the pre-certification inspection that the certificate will be issued for six and that the only path to more is to leave Chapter 3290 altogether. The threshold is in § 3280.4: "Group child care home—The premises in which care is provided at one time for more than 6 but fewer than 16 older school-age level children or more than 6 but fewer than 13 children of another age level who are unrelated to the operator. The term includes a facility located in a residence or other premises." You may run a group child care home inside your residence, but you are then under Chapter 3280 entire — its group-size table, its 40-square-feet-per-child space measurement at § 3280.61(c), its primary staff person qualification levels at § 3280.34(b), its secondary staff person qualifications at § 3280.35 — none of which exists in Chapter 3290. The second false belief is that there is a hidden per-room or per-adult sub-limit inside the six, imported from another state's "no more than four in a group" language or from the accreditation standards applicants read while researching. There is not. Pennsylvania's supervision rule, § 3290.113(a), says only: "Children on the facility premises and on facility excursions off the premises shall be supervised by a staff person at all times. Outdoor play space used by the facility is considered part of the facility premises. The requirement for supervision on and off the facility premises includes compliance with the staff:child ratio requirements in § § 3290.51 and 3290.52." Supervision is defined at § 3290.4 as "critical oversight in which the supervisor can see, hear, direct and assess the activity of the supervisee." That is a qualitative standard about line of sight and audibility, not a numeric group cap. The one place where Pennsylvania does impose a numeric sub-limit on a family home activity is water, and it is a ratio rather than a group size: § 3290.115(a)(5) sets swimming and wading ratios of one staff to one infant, one to two young or older toddlers, one to five preschool children, one to six young school-age and one to six older school-age children, and § 3290.115(a)(7) adds that "The person certified in lifeguard training may not be included in the staff:child ratio." Read it as what it is — an activity-specific ratio that can force you to take fewer children into the water than you have in the house — not as a general group-size rule. The third false belief is the most expensive: that the number on the certificate is negotiable upward because "the space allows it." Chapter 3290 has no space measurement at all. There is no family-home analogue of § 3280.61; the physical-site sections of Chapter 3290 run from § 3290.61 to § 3290.78 and govern unsafe outdoor areas, walkways, electrical covers, toxics, sanitation, smoking, water, indoor temperature, hot pipes, ventilation, telephone, emergency numbers, first-aid kit, building surfaces, paint, firearms, glass and the toilet area — and not one of them counts children per square foot. Square footage is therefore not an argument for more children in Pennsylvania, and it is not an argument for fewer either. Your ceiling is six unrelated children, subject to the age-level sublimits of § 3290.52, full stop. THE ADMINISTRATIVE RECORD CONFIRMS THE ABSENCE. Look at what actually gets printed on the document you will hang on the wall. § 20.55(b) of the licensure chapter that governs your certificate provides: "The certificate of compliance lists the name of the legal entity, the name and address of the facility or agency, satellite sites, if applicable, type of service provided, maximum capacity, title and chapter of applicable licensure or approval regulations, the date the regulations were adopted, certificate number, effective and expiration dates of the certificate, and restrictions, if applicable." Maximum capacity is on the certificate. Group size is not, because for a family child care home there is nothing to print. The appeal provisions say the same thing from the other direction: § 20.81 lists the decisions a legal entity may appeal, and paragraphs (6) and (7) are "The reduction in the maximum capacity of the facility or agency" and "The denial of an increase in the maximum capacity of the facility or agency." Capacity is the only quantity the Department raises, lowers, denies or grants. There is no proceeding in Chapter 20 or Chapter 3290 about group size for a family home, because there is no group size. ONE FORWARD-LOOKING WARNING, MEASURED RATHER THAN ASSUMED. OCDEL has an open project to rewrite the child care certification regulations, and it does not preserve the three-chapter structure: on the Pennsylvania Key's project page for the Child Care Certification Regulation Rewrite Impact Project, OCDEL states that "The proposed Certification Regulations for Chapters 3310 (Family Child Care Homes) and 3320 (Child Care Centers) have been submitted to the Formal Regulatory Review Process" and that "There will be a formal, 30-day Public Comment period while the package is being reviewed by Legislative Committees and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC)." Two chapters, not three — group child care homes are not given their own chapter in that description. If the rewrite lands as described, the group-size table that today lives at § 3280.52(b) is in play, and so is the absence of one in family homes. But it has not landed. As of the Pennsylvania Bulletin issue of August 22, 2026, no proposed rulemaking for a Chapter 3310 or 3320 has been published; a week-by-week sweep of volume 55 (all of 2025) and volume 56 (through issue 56-34) turns up no rulemaking, proposed or final, touching Chapters 3270, 3280 or 3290, and the highest Department of Human Services regulation in the Independent Regulatory Review Commission's list is 14-559, "Residential Services for Children and Youth," with no child care certification package behind it. Until a proposed rulemaking appears in the Bulletin, the group-size law of Pennsylvania is what it has been since 1992: a table for group homes, silence for family homes. Plan and price your business on the silence, and treat the six-child ceiling and the § 3290.52 age caps as the only numbers that will ever appear on an inspection summary.
Rhode Island	Twelve, with no separate group-size subdivision beneath it. A Rhode Island family child care home is one mixed-age group in a residence, so licensed capacity IS group size: capacity is 'the maximum number of children permitted to be in a licensed Family Child Care Home at any one time' (218-RICR-70-00-2.1.4(A)(2)) and 2.3.6(B)(1) forbids exceeding it at any time. What functions as a group-size control instead is the stack of sub-caps — six with no assistant on site, eight with one, twelve only as a Group Family Child Care Home, and inside each the under-eighteen-months limit of two, four or eight (2.3.4(B)(1)-(4)). Four constraints can hold the real number below twelve: measured space, at 35 square feet of usable floor space per child fixed by a DHS visit (2.3.1(F)(1)); local zoning, built into the GFCCH definition itself (2.1.4(A)(8)); the fee tier, since R.I. Gen. Laws 42-12.5-5 prices a group family daycare home application at $250 against $100 for a family daycare home; and the physical layout, because children may be cared for in a basement only if all areas are less than fifty percent below ground level per the building inspector and there are two exits, one of them a door leading directly outside — bulkheads and overhead garage doors are expressly not acceptable exits — and a basement may not be used for sleeping unless the fire marshal has approved the space in a life safety inspection (2.3.1(F)(2)).
South Carolina	GROUP SIZE: THE HOUSE IS THE GROUP — SOUTH CAROLINA SETS NO SUB-GROUP LIMIT FOR A FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME South Carolina does not regulate group size inside a family child care home. There is no rule dividing six children into a "group" and no per-room maximum. The maximum group size is therefore identical to the total capacity: SIX, or fewer if zoning or the certificate says fewer. R.114-533C(1) is the whole of it: "The operator may have up to six (6) children in the home at any given time, including children living in the home and children related to the operator who are under the age of twelve (12), unless zoning restrictions further limit the number of children." The enforceable figure is the one printed on the paper — R.114-531C(4) requires the registration to state "the maximum number of children to be present in the family child care home during operating hours", and R.114-531C(5) forbids exceeding it; R.114-531F(6) and R.114-531F(7) do the same for the licence. WHY THERE IS NO SUB-GROUP RULE, STRUCTURALLY. Group-size regulation is a device for facilities where multiple caregivers each run a room. A South Carolina family child care home is defined around a single resident operator — R.114-530A(15), "The operator has the ultimate responsibility of the family child care home and must be the person in charge of supervising the children in the family child care home"; R.114-532A(1), "The operator of a family child care home shall be at least eighteen (18) years of age and shall reside in the home" — and the supervision rule requires that operator to keep every child in sight: R.114-533A(4), "The operator and/or caregiver is monitoring all of the children's activities by sight." A rule that split six children into two supervised sub-groups would contradict the requirement that one adult see all of them. The regulation instead uses geometry: R.114-533A(2), "The operator and/or caregiver is in the same general area as the children and immediately available to them at all times." THE ONE PLACE THE REGULATION CONTEMPLATES CHILDREN IN DIFFERENT ROOMS, AND WHAT IT DOES ABOUT IT. Naptime. R.114-533B(3): "The operator and/or caregiver keeps all doors open if children nap in different rooms or