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Home Daycare License Requirements in Pennsylvania (2026)

Opening a home daycare in Pennsylvania means getting a family child care home license from the Department of Human Services (DHS). Here is exactly what that takes in 2026 — your capacity limit and ratios, the training and background checks, the application steps, and the postings and enrollment forms you need — sourced to the state’s own rules and dated.

Who needs a license — home types in Pennsylvania

A Pennsylvania "family child care home" is defined in 55 Pa. Code § 3290.4 in one sentence: "Family child care home—A home other than the child's own home, operated for profit or not-for-profit, in which child care is provided at any one time to four, five or six children unrelated to the operator." Four, five or six. Not "up to six." Not "one to six." The floor is as real as the ceiling, and it is the floor that surprises people. The applicability section says the same thing from the other direction and adds the age limit. § 3290.3(a): "This chapter applies to facilities in which out-of-home care is provided, at any one time, for part of a 24-hour day to four, five or six children who are not related to the operator and who are 15 years of age or younger. This chapter applies to private or public, profit or nonprofit facilities." The age ceiling is carried by the definition of "child" in § 3290.4: "Child—A person 15 years of age or younger." So a sixteen-year-old in your care is not a "child" for counting purposes at all. And note "for part of a 24-hour day" — Pennsylvania's regime is about care that is not full custody; it explicitly contemplates night care, defined in § 3290.4 as "Night care—Care for a child between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.," and it contemplates 24-