areas." R.114-533B(2): "The operator and/or caregiver is on the same level of the home where the children are napping." R.114-533B(4): "The operator and/or caregiver visually checks on each child every fifteen (15) minutes." So the regulation permits the children to be physically split during sleep, and then substitutes an open-door, same-floor, fifteen-minute-check regime for the sight-line rule that governs waking hours. DSS's own policy restates the prohibition in the negative — POLICY FCCH 11: "Children shall not sleep in rooms with the door closed to allow for proper supervision during nap time, even if a monitoring device is used" (effective 04/04/2019) — and POLICY FCCH 10 states the floor rule: "The operator and/or staff must be on the same floor level as the children during inside play time and nap time." THE ONE SPACE RULE THAT LOOKS LIKE A GROUP-SIZE RULE AND IS NOT. R.114-535A(1)(c) requires "areas protected from general walkways within the family child care home where crawling children can be on the floor to explore". That is a layout duty, not a group cap: it obliges the operator to carve out a protected floor area for non-walking children, but it does not limit how many children may be in any room. INFANTS DO NOT FORM A SEPARATE GROUP; THEY TRIGGER AN ADULT. The four-infant rule at R.114-533C(2) — "There shall be an additional caregiver, household member eighteen (18) years of age or older, staff, emergency person, or volunteer on the premises when four or more children in attendance are younger than twelve (12) months of age" — adds a person, not a partition. Nothing requires infants to be separated from older children, and nothing caps the number of infants at anything below the six-child ceiling. Six infants in one South Carolina family child care home is lawful provided a second adult is on the premises. Contrast the safe-sleep architecture at R.114-537A, which is per-child rather than per-group: each infant "shall be placed on their backs to sleep in a crib on a flat non-inclined surface" (R.114-537A(1)), in a crib meeting Consumer Product Safety Commission requirements with the compliance certificate kept on file (R.114-537A(2)), with "Individual, comfortable, and sanitary cribs for sleeping and resting" (R.114-537A(3)), placed so that "caregivers ... have ready access to each child" (R.114-537A(5)), and with no infant permitted to "sleep in car seats, bean bag chairs, infant swings, play pens, high chairs, or any other equipment other than an approved crib" (R.114-537A(6)). Six infants therefore means six compliant cribs and six certificates, all placed for ready access — a spatial constraint that in practice limits infant intake more effectively than any group-size rule would. THE SLEEPING-EQUIPMENT RULE FOR OLDER CHILDREN WORKS THE SAME WAY. R.114-535B: "(1) Individual, comfortable and sanitary equipment for sleeping and resting shall be provided. (2) Beds, cots and mats shall be made of easily cleanable material. (3) Placement of beds, cots, or mats shall allow caregivers to have ready access to each individual child." Again per-child, not per-group. And note two blanket equipment prohibitions in the 2024 regulation that operators of older homes are caught by: R.114-535A(2)(b), "Playpens and Pack n' Plays are not permitted", and R.114-535A(2)(c), "Mobile walkers are not permitted." The playpen prohibition is a change from the group child care home regime, where R.114-515B(5) still contemplates them ("If playpens are used, they shall have waterproof, washable, comfortable pads") — a live inconsistency between two neighbouring regulations in the same chapter, created because the family home rules were rewritten in 2024 and the group home rules have not been touched since 2005. GROUP SIZE ON THE NEXT RUNGS, FOR ORIENTATION. A GROUP CHILD CARE HOME is capped at twelve: § 63-13-20(14), "at least seven but not more than twelve children", with R.114-513B(1) making the licence figure controlling ("No group child care home shall have present at any one time children in excess of the number for which it is licensed"). The group home regulation likewise sets no sub-group size — its only structural number is the second-adult trigger at R.114-514A(2), "There shall be an additional teacher/caregiver present when attendance reaches nine children or when four or more of the children are younger than two years old." A CHILD CARE CENTER begins at thirteen (§ 63-13-20(3)) and is governed by R.114-500 to R.114-509, which do contain staff:child ratio provisions (R.114-504) and a transport ratio cross-reference (R.114-505). None of that reaches a six-child home. THE PRACTICAL CEILING IS NOT THE REGULATORY ONE. Four constraints bite before six children do, and an operator planning a South Carolina family child care home should size against these rather than against the number six. (1) Household composition: the operator's own resident children and related children under twelve occupy slots under R.114-533C(1). (2) Zoning: R.114-533C(1)'s closing clause and § 63-13-90 let a municipality set a lower number, and R.114-531C(2) makes continuing zoning conformity a condition of the registration. (3) Infant mix: the four-infant trigger converts a solo business into a two-adult business. (4) For LICENSED homes only, floor area: the 1993 Suggested Standards, made binding on licensed homes by R.114-531D(4)(k) and R.114-531E(1), require "at least 35 square feet of indoor space per child (exclusive of bathrooms and storage places)" and "at least 75 square feet per child of outdoor space" (Standard III.C.4) — 210 and 450 square feet respectively at six children. The regulation itself contains no square-footage rule at all, which is why this constraint is invisible in every summary that reads only R.114-535. BOTTOM LINE. Maximum group size in a South Carolina family child care home = the home's licensed or registered capacity = six children maximum, inclusive of the operator's own and related children under twelve, reducible by zoning or by a condition on the certificate, with no per-room or per-age sub-group limit anywhere in R.114-530 through R.114-537.
South Dakota	There is no separate group-size number for a registered family day care home. The chapter's group-size rule is captioned and drafted for other programs — 'Group size -- Center and school-age programs. Maximum group sizes are determined by individual room capacity and all space used must be approved for care by the department' (ARSD 67:42:17:19) — and the family day care rule is a single combined provision, 'Supervision, ratios and group size -- Family day care' (ARSD 67:42:17:23), which sets only the twelve-child total plus the under-two and under-one sub-caps. So in practice the effective ceiling is: the number printed on the registration certificate (SDCL 26-6-15), never more than twelve at any one time counting the provider's own children under six (ARSD 67:42:17:23; SDCL 26-6-14.1), plus at most two additional school-age or emergency children under SDCL 26-6-15.1 who must still be counted in the ratios. Nothing in chapter 67:42:17 requires a registered home to divide children into groups, to separate age groups, or to get room capacity approved: the plan-approval duty of ARSD 67:42:17:02 falls on 'a center or school-age program' only.
Tennessee	IN TENNESSEE, 'GROUP SIZE' AND 'CAPACITY' ARE THE SAME NUMBER FOR A HOME — THERE IS NO SEPARATE CLASSROOM-GROUP CAP UNDER .20 OR .21. The chapter uses the phrase 'ratios and group size' as a couplet (e.g. .21(1)(a)1, .21(1)(a)4, .05(12)(c)), and the group home chart at .21(1)(b) is captioned 'Group Home Ratio and Group Size Chart' — the same table serves both functions. So the operative maxima are: FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME — SEVEN CHILDREN present at any one time (.20(1)(c)1), rising to TWELVE only where every child above the seventh is related to the primary educator, and reduced by whatever licensed capacity the Department has designated under .02(32) and .20(2)(b). GROUP CHILD CARE HOME — TWELVE CHILDREN present (.21(1)(a)2), rising to FIFTEEN only where the agency is 'approved for three (3) additional school-agers' (.02(26)) and the three extras are school-age children in before/after-school, school-holiday, snow-day or summer care (.21(1)(a)2(i)(II)). The group chart itself prints the constraint inside every row: '(any number over twelve (12) must be school-age)'. THE ONE TRUE SUB-GROUPING RULE IN THE HOME CHAPTERS is the infant/toddler split at .21(1)(d): 'If four (4) or more infants/toddlers attend a group child care home, they shall have a separate and distinct space and their own educator. 1. The space shall provide thirty (30) square feet per child. 2. Barriers shall be sufficient to provide separation without isolating children.' Three infants/toddlers may be mixed into the main group; the fourth forces a physically separate space with a dedicated adult. There is no equivalent provision in .20 — a family child care home is not required to sub-divide, which is consistent with its seven-child ceiling. THE TEN PERCENT VARIANCE APPLIES TO GROUP SIZE AS WELL AS TO RATIO (.21(1)(a)4) — 'up to ten percent (10%), rounded to the nearest whole number, no more frequently than three (3) days per week' — but never above licensed capacity, and 'Infant and toddler groups may never exceed the required ratios and group sizes' (.21(1)(a)4(ii)). Family child care homes get no variance. GROUP SIZE IS A POSTED FACT, NOT A PRIVATE ONE. Rule .05(12)(c): 'Required adult:child ratios and group size shall be posted in every classroom.' In a home, 'every classroom' means every space in which children are cared for. AND THE DOWNWARD SWITCH IS AUTOMATIC. .21(1)(e): 'If attendance drops to seven (7) or fewer children, family child care home ratios apply.' A group home that empties out in the late afternoon is governed, in that hour, by Chart One — which is what permits a single educator to close the day alone.
Texas	TEXAS DOES NOT IMPOSE A MAXIMUM GROUP SIZE ON A CHILD-CARE HOME THAT IS SEPARATE FROM THE HOME'S CAPACITY, AND ANY VENDOR WHO SELLS YOU A "TEXAS FAMILY CHILD CARE GROUP SIZE" NUMBER IS INVENTING IT. In a Texas home operation the number that limits you is the total number of children physically present, and that total is fixed by three things and only three things: the age mix in the chart that applies to your permit type, the flat ceiling of twelve in 26 TAC §747.1605, and the capacity printed on your license or registration, which Child Care Regulation sets from your measured indoor useable activity space. There is no rule that assigns children to a caregiver as a "group," no rule that caps how many children may occupy one room of the house, and no rule requiring you to keep the babies apart from the older children. The proof is not an absence you are asked to take on faith; it is the set of sections that do limit numbers, quoted below, plus the parallel sections in the centre chapter that do impose group size and that the home chapter conspicuously omits. WHERE THE PHRASE "GROUP SIZE" ACTUALLY APPEARS IN THE HOME CHAPTER, AND HOW LITTLE IT DOES. Subchapter E of 26 TAC Chapter 747 is titled "CHILD/CAREGIVER RATIOS AND GROUP SIZES" and its Divisions 2 and 3 are titled "REGULAR RATIOS AND GROUP SIZES IN THE REGISTERED CHILD-CARE HOME" and "REGULAR RATIOS AND GROUP SIZES IN THE LICENSED CHILD-CARE HOME". That is the whole of it. The operative phrase "maximum group size" survives in exactly one place in the chapter: the third column heading of the chart attached to §747.1803, which reads "Maximum group size and number of children two caregivers may supervise" — a column whose value is the total number of children the home may hold, not a sub-group within it. §747.123, the chapter's definition section, defines "Infant", "Toddler", "Pre-kindergarten age child", "School-age child", "Caregiver", "Activity space" and fifty-odd other terms, and defines "Group activities--Activities that allow children to interact with other children in large or small groups", but it does not define "group" and it does not define "group size". Contrast that with the centre chapter, where 26 TAC §746.1503 says in full: "A group of children is defined by the number of children assigned to a specific caregiver or group of caregivers, occupying an individual classroom or well-defined physical space within a larger room. Each child in any group has two things in common with every other child in his group: the same caregiver(s) responsible for the child's basic needs and the same classroom or activity space. Generally, the group stays with the assigned caregiver(s) throughout the day and may move to different areas throughout the child-care center, indoors and out. The group may not mix freely with other children, unless specific criteria are met as specified in this subchapter." Contrast it with §746.1505, which lets a centre put "a group of 25 children and another group of ten children" in one room provided shelves or low movable walls divide them, and with §746.1609, which attaches a chart headed "The maximum group size and the number of children two or more caregivers may supervise when 13 or more children are in care". None of those three sections has an analogue in Chapter 747. The Commission wrote a group-size regime for centres and deliberately did not write one for homes, because a home operation in Texas can never hold more than twelve children in the first place. THE FLAT CEILING, VERBATIM, AND THE TRAP INSIDE IT. 26 TAC §747.1605, headed "May I ever care for more than 12 children in my registered or licensed child-care home?", answers: "No. The total number of children in care must never exceed 12, and may be fewer than 12 depending on the ages of the children in the child-care home. This number includes all children present in the child-care home and any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported." Read the last sentence twice. Twelve is not twelve-in-the-house; it is twelve under your responsibility anywhere on earth at that instant. If your assistant has taken four school-agers to the park, you may have eight at home, not twelve. The counting rule that feeds it is §747.1603, which provides: "In determining child/caregiver ratio, the following apply: (1) The total number of children you may supervise is determined by the ages of the children in the child-care home. (2) You may use the developmental or emotional age, rather than the chronological age, of a child with special care needs, if this is recommended by a health-care professional or a qualified professional and is documented in the child's record. (3) All children present, including children related to you, assistant and substitute caregiver's children, and drop-in and part-time children must be counted in the child/caregiver ratio, by age of the child, regardless of the length of time they are present. (4) You must also count neighborhood children visiting your child-care home, if you are responsible for their care and supervision in the absence of the parent. (5) In a registered child-care home, you may count a child who is at least four years of age and attending a pre-kindergarten program during the customary school day in the same way children five years old and older who are in care after school hours are counted. The pre-kindergarten program must be operated by or in collaboration with the local school district." Paragraph (3) is the paragraph that ends careers: your own children count, your assistant's children count, the drop-in counts, the child who is there for forty minutes counts, and they count by their age, which means your own eleven-month-old occupies an infant slot in the chart exactly as a paying infant would. §747.1601 supplies the elementary definition that the charts operate on: "The child/caregiver ratio is the maximum number of children one caregiver may be responsible for." THE TWO PERMIT TYPES, AND WHY THE CHART YOU READ DEPENDS ON WHICH ONE YOU HOLD. 26 TAC §747.111 fixes the scope: "The minimum standards in this chapter apply to: (1) Child-care homes registered or licensed by us to care for 12 or fewer children in the caregiver's own home for less than 24 hours per day; and (2) Any unlicensed child-care home that requires a registration or license per the Human Resources Code, Chapter 42, because the home is providing child-care services." §747.113 defines the lower tier: "(a) In a registered child-care home, the registered primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for not more than six children from birth through 13 years, and may provide care after-school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children. The total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12. (b) A registered child-care home includes the program, building, grounds, furnishings, and equipment." §747.115 defines the upper tier: "(a) In a licensed child-care home, the licensed primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for children from birth through 13 years, unless the operation was licensed as a group day care home prior to September 1, 2003 ... (c) The total number of children in care varies with the ages of the children, but the total number of children in care in a licensed child-care home at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." The statutory floor under both is Texas Human Resources Code §42.002(9), which still uses the older word: "'Family home' means a home that provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence for not more than six children under 14 years of age, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, and that provides care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children, but the total number of children, including children who are related to the caretaker, does not exceed 12 at any given time." Which permit you need is not your choice: HRC §42.052(c) provides that "A family home that provides care for compensation for three or fewer children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall list with the commission if the home provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence. The home may register with the commission," and §42.052(d) provides that "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission." HRC §42.041(b)(10) then exempts "a family home, whether registered or listed" from the licence requirement, which is why the licensed child-care home is the statute's group day-care home and not a family home at all. THE REGISTERED-HOME CHART, REPRODUCED IN FULL, BECAUSE THE NUMBERS ARE THE RULE. §747.1701 says: "There must not be more children in your registered child-care home at the same time than is shown in the following chart", and the attached figure is headed "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Registered Child-Care Home" with four columns: "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months and older", "Number of children five years old and older after school hours", and "Maximum number of children allowed in the child-care home at any one time, including children related to the caregiver". The rows are: zero infants with six children 18 months and older and six after-school children, total twelve; zero, five and seven, total twelve; zero, four and eight, total twelve; zero, three and nine, total twelve; zero, two and ten, total twelve; zero, one and eleven, total twelve; zero, zero and twelve, total twelve; one infant with five and four, total ten; one with four and five, total ten; one with three and six, total ten; one with two and seven, total ten; one with one and eight, total ten; one with zero and nine, total ten; two infants with four and two, total eight; two with three and three, total eight; two with two and four, total eight; two with one and five, total eight; two with zero and six, total eight; three infants with three and one, total seven; three with two and two, total seven; three with one and three, total seven; three with zero and four, total seven; four infants with two and zero, total six; four with one and one, total six; four with zero and two, total six. The chart stops at four infants. There is no row for five infants, which means a registered child-care home may never have five children under eighteen months present, full stop. The arithmetic to internalise is that each additional infant costs you two whole slots: twelve, ten, eight, seven, six. That is the closest thing Texas has to an under-18-months sub-limit, and it is expressed as a shrinking total rather than as a separate infant cap. THE REGISTERED HOME GETS NO CREDIT FOR A SECOND ADULT, AND THIS IS THE SINGLE MOST EXPENSIVE MISUNDERSTANDING IN THE CHAPTER. 26 TAC §747.1703 is one sentence: "If your child-care home is registered, you may not increase the number of children in care if two or more caregivers are caring for the children." Hire a qualified assistant, pay her wages, put her on the payroll, and your maximum is still six-plus-six with the infant deductions above. The extra adult buys you supervision quality, relief coverage and the ability to be temporarily absent — nothing else. If the second adult is supposed to buy you enrolment, you are in the wrong permit type and you need to convert to a licensed child-care home, which is a different application with a different qualifications track, not an amendment. THE LICENSED-HOME ONE-CAREGIVER CHART, REPRODUCED IN FULL. §747.1801 says: "There must not be more children in your licensed child-care home at the same time than is shown in the following chart", and the attached figure is headed "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home" with the columns "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months through three years old", "Number of children four years old and older" and "Maximum number of children one caregiver may supervise". The rows: zero infants with eight toddlers-through-three and four aged four-plus, total twelve; zero, seven and five, twelve; zero, six and six, twelve; zero, five and seven, twelve; zero, four and eight, twelve; zero, three and nine, twelve; zero, two and ten, twelve; zero, one and eleven, twelve; zero, zero and twelve, twelve; one infant with six and four, total eleven; one with five and five, eleven; one with four and six, eleven; one with three and seven, eleven; one with two and eight, eleven; one with one and nine, eleven; one with zero and ten, eleven; two infants with five and three, total ten; two with four and four, ten; two with three and five, ten; two with two and six, ten; two with one and seven, ten; two with zero and eight, ten; three infants with three and one, total seven; three with two and two, seven; three with one and three, seven; three with zero and four, seven; four infants with two and zero, total six; four with one and one, six; four with zero and two, six. Note two things. First, the licensed chart's age bands are not the registered chart's age bands: the licensed chart splits at four years old and has no separate after-school column, whereas the registered chart splits at five and gives after-school children their own column. Second, the licensed one-caregiver ceiling degrades more gently at one and two infants (eleven and ten, against the registered ten and eight) and then falls off the same cliff at three infants (seven) and four infants (six). Five infants is again not on the chart and is therefore prohibited for a single caregiver. WHAT A SECOND CAREGIVER BUYS IN A LICENSED HOME, AND WHAT THE ARITHMETIC ACTUALLY IS. 26 TAC §747.1803 provides: "If your child-care home is licensed, then the following child/caregiver ratio and maximum group size applies when two caregivers are caring for the children", and the attached figure is headed "Number of Children Two Caregivers May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home" with columns "Number of children 0 - 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months old and older" and "Maximum group size and number of children two caregivers may supervise". The rows: zero infants and twelve older, twelve; one and eleven, twelve; two and ten, twelve; three and nine, twelve; four and eight, twelve; five and seven, twelve; six and six, twelve; seven and five, twelve; eight and four, twelve; nine and three, twelve; ten infants and zero older, ten. That last row is the whole rule in miniature and it is where people get written up. Two caregivers hold the home at twelve all the way up to nine children under eighteen months. At ten infants the ceiling drops to ten and the "18 months old and older" column goes to zero — you may have ten babies and no one else, and there is no row for eleven or twelve infants, so eleven infants under eighteen months is prohibited in a licensed home no matter how many adults you employ. §747.1805 then closes the sequence: "If your child-care home is licensed and more than two caregivers are present caring for the children, then you may care for 12 children of any age from birth through 13 years." Three caregivers is the only configuration in which the age mix stops mattering; it still does not raise the total above twelve, because §747.1605 forbids it. WHO THAT SECOND PERSON MUST BE, IN THE CHAPTER'S OWN WORDS. 26 TAC §747.1201: "There are two kinds of caregivers: assistant caregivers and substitute caregivers." §747.1203: "(a) An assistant caregiver is counted in the child/caregiver ratio and assists in the care and supervision of children. An assistant caregiver may not be left to supervise and care for children without the primary caregiver or a substitute caregiver being present in the child-care home at the same time. (b) A substitute caregiver is the caregiver you leave in charge of your child-care home in your absence. You must give the substitute caregiver the authority to administer your child-care home in compliance with the minimum standards and the Licensing law in your absence. Your substitute caregiver may also be counted in the child/caregiver ratio." §747.1207 sets the assistant's qualifications: be 18 years old except as provided by §747.1211; have a high school diploma, a high school equivalent, or "a high school certificate of coursework completion, as defined in Texas Education Code §28.025(d)"; have completed orientation to your child-care home; meet the background-check requirements in 26 TAC Chapter 745, Subchapter F; hold "a current record of a tuberculosis (TB) examination showing the caregiver is free of contagious TB, if required by the Texas Department of State Health Services or local health authority"; complete Form 2985, the notarised "Licensing Affidavit for Applicants for Employment with a Licensed Operation or Registered Child-Care Home", before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver, as specified in HRC §42.059; and complete Form 2912, the "Pre-Employment Affidavit for Applicants for Employment at Certain Child Care Operations", as specified in HRC §42.0563. §747.1209 adds one item for the substitute: everything in §747.1207 plus "training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR as required by §747.1313". The exception for minors, §747.1211, permits a 16 or 17 year old with a diploma, or a 16, 17 or 18 year old still in high school, to be an assistant caregiver only if "The person is never in charge of an individual child, never has sole responsibility for a group of children, and does not act as the substitute caregiver in your absence", works close by under supervision, and has completed or is enrolled in an approved child-care career programme. That phrase "sole responsibility for a group of children" is the only place the chapter uses "group" in a restrictive sense, and it restricts the person, not the number. Two further sentences bound the whole personnel scheme: §747.1005, "No. A registered child-care home may have only one primary caregiver," and §747.1105, "No. A licensed child-care home may have only one primary caregiver." You cannot split a home into two caregiver-led groups with two primaries; the permit has one head. CAPACITY IS A DIFFERENT NUMBER FROM THE CHART, IT IS PRINTED ON YOUR PERMIT, AND IT WINS WHEN IT IS LOWER. 26 TAC §745.21(4) defines it: "Capacity--The maximum number of children that a permit holder may care for at one time." 26 TAC §747.207(10) makes exceeding it a violation by the primary caregiver, who is responsible for "Ensuring the total number of children in care at the home or away from the home, such as during a field trip, never exceeds the capacity of the home as specified on the license or registration." Where that number comes from is Subchapter T. §747.4001: "Your registered or licensed child-care home must have at least 30 square feet of indoor useable activity space for each child in care." §747.4003, headed "May I care for 12 children if I do not have 30 square feet of indoor useable activity space?": "No. We will limit the number of children you may care for based on the indoor useable activity space in the child-care home." §747.4011: "(a) We determine the indoor useable activity space by: (1) Measuring all indoor useable activity space from wall to wall on the inside at floor level; (2) Rounding all measurements up to the nearest inch; (3) Excluding single-use areas, which are areas not routinely used for children's activities, such as a bathroom, hallway, storage room, cooking area of a kitchen, swimming pool, and storage building; and (4) Excluding floor space occupied by permanent and stationary fixtures, such as built-in bookcases, shelving, and storage/counter space that is not intended for use by children. (b) We use the sum of the measurements to calculate the indoor useable activity space and to determine the maximum number of children you may care for." Twelve children therefore requires 360 square feet of qualifying space after the bathrooms, hallways, kitchen work area and built-ins come out — and applicants routinely discover at the pre-permit inspection that the room they measured at 400 square feet yields 280. Plan the measurement before you plan the enrolment. Note also §747.4009: a home registered or licensed before September 1, 2003 "is exempt from this requirement until your permit to operate is no longer valid," which is a grandfather clause, not a right you can acquire today. THE SECTION THAT SETTLES THE QUESTION OUTRIGHT. 26 TAC §747.4007 is headed "Am I required to care for children younger than 18 months separately from older children?" and answers: "No, but you must be close enough to the younger children to interact with them and to intervene, if needed to protect them." There is the whole answer in one line. Texas does not require age separation in a home, does not require a defined physical space per age band, does not cap the number of children who may be in the living room at once, and therefore has nothing that functions as a group-size rule distinct from the total. The only spatial constraint is thirty square feet per child across the whole qualifying area, and the only proximity constraint is the supervision duty in §747.1501 and §747.1503. THE SITUATIONS WHERE THE REGULAR CHART IS OVERRIDDEN BY A TIGHTER RATIO. Field trips: §747.1901(a) requires, when children mix with children and adults who are not from your home, the ratio in the attached figure — one adult per three children if the youngest in the group is 0 through 23 months, one per six at two years, one per six at three years, one per nine at four years, one per eleven at five years, one per twelve at six years and older. §747.1901(b) allows adult volunteers or household members who are not qualified caregivers to be counted for those mixing trips only, "as long as you maintain at least the regular ratio for your registered or licensed child-care home, as applicable, with qualified caregivers". §747.1901(c) restores the regular ratio for enclosed controlled outings such as library story time or a neighbourhood walk. Transportation: §747.1903(a), "You must have one caregiver in addition to the driver if you transport more than four children who are younger than 24 months," and (b), "When you transport children two years and older, you must comply with the regular child/caregiver ratio. The driver may be counted in this ratio if the driver meets the caregiver qualifications." Wading: §747.2001(b), "If there is more than one child under 24 months in care, a second adult must be present," with the figure "Ratio for Wading Pools" requiring, for a youngest child of 0 through 23 months, one adult for one child or two adults for six; at two years, one adult for five or two adults for eleven; at three years one per six; at four, five and six-plus, one per twelve. Swimming: §747.2005(a), "When your child-care home uses a swimming pool and four or more children are swimming, there must be at least two caregivers present supervising the children who are swimming," with the figure "Ratio for Swimming Pools" at one adult per one child for a youngest of 0 through 23 months, one per two at two years, one per six at three, one per eight at four, one per ten at five and one per twelve at six and older. Naptime and the edges of the day give you nothing: §747.1607, "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers while children are napping," and §747.1609, "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers supervising the children during opening and closing times." Nighttime care does not change the numbers either but does change the hours: §747.3003 permits day-and-night care only with approval and only for "No more than 16 hours within a 24-hour period on a daily basis" or "No more than three consecutive 24-hour periods with a maximum of six 24-hour periods per month, as specified in §745.383". THE STALENESS TRAPS, NAMED, BECAUSE EVERY ONE OF THEM IS LIVE TODAY. First, the Secretary of State has retired the old Texas Administrative Code site: every texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.* and tacctx$.startup URL, including the ones printed in older guides and in most attorneys' bookmarks, now returns a "Site Has Moved" stub, and the rules in effect are served from the Secretary of State's Rules and Meetings portal, which stamps each rule you open with the date you queried it. If your source is a saved readtac link, your source is dead. Second, the rules moved title: they were adopted in Title 40 under DFPS and transferred to Title 26 under HHSC effective March 9, 2018, as published in the Texas Register February 16, 2018, 43 TexReg 909, and the transfer never re-cut the older figures — the charts attached to §747.1701, §747.1801 and §747.1803 are still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701", "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1801" and "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1803", while the charts amended more recently are captioned "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2001(c)" and "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2005(b)". A 40 TAC caption on a chart is not evidence that you are reading a repealed rule; it is evidence that nobody redrew the picture. Third, the statute and the rules use different vocabularies and will not match if you search them the same way: the Human Resources Code speaks of the "family home", the "registered family home", the "listed family home" and the "group day-care home", while 26 TAC Chapter 747 speaks only of the "registered child-care home" and the "licensed child-care home". Fourth, the agency's own manual is not the rule. The HHSC publication "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", cover-dated September 2024 and marked "Revised: December 2025", reproduces §747.1603(5) with the words "attending a pre-kindergarten program away from the home during the customary school day"; the codified rule as served by the Secretary of State today contains no "away from the home", and §747.1603 has not been amended since December 1, 2010, 35 TexReg 10266. The same manual reprints §745.21 with "Capacity" as paragraph (3) and "Caregiver – A person whose duties include the supervision, guidance, and protection of a child or children", where the codified §745.21 numbers Capacity as (4) and defines "Caregiver--A person who is counted in the child to caregiver ratio, whose duties include the supervision, guidance, and protection of a child." Cite the manual to an inspector and you may be citing text the Commission never adopted. Fifth, the codified rules contain their own miscite: §747.201(a)(1) tells the primary caregiver to "Refer to §747.111 of this title (relating to What is a licensed child-care home?)", but §747.111 is "What types of operations do these minimum standards apply to?" and the licensed child-care home is defined at §747.115. Sixth, do not assume the numbers changed because the Legislature met. The Chapter 747 rules carry a Chapter Review Date of 05/17/2024, and the 89th Legislature's 2025 amendments to Human Resources Code Chapter 42 — H.B. 2789, H.B. 4529, H.B. 1403, H.B. 3597, S.B. 1619, H.B. 1610 and the second called session's H.B. 16 — touched the exemption for single source continuum contractors, immunisation and vaccine policy, liability insurance, initial licences, training, penalties and the 2027 restructuring of §§42.0448 and 42.0449, and touched none of §42.002(9), §42.052, or the ratio and group-size authority in §42.042. The last time the Legislature spoke to group size at all it spoke about cost, not numbers: HRC §42.042(m) provides that "In determining minimum standards relating to staff-to-child ratios, group sizes, or square footage requirements applicable to nonresidential child-care facilities that provide care for less than 24 hours a day, the department shall, within available appropriations, conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis and economic impact study that includes families and licensed child-care providers." That subsection is the reason no one should expect a Texas home group-size rule soon: any new one has to survive an economic impact study first. WHAT TO DO WITH ALL OF THIS WHEN YOU PLAN THE HOME. Decide the permit before you decide the enrolment, because §747.1703 means a registered home cannot buy capacity with staff and a licensed home can. Count your own children in the chart at their real ages, because §747.1603(3) does. Measure the qualifying floor area under §747.4011 before you promise anyone twelve places, because §747.4003 lets Child Care Regulation write a smaller number on your permit and §747.207(10) makes that smaller number the one that binds you. Track infants under eighteen months as the scarce resource they are: four is the ceiling for one caregiver in either permit type, nine is the ceiling for two caregivers in a licensed home before the total collapses to ten, and ten is the absolute ceiling for children under eighteen months in any home configuration. And when someone asks you what your maximum group size is, the correct and defensible answer is that Texas does not use that concept for homes, that your limit is the total on your permit, capped at twelve by §747.1605 and reduced by the age mix in §747.1701, §747.1801 or §747.1803 and by your measured space under §747.4001 and §747.4011.
Utah	GROUP SIZE IN A UTAH HOME — A SEPARATE LIMIT FROM RATIO, AND THE ONLY PLACE UTAH PUBLISHES TABLES. 1. THE DEFINITIONS THAT MAKE GROUP SIZE A DISTINCT CONCEPT. R430-50-2(19): "'Group' means the children who the provider assigns to one or more caregivers for their care and supervision." R430-50-2(20): "'Group size' means the total number of children in a group per room or area." R430-50-2(7): "'Capacity' means the maximum number of children the provider is allowed to care for at any given time." Three different measures. CAPACITY is what your permit says. RATIO is adults per children. GROUP SIZE is how many children may be together in one room or area under one assignment. In a centre these diverge sharply; in a home they mostly collapse into one another, because a family home is normally a single group in a single set of rooms. But Utah keeps them formally distinct, and the licensed family rule uses group size — not ratio — as the vehicle for its most important arithmetic. 2. THE CERTIFICATE TRACK HAS NO PUBLISHED GROUP-SIZE TABLE. R430-50-10 contains three subsections and no tables. Its only group-size operative provision is R430-50-10(3): "The provider shall include the provider's and employee's own child age four years old or older in care: (a) in the group size when the parent of the child is working at the facility; and (b) in the group size and the caregiver-to-child ratio when the parent of the child is not working at the facility." So the effective group size for a residential certificate holder is: the number printed on the certificate (which may not exceed eight children in care under R430-50-3(1)(c) and R430-50-10(1)), plus your own 4-12s present during care hours, plus — after school only — up to two additional school-age children under R430-50-9(4). Nothing in R430-50 caps total bodies in the house the way Table 1 does for the licensed track. That is a genuine gap in the certificate rule, and it is flagged in verify_flag. 3. THE LICENSED FAMILY TRACK — TABLE 1 AND TABLE 2, REPRODUCED IN FULL. R430-90-10(4) is the operative sentence: "The provider may not exceed the group sizes found in Table 1 and Table 2." TABLE 1 — "Maximum Group Size With One Caregiver." Column headings, verbatim: "Number of provider's and caregiver's own children ages 4-12 years present during child care hours" \| "Maximum allowed number of children in care, including the provider's and caregivers' own children younger than 4 years old" \| "Total number of children present in the home during child care hours." 0-4 children → 8 children in care → 12 total present. 5 children → 7 children in care → 12 total present. 6 children → 6 children in care → 12 total present. 7 children → 5 children in care → 12 total present. 8 children → 4 children in care → 12 total present. 9 children → 3 children in care → 12 total present. 10 children → 2 children in care → 12 total present. 11 children → 1 child in care → 12 total present. TABLE 2 — "Maximum Group Size With Two Caregivers." Same three column headings. 0-8 children → 16 children in care → 24 total present. 9 children → 15 children in care → 24 total present. 10 children → 14 children in care → 24 total present. 11 children → 13 children in care → 24 total present. 12 children → 12 children in care → 24 total present. 13 children → 11 children in care → 24 total present. 14 children → 10 children in care → 24 total present. 15 children → 9 children in care → 24 total present. 16 children → 8 children in care → 24 total present. 17 children → 7 children in care → 24 total present. 18 children → 6 children in care → 24 total present. 19 children → 5 children in care → 24 total present. 20 children → 4 children in care → 24 total present. 21 children → 3 children in care → 24 total present. 22 children → 2 children in care → 24 total present. 23 children → 1 child in care → 24 total present. 4. HOW TO READ THE TABLES WITHOUT GETTING THEM WRONG. THE THIRD COLUMN IS THE REAL CEILING. Twelve bodies with one caregiver; twenty-four with two. It never varies. Every row of Table 1 says 12; every row of Table 2 says 24. That is a hard occupancy limit on children present in the home during child care hours, and it is the number a licensor counts on arrival. THE FIRST COLUMN COUNTS ONLY 4-12 YEAR OLDS, AND ONLY YOUR HOUSEHOLD'S. It is "the provider's AND CAREGIVER'S own children ages 4-12 years present during child care hours." An assistant who brings her own eight-year-old adds to Column 1 exactly as the provider's eight-year-old does. Children outside 4-12 are not in Column 1 at all: own under-fours are in Column 2, and own thirteen-and-overs are outside both. THE SECOND COLUMN INCLUDES YOUR OWN UNDER-FOURS. The heading is explicit: "including the provider's and caregivers' own children younger than 4 years old." A provider with a two-year-old of her own who is licensed for sixteen may enrol fifteen other children, not sixteen. THE FREE ALLOWANCE. Table 1's first row covers "0-4 children" — up to four own 4-12s cost nothing. Table 2's first row covers "0-8 children." Above the allowance the trade is exactly one-for-one and continues to the bottom of the table. FIVE WORKED CASES. (a) One caregiver, no own children: 8 in care, 12 bodies. The 12 leaves headroom for four non-care children in the house (older siblings, a visiting cousin over 13 is not counted as a child) — but note that anyone 12 or over residing there is a covered individual under R380-600-2(13)(f) and needs clearance. (b) One caregiver, three own children aged 6, 8 and 10: still row "0-4," so 8 in care, 12 total. Those three plus eight in care is eleven bodies — legal. (c) One caregiver, seven own children aged 4-12: row "7 children," so only 5 in care, 12 total. Seven plus five is twelve — exactly at the wall. (d) Two caregivers, ten own 4-12s between them: row "10 children," so 14 in care, 24 total. Ten plus fourteen is twenty-four — exactly at the wall. (e) Two caregivers, one of whom has a two-year-old of her own: that child is in Column 2, not Column 1. Row "0-8" applies, so 16 in care INCLUDING that toddler — fifteen other children. 5. THE UNDER-TWO OVERRIDES BITE BEFORE THE TABLES DO. R430-90-10(3) and R430-50-10(2) are identical: "(a) there is at least one caregiver for every three children younger than two years old; (b) each caregiver cares for no more than two children younger than 18 months old; and (c) there are at least two caregivers if more than three children younger than two years old are present and there are more than six children in care." Two caregivers can hold sixteen under Table 2 — but no more than six of those sixteen may be under two, and no more than four under 18 months. The tables never mention age; the overrides never mention tables; both apply. 6. THE AFTER-SCHOOL OVERRIDE SITS ON TOP. R430-90-9(4) permits "after school child care for up to three additional school-age children" above the licensed capacity; R430-50-9(4) permits two. Utah's statutory instruction, Section 26B-2-402(3), requires this and forbids the department from making the provider get a waiver or a new licence for it. R430-50-2(36) defines the beneficiaries: "'School-age child' means a child age five through 12 years old." The override is silent on whether the third-column total (12 or 24) also stretches; on the text as written, the "total number of children present in the home" cap in Tables 1 and 2 is not expressly relaxed, and a cautious provider should treat 12/24 as absolute. That ambiguity is recorded in verify_flag. 7. SQUARE FOOTAGE AS THE FOURTH CONSTRAINT ON GROUP SIZE. R430-90-9(1): "The provider shall ensure that there is at least 35 square feet of indoor space for each child in care, including the provider's or employee's own child." Sixteen in care needs 560 usable square feet, excluding bathrooms, closets, entryways, hallways and lobbies (R430-90-9(3)). Outdoors, R430-90-9(18): "at least 40 square feet of space for each child using the area at one time." And Section 26B-2-402(7) requires that children through age 12 (through 18 with a disability) be counted for square footage INCLUDING the provider's own child, so your own eleven-year-old, free under Table 2's allowance, still consumes 35 indoor square feet. 8. WHY THERE IS NO THIRD TABLE. R430-90-10(1) stops at "two caregivers for nine to 16 children in care." There is no provision for a third caregiver to unlock a larger group, and no Table 3. Sixteen children in care is the statutory-practical ceiling of the family home track in Utah; beyond it a provider must move to a centre licence under Title R381, where the setting must no longer be "the home of the provider" (Section 26B-2-401(2)(a)). This is the structural reason Utah's family-home ceiling is 16 rather than the 20-plus that some states allow with a third adult. 9. CENTRE GRANDFATHERING DOES NOT APPLY TO HOMES. Section 26B-2-402(9)(a) exempts certain old centres from group-size restrictions: "A child care center constructed prior to January 1, 2004, and licensed and operated as a child care center continuously since January 1, 2004, is exempt from the licensing committee's and the department's group size restrictions, if the child to caregiver ratios are maintained, and adequate square footage is maintained for specific classrooms," and (9)(b) makes that exemption transferable to subsequent licensed operators. This is a CENTRE provision — "child care center," "classrooms" — and there is no equivalent grandfathering anywhere in R430-50 or R430-90. A long-established Utah family home has no legacy group-size relief. 10. ENFORCEMENT OF GROUP SIZE. Exceeding Table 1 or Table 2 is a breach of R430-90-10(4) and runs the R380-600-8(2) ladder up to revocation, with civil money penalties capped at "$10,000 per violation" by Section 26B-2-703(4) and doubling on repeat within 36 months under R380-600-8(6). Because R380-600-7(11) requires OL to post "each citation from each inspection and each substantiated noncompliance from a complaint investigation on the division website for no less than 36 months," an over-capacity citation is publicly searchable by prospective parents for three years.
Vermont	Vermont sets a HOME-WIDE limit, not a per-group or per-room limit: the whole point of the family child care rules is that the licensed space is a residence, and rules 6.2.1.1 and 6.2.2.1 both count 'all children present and unaccompanied by a parent at the FCCH' as one population. REGISTERED FCCH: ten children at any one time under Option 1 (Year Round Care), twelve during summer school vacation under Option 2, per rule 6.2.1.2 — "At no time shall the total number of children in care exceed ten (10) during Option one (1): Year Round Care or twelve (12) children for Option two (2): Summer Vacation" — with the twelve reachable only in the six-plus-six configuration of rule 6.2.1.7 and only with two staff. LICENSED FCCH: whatever number the Division has written on the certificate, capped by the charts at twelve; rule 6.2.2.2 states the certificate rule and rule 2.3.10.1.1 requires the posted licence of licensed programs to display "The maximum number of children who may be served at one (1) time; and The ages of the children who may be served." The practical ceiling by staffing in the licensed tier is: one staff = 6 (or 8 if every child is 3-12 and none is under 3); two staff = 12, but only with four or fewer children under twenty-four months; three staff = 12 with as many as six under twenty-four months. Age sub-caps ride on top of the totals and are the real constraint for infant care: a registered home with one adult may hold no more than two children under twenty-four months in a mixed group (three if the entire group is under twenty-four months); with two adults, four in a mixed group and five or six if the whole group is under twenty-four months; a licensed home needs three staff before it may hold six children under twenty-four months. Changing either the number or the ages served is not a unilateral act: rule 2.3.11 requires prior notice to the Division of "a change in the number of children the FCCH serves at any one (1) time" and of "a change in the ages of children the FCCH serves," after which "The Division shall determine whether it will be possible to modify a current license, approve a time limited variance or whether the FCCP must submit an application for a new license." Exceeding the number is defined by rule 2.2.44 as a SERIOUS VIOLATION, which triggers the mailed Parental Notification Letter of rule 2.8.2 and, under 33 V.S.A. § 151(3), exposes the licence to suspension where children are immediately imperilled. One caution for anyone comparing Vermont to its neighbours: the number that appears in national comparison tables for Vermont — commonly '10' — is the registered Option 1 figure and silently omits the summer twelve, the certificate-driven licensed tier and every age sub-cap in the five charts.
Virginia	VIRGINIA IMPOSES NO SEPARATE "GROUP SIZE" CAP ON A HOME. There is no section of 8VAC20-800 titled group size, no maximum-group-size table, and no rule requiring children to be divided into groups. Searching the whole of Chapter 800 for a group-size limit returns nothing; the concept simply is not used for homes. What bounds the number of children in one place at one time is the interaction of three separate limits: (1) LICENSED CAPACITY, absolute and stated on the licence — "The provider shall ensure that the total number of children receiving care at any one time does not exceed the maximum licensed capacity of the home" (8VAC20-800-40 A), the licence stating "The maximum number of children who may be in care at any time" (8VAC20-821-30 E 5). The statutory ceiling on that number is 12 (Va. Code § 22.1-289.02). (2) THE 16-POINT RULE, 8VAC20-800-570, which converts age mix into a required number of caregivers rather than into a group boundary. Because the rule is expressed per CAREGIVER rather than per group, adding a second caregiver in the same room lifts the ceiling to 32 points — subject to the licensed-capacity cap. Virginia does not require that those children be separated into two groups, nor that the caregivers be assigned to distinct sub-groups. This is a real difference from most states' home rules, which pair a ratio with a group-size cap. (3) THE DEFINITIONAL CEILING OF 12, above which the program stops being a home. 8VAC20-821-10: a child day center is a program offered to "(ii) 13 or more children at any location." At 13 children the program has changed legal species and must be licensed as a center under 8VAC20-780, in a building meeting the Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code Use Group requirements (8VAC20-821-50 A) with fire and health inspection reports (8VAC20-821-50 B and C) — none of which is required of a home. WHERE VIRGINIA DOES CONSTRAIN PHYSICAL GROUPING, IT DOES SO THROUGH SPACING RULES, NOT GROUP SIZE. 8VAC20-800-510 C: "Occupied cribs, cots, rest mats, and beds shall be: 1. At least three feet from any heat-producing appliance; and 2. At least 12 inches from each other." 8VAC20-800-510 A: "A child shall be provided with an individual crib, cot, rest mat, or bed for resting or napping," and B, "Upper levels of double-deck beds shall not be used." 8VAC20-800-520 A: "Cribs shall be provided for children from birth through 12 months of age and for children over 12 months of age who are not developmentally ready to sleep on a cot, rest mat, or bed." And 8VAC20-800-390: "A. Each child who is two years of age and older shall have access to an individual location in which to keep clothing, toys, and belongings. B. Each child who is under the age of two shall have an individual location in which to keep clothing, toys, and belongings that is accessible to the caregiver and parent." These are per-child entitlements; in a small home they bind the practical number long before any notional group-size rule would. THE ONE PLACE A "TWO CAREGIVER" MINIMUM APPEARS. 8VAC20-800-660 E 1, swimming in water over two feet deep: "A minimum of least two caregivers shall be present and able to supervise the children" (the "of least" is the codified text's own typographical slip; the meaning is unambiguous). That is a floor on caregivers, not a cap on group size. VERDICT ON THE PRIOR ENTRY. CONFIRMED. The prior entry's formulation — "Virginia's family day home standards express group size through licensed capacity + the point system rather than a separate 'group size' cap" — is correct and survives verification against the full text of Chapter 800.
Washington	Washington does not cap group size in a family home the way it caps it in a center, and understanding why is the difference between designing a program that gets licensed and one that gets a modification letter. In a center, WAC 110-300-0356(5) sets a "maximum group size" for each age band inside "each classroom or well-defined space," and a center can hold several such groups at once. A licensed family home is a single group. The chapter contains no per-room group ceiling for family homes because the whole home is the room. What WAC 110-300-0355 caps instead is total capacity — "The maximum number of children that may be in care at any one time (total capacity)" — and it caps that number at twelve. WAC 110-300-0355(1): "The department issues initial or nonexpiring family home licenses for up to 12 children. The department will not issue a family license to care for more children than permitted by the rules in this chapter but may issue a license to care for fewer than the maximum allowable enrolled children." The statutory source of the twelve is RCW 43.216.010(1)(c), which defines a family day care provider as one serving "not more than 12 children at any given time in the provider's home in the family living quarters." Every "group size" question in a Washington family home therefore resolves into a capacity question plus a staffing question, and the phrase "maximum group size" appears exactly once in WAC 110-300-0355, in a special infant-toddler configuration described below. Twelve is not a starting point. It is the end of a four-step ladder keyed to your experience, and the trap that costs money is building a house for twelve and being licensed for six. WAC 110-300-0355(7): "When applying for an initial or nonexpiring family home license, a family home licensee with less than one year of experience may request from the department a capacity of up to six children, birth through 12 years of age. (a) A maximum of three children may be under two years of age. (b) If there are three children under two years of age, one of these children must be able to walk independently." A first-time applicant with no prior licensed child care experience can request six children and no more, and inside that six no more than three under two; to have all three of those under-twos she must show that one of them walks independently. An enrolled non-walking eleven-month-old is not just a child; it is a constraint on the two slots next to him. Rung two, WAC 110-300-0355(8): "a family home licensee with at least one year but less than two years of experience and: (a) Working alone may request a capacity of up to eight children ages two through 12 years of age, with a maximum of four children under three years of age. (b) Working with a qualified assistant may request a capacity of up to nine children birth through 12 years of age with a maximum of four children under two years of age." Read the age ranges, not just the numbers. Working alone at this rung, your licensed age range starts at two years — you cannot enroll an infant at all, at any capacity, if you intend to work alone with one to two years of experience. Adding a second adult buys you one more child and, far more valuably, drops your licensed floor from two years to birth. Providers who plan an infant-heavy business and then discover they must hire from day one are the most common casualty of this rung. Rung three, WAC 110-300-0355(9), is where twelve becomes reachable: "a family home licensee with at least two years' experience and: (a) Working alone may request a capacity of up to 10 children ages three years through 12 years of age; (b) Working alone may request a capacity of up to 12 children for school age children only; and (c) Working with a qualified assistant, may request a capacity of up to 12 children birth through 12 years of age with a maximum of six children under two years of age with two children being able to walk independently." Three distinct licenses hide in that subsection. Ten children working alone, but only ages three through twelve — a solo provider with two years of experience is barred from enrolling any child under three at that capacity. Twelve children working alone, but school-age only, meaning the five-through-twelve band defined in WAC 110-300-0005 as children "attending a public or private school or ... receiving home-based instruction under chapter 28A.200 RCW"; that is the highest solo number in the chapter and it is available only to an after-school program. Or twelve children birth through twelve with a qualified assistant, with a hard sub-cap of six under two, and inside that six, at least two children who "walk independently." Licensors verify that clause at inspection, because non-walking infants cannot self-evacuate. Six under-twos of whom none walk is not a licensable configuration at capacity twelve, even with an assistant and the square footage. Rung four is the only true "group size" rule in the family home section, and it exists to make an all-infant home possible. WAC 110-300-0355(10): "A family home licensee, with two years of experience, may request a license for birth to 24 months of age with a maximum group size of eight when: (a) There are two staff present with the group consisting of one staff who meets the qualification of the licensee and another who meets the qualifications to be counted in ratio; (b) The staff-to-child ratio is 1:4; (c) Fifteen additional square feet are provided for each infant or toddler; and (d) A second staff member is present whenever: (i) More than two children in care do not walk independently; or (ii) When there are more than four children in care." Eight infants and toddlers, 1:4, two adults, one of whom must meet the qualifications of a family home licensee rather than merely those for being counted in ratio, and fifteen square feet per child on top of the ordinary thirty-five. This is the Washington infant-care license and it is capped at eight, not twelve. If you intend to specialize in infants, design your space, budget, and hiring around eight. Mixed ages do not get you a bonus in a family home; they get you a second adult. The staffing triggers are set out in WAC 110-300-0355(11): "The staff-to-child ratio is determined by the ages and number of children in care. Two early learning program staff are required anytime: (a) More than six children are in care and any child in care is under two years of age; (b) More than eight children are in care and any child in care is under three years of age; or (c) More than 10 children are in care and any child is under school age." Those three triggers are the practical group size rules of a Washington family home, and they operate hour by hour, not on the license. Seven children with a single fifteen-month-old present requires two adults. Nine children with a single two-and-a-half-year-old present requires two adults. Eleven children with one four-year-old present requires two adults. Move that one young child out of the home and the same eleven children need one adult. A Washington family home's real capacity is a function of the youngest child in the building at that moment, which is why licensors arrive during the four-o'clock hour, when the school-age children are back and the preschooler has not yet gone home, and count. There is no mixed-age time allowance for family homes, and the 2026 amendment that everyone is talking about does not apply to you. Centers may combine age groups for limited periods. Engrossed Substitute House Bill 2219, Chapter 82, Laws of 2026, effective 11 June 2026, amended RCW 43.216.255(2) to read: "In establishing the maximum group sizes and staff-to-child ratios for child care centers, the licensing standards established and implemented by the department must allow for the following periods of mixed-ratio time in which children of different age groups may be combined, provided the staff-to-child ratio and group size designated for the youngest child in the mixed group are maintained: (a) Except as provided in (b) of this subsection, up to 2.5 hours per day, to be used on a schedule established by the center; and (b) Up to four hours per day, to be used on a schedule established by the center, if at least 90 minutes of that time is reserved for allowing meal and rest breaks for center staff." Read the opening words: "for child care centers." The mixed-ratio allowance is a center allowance. A family home has one group all day and therefore needs no permission to mix ages; it simply carries the youngest child's ratio for as long as that child is on the premises, with no two-hour or two-and-a-half-hour window of relief. That same 2026 amendment is the live example of the trap that Washington's own code publication sets for applicants, and you should check it yourself before you rely on any printed rule. The codified text of WAC 110-300-0356(6) served today on the Legislature's WAC site still reads that a center licensee may combine children of different age groups "for periods of no more than the first two hours of the day or the last two hours of the day, not to exceed two hours in any given day," and its history line ends at WSR 18-15-001, filed 7/5/18. That text is dead. DCYF replaced it by emergency rule, WSR 26-13-050, filed and effective 11 June 2026 at 3:10 p.m., which struck the two-hour language and substituted "for up to: (a) Two and a half hours per day, on a schedule established by the center; or (b) Four hours per day, on a schedule established by the center, if at least 90 minutes of that time is reserved for allowing meal and rest breaks for center staff." The permanent rulemaking is still open — DCYF filed a preproposal statement of inquiry, WSR 26-10-098, on 6 May 2026, naming WAC 110-300-0356 among the sections to be amended under ESHB 2219, and stating that the process will be "Negotiated rule making; and collaborative." So the codified rule is the stale one, the emergency rule is the operative one, and the permanent rule does not exist yet. If you are quoting a group size rule from a downloaded PDF of chapter 110-300 WAC, check the register filings for the section before you build a schedule on it. The counting rules are stricter than the numbers, and they are where capacity violations actually arise. WAC 110-300-0355(3): "A family home licensee must not exceed the total capacity or age range stated on the child care license at any time except as provided in this section and WAC 110-300-0358. All children on the premises, signed in to child care, on an off-site trip from the early learning program, or being transported by the early learning program staff are counted in capacity including the children of staff." And WAC 110-300-0355(4): "Any child birth through 12 years old on the premises, signed in to the child care, on an off-site trip from the early learning program, or being transported counts in capacity. This includes a family home licensee's own children, children of staff, or visiting children not accompanied or supervised by an adult." Four categories of child that are not your enrolled children count against your capacity: your own children under thirteen, your assistant's children, any child on the premises signed in, and any unaccompanied visiting child. "Premises" is defined broadly in WAC 110-300-0005 as "the licensed and unlicensed space at the licensed address including, but not limited to, buildings, land, and residences," so your own eight-year-old doing homework in an unlicensed bedroom is on the premises and counts. Hiring an assistant who has two young children of her own does not add two adults' worth of ratio; it adds one adult and subtracts two slots. Run that arithmetic before you hire. Two categories are counted asymmetrically, which is the only relief in the section. WAC 110-300-0355(3)(a): "A family home licensee must receive department approval to care for a child with special needs, pursuant to WAC 110-300-0300, if the child is older than the maximum age identified on the license. A child with documented special needs may be in care up to age 19 and must be counted in both capacity and staff-to-child ratio." WAC 110-300-0355(3)(b): "A child with special needs who requires individualized supervision pursuant to WAC 110-300-0300 counts towards capacity but does not count in the staff-to-child ratio." A child who requires individualized supervision occupies a licensed slot but is invisible to the ratio arithmetic, which can be the difference between needing a second adult and not. WAC 110-300-0355(3)(c) covers the child who ages out mid-enrollment: a child "who turns 13 years old permitted by chapter 110-15 WAC ... must be counted in both capacity and staff-to-child ratio." The number is also a room-size number. Capacity is not granted on staffing alone. WAC 110-300-0355(2) lists the seven factors DCYF weighs: "(a) Square footage of the early learning program; (b) An early learning provider's years of experience in licensed child care (experience must be from working as a center director, program supervisor, lead teacher, family home licensee, or another similar role in a child care setting); (c) A provider's education and ongoing training; (d) The age range requested or approved by the department; (e) The amount of developmentally appropriate equipment, materials, and toys an early learning program can provide children to use; (f) A provider's licensing history with the department; and (g) The number of qualified staff available to meet staff-to-child ratios." Note the definition of experience in (b): informal babysitting, nanny work, and parenting do not count, and applicants who assume otherwise are told at orientation that they are rung-one applicants capped at six. The floor-space arithmetic is WAC 110-300-0354(1): "To define capacity, licensed indoor early learning program space must have a minimum of thirty-five square feet per child in attendance." Twelve children therefore requires at least 420 square feet of qualifying indoor space, and the exclusions in WAC 110-300-0354(2) will delete more of your house than you expect: "(a) Unlicensed space; (b) Hallway space that is used for emergency evacuation or is not approved to be used for program activities; (c) Bathrooms and diaper changing areas (including twenty-four inches surrounding diaper changing areas and handwashing sink, unless the diaper changing area has a two foot high barrier); (d) Laundry areas; (e) Closets; (f) Stairways; and (g) Floor space occupied by shelves, built-in cabinets, file cabinets, desks, or other office equipment not intended to be accessible to children." What counts back in is narrower than intuition too: WAC 110-300-0354(1)(b) allows "Floor space under tables, desks, chairs, and other equipment used as part of children's activities," and WAC 110-300-0354(1)(d) allows napping areas "if mats and cots are removed when not in use and children have free access to the area." A stairway landing, a mudroom used for evacuation, and the twenty-four inches around your changing table are all deleted from the measurement, and that deletion decides whether your capacity is eight or ten. Note one asymmetry that catches home providers: the extra fifteen square feet per crib or playpen in WAC 110-300-0354(1)(a) is written for "Center early learning program space." For a family home, the additional fifteen square feet per infant or toddler appears only in the infant configuration of WAC 110-300-0355(10)(c) and in the over-twelve waiver at WAC 110-300-0358(3)(c)(ii). The assistant regime is where WAC 110-300-0355 is least precise and where you should read the definitions rather than the capacity table. WAC 110-300-0355(8)(b) and (9)(c) both turn on "a qualified assistant," a phrase chapter 110-300 WAC never defines. What the chapter does define, in WAC 110-300-0005, are "assistant teacher," "aide," and "lead teacher," and WAC 110-300-0100 sets each one's qualifications. An assistant teacher must, under WAC 110-300-0100(7)(a), "(i) Be at least 18 years old; (ii) Have a high school diploma or equivalent; (iii) Have an ECE initial certificate or equivalent by August 1, 2030, or within five years of being hired or promoted into this position, whichever occurs later," plus preservice requirements under WAC 110-300-0105 and annually documented professional development. An aide, under WAC 110-300-0100(8), need only "(a) Be at least 14 years old; (b) Have a high school diploma or equivalent, or be currently enrolled in high school or an equivalent education program," plus preservice requirements — and critically, WAC 110-300-0100(8)(e) provides that "Aides may be counted in the staff-to-child ratio if they are working under the continuous oversight of a lead teacher, program supervisor, center director, assistant director, assistant teacher, or family home licensee." A fourteen-year-old aide can be your second adult for ratio purposes in a family home, provided you are continuously overseeing them. That is a real and cheap staffing option that most applicants do not know exists. It is not, however, a substitute for the qualified second staff member required in the infant configuration: WAC 110-300-0355(10)(a) demands "one staff who meets the qualification of the licensee and another who meets the qualifications to be counted in ratio," so an eight-infant home needs one adult with the licensee's own qualifications on site, not an aide plus a teenager. WAC 110-300-0100(8)(e)(i) softens the training burden for occasional help: "Aides working 19 or fewer hours per month can be counted towards staff-to-child ratio with applicable preservice requirements ... but without in-service training requirements." Nineteen hours a month is the line; cross it and, with twelve cumulative months of employment, the full in-service training under WAC 110-300-0107(1)(a) attaches. You must hold the ratio in places applicants forget. WAC 110-300-0345(2): "An early learning provider must meet capacity, group size, mixed age grouping, and staff-to-child ratios while children are in care. This includes, but is not limited to: (a) Indoor and outdoor play activities; (b) Off-site activities; (c) During transportation; (d) Meal times; (e) Rest periods; (f) Evening or overnight care; and (g) When children are on different floor levels of the early learning program." Subsection (g) is the family home killer. A two-story or split-level home with children on two floors requires an adult on each floor if the ratio would otherwise be broken, because you cannot supervise a basement playroom from a main-floor kitchen. WAC 110-300-0345(5)(a) forecloses the workaround: a provider must "Not use devices such as a baby monitors, video monitors, or mirrors in place of supervision." WAC 110-300-0355(5) and (6) extend the same duty outward: you "must provide qualified staff to fulfill the staffing requirements and staff-to-child ratios during operating hours, including off-site activities and when transporting children in care," and must "provide additional staff, pursuant to WAC 110-300-0350, when children are participating in water activities or activities near water." A wading pool in the backyard is a staffing event. Above twelve, there is exactly one door and it is narrow. RCW 43.216.692 authorizes it: "The department may waive the limit, as established in RCW 43.216.010(1)(c), that restricts family home providers from serving not more than 12 children. The department must establish conditions for such waivers by rule and must assess, at a minimum, the provider's available square footage and staffing capabilities prior to issuing any waiver of the limit of 12 children." The rule is WAC 110-300-0358, most recently amended by WSR 25-01-087, filed 13 December 2024, effective 13 January 2025 — a genuinely recent rewrite, so any guidance older than 2025 describes a superseded version. WAC 110-300-0358(2): "Providers must apply to the department in writing to request waivers to serve more than 12 but not more than 16 children." Sixteen is the absolute ceiling in Washington; there is no "group home" tier, and no path from a family home to a twenty-child program that does not involve becoming a center under WAC 110-300-0010(4). The waiver conditions are cumulative and each one has been the reason someone was denied. Experience: WAC 110-300-0358(3)(a) requires "at least three years' of experience to be eligible for a waiver under this section," served "as: Center director, program supervisor, family home licensee, or other similar role in a child care setting." Note that lead teacher, which counts for ordinary capacity under WAC 110-300-0355(2)(b), is absent from the waiver list. Licensing status: WAC 110-300-0358(3)(b) requires that "The licensee must be operating under a full, nonexpiring family home license" — an initial licensee cannot apply, no matter how good the space. Space: WAC 110-300-0358(3)(c) requires "at least 35 square feet of licensed, accessible indoor space for each child included in the total capacity," plus "an additional 15 square feet of licensed, accessible indoor space for each child under the age of 24 months," plus "at least 75 square feet of licensed, accessible outdoor space for each child included in the total capacity," with the alternative of "a plan to rotate groups of children to play outdoors or a department-approved plan to use an off-site play area." Sixteen children is therefore 560 square feet of qualifying indoor space and 1,200 square feet of qualifying outdoor space before the infant surcharge. Staffing under the waiver is where the qualification requirements finally bite. WAC 110-300-0358(3)(d): "(i) The licensee must have an ECE short certificate or equivalent, as approved and verified in the electronic workforce registry by the department. (ii) When the licensee is not on-site, they must designate a person on-site who meets the requirements of this subsection to manage the early learning program. (iii) Additionally, at least one staff person or volunteer working on-site must have an ECE initial certificate or equivalent." An ECE short certificate is defined in WAC 110-300-0005 as "an initial certificate plus eight quarter credits" — twenty quarter credits of college coursework in total. Ordinary family home licensure gives you until 1 August 2030 or five years from licensure to obtain the initial certificate under WAC 110-300-0100(1)(b)(i); the waiver requires the short certificate now, in hand, verified. The waiver ratios are the real group size ceiling above twelve, and they are tighter than the ordinary rungs. WAC 110-300-0358(3)(e), "Staff-to-child ratios and age group limits. When operating with 13 to 16 children: A provider licensed to care for children ages: (i) Two years old and above must not exceed a maximum staff-to-child ratio of 1:8; (ii) Under two years of age must not exceed a maximum staff-to-child ratio of 1:6; and (iii) Under two years of age may have up to six children attend at any one time under the following conditions: (A) Five children under two years of age may attend at any one time if at least one of those children can walk independently. (B) Six children under two years of age may attend at any one time if at least two of those children can walk independently." Sixteen children aged two and over therefore requires two adults at 1:8. Six under-twos remains the absolute infant sub-cap whether you are licensed for twelve or sixteen — the waiver buys you older children, never more babies. The rest of WAC 110-300-0358(3) is a physical-plant audit. Under (f), your plan for the licensed space "must include details regarding napping, supervision, and diapering, if applicable," and "A waiver granted under this section does not allow a licensee to provide overnight care for more than 12 children" — twelve remains the hard overnight number. Under (g), your emergency plan "must account for the total capacity of children requested," the space "must have emergency lighting for interior stairs that automatically turns on when electrical power goes out," any connected kitchen must have "At least one fire extinguisher or one can of fire extinguisher aerosol spray" and "A heat detector," and your staff "must be able to demonstrate, at least annually to licensing staff, the ability to evacuate all early learning staff and children from inside the home to a safe location outside the home in two minutes or less." Two minutes, with sixteen children, demonstrated on demand every year, is the condition that quietly disqualifies most multi-level homes. Under (h), "There must be a ratio of at least one working flush toilet and one handwashing sink for every 15 household members, staff, and requested capacity of children" — count your household, not only the children, and a home on a private septic system must supply "verification from the local health jurisdiction the system can accommodate the total number of household members, staff, and requested capacity of children." Then there are the three procedural conditions that turn the waiver from a form into a project. WAC 110-300-0358(5): before you may care for thirteen to sixteen children, "(a) The waiver must be approved in writing by the department secretary or the secretary's designee; and (b) The licensee must provide documentation to the department from the city or county within which the early learning program operates (or a third party approved by the city or county) that states the early learning program space and structures meet local building codes and the requirements of the department's Family Home Child Capacity Waiver inspection checklist." That is a paid local building-code inspection of a private residence. Budget for it. WAC 110-300-0358(8) requires you to tell parents: you "must inform the parents and guardians of enrolled children of the approved waiver: (a) Prior to operating with 13 to 16 children for the first time; and (b) When a new child or new family is enrolled." And WAC 110-300-0358(6) removes your recourse: "A denial of a waiver request is not an enforcement action as described in RCW 43.216.010 and is not subject to an appeal by a provider." There is no administrative hearing on a denied capacity waiver. You may reapply; you may not appeal. Finally, WAC 110-300-0358(4) allows the waiver to be "time specific" or open-ended, and WAC 110-300-0358(7) lets DCYF rescind it "at any time," including when "The department issues an enforcement action against the provider," when "The department and the provider enter into a facility licensing compliance agreement," when "A licensing rule that was considered in granting the waiver is repealed or amended," or when the license is transferred under RCW 43.216.305 and WAC 110-300-0011 and the waiver conditions can no longer be met. A single facility licensing compliance agreement — not a revocation, not a suspension, just an agreement to fix something — can cost you four enrolled children overnight. For orientation, here is what the neighbouring license types cap, because applicants shop between them. A center under WAC 110-300-0356(5) runs by classroom: infants birth through eleven months at "Maximum group size of eight with a ratio of one staff to four children (1:4)" or "Maximum group size of nine with a ratio of 1:3"; toddlers twelve through twenty-nine months at "Maximum group size of 14 with a ratio of 1:7" or "Maximum group size of 15 with a ratio of 1:5"; preschoolers thirty months through six years "with a maximum group size of 20 with a ratio of 1:10"; and school-age children five through twelve who are enrolled in or attending kindergarten or elementary school "with a maximum group size of 30 with a ratio of 1:15." A center's mixed-age combinations are separately tabulated in WAC 110-300-0357. A school-age program under chapter 110-301 WAC is capped by WAC 110-301-0356(5) at "the maximum group size of thirty children and ratio of 1:15 staff members to children, including children related to staff or the licensee," with the note that "Group size may exceed thirty children only for special events such as assemblies or performances." An outdoor nature-based program under chapter 110-302 WAC is capped by WAC 110-302-0356(8): preschool-age thirty months to six years at "the maximum group size must not exceed 16 children with a staff-to-child ratio of one staff member to six children"; school-age five to thirteen at "the maximum group size must not exceed 20 children with a staff-to-child ratio of one staff member to eight children"; and school-age nine to thirteen at twenty children with 1:10. WAC 110-302-0356(8)(d) then adds a requirement no family home carries: "Each group must be staffed by at least two qualified staff members who are not aides or volunteers. Every third staff member counted in the ratio may be an aide or volunteer." Three closing cautions on the number written on your license. First, it is a ceiling on simultaneous attendance, not on enrolment, and WAC 110-300-0005 defines "'Capacity'" to include "any children in transit to or from the program or other activities such as field trips while the children are signed in to the care of the program" — a child on your van is a child in your count. Second, DCYF is not obliged to grant what you request: WAC 110-300-0355(1) says the department "may issue a license to care for fewer than the maximum allowable enrolled children," and licensing history under WAC 110-300-0355(2)(f) is an express factor, so a prior violation reduces future capacity. Third, exceeding capacity is not a paperwork error: it goes into the licensing history that determines whether you ever get above twelve, and under RCW 43.216.325 it is an enforcement action in its own right. Count your own children, count your assistant's children, count the neighbour's child who wandered in, and count them on every floor of the house.
West Virginia	No separate group-size limit beyond the home capacity itself: 6 children under age 13 at one time (no more than 2 under 24 months) for a registered Family Child Care Home (78 CSR 19 §6.6.a). A licensed Family Child Care Facility may serve up to 12, with a two-staff requirement once more than 6 children (or more than 2 under 24 months) are present (78 CSR 18 §7.1.a).
Wisconsin	There is no age-banded group size in family child care as there is in a group center. The whole center is one group and 12 is the number (DCF 250.055 (2) (a)), counting all children under 7 including the provider's own and all children 7 and over who are not the provider's own. Within that ceiling the only sizing instrument is the weight arithmetic of DCF 250.055 (2) (b) and Table DCF 250.055, capped by the statutory bar in s. 48.67 (2m), Stats., on more than 2 providers at one time. Three things lower the effective number: space (35 square feet of usable indoor floor space per child and 75 square feet of outdoor play space per child based on licensed capacity, DCF 250.06 (1) (b) 1. and (11) (b) 2.); age mix (the 4-under-18-months and 8-under-18-months stops of DCF 250.055 (2) (c)); and the level of the house (par. (d)). During night care, care between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. under DCF 250.03 (21), the same ratios and group sizes apply, and where the same premises serve both day and night care the number of children during any overlap may not exceed licensed capacity (DCF 250.10 (2)).
Wyoming	Set by the Ch.11 §2(b) ratio table per age band, not a single statewide number: infants max group 10 (3 staff), one-year-olds 12, two-year-olds 18, 3–4-year-olds 30, school age 40. A Family Child Care Home cannot exceed 10 children total.

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Each state rule is cited to its statute or licensing agency and dated on its page. General information, not legal advice and not a guarantee of licensure — confirm with your state’s licensing agency before applying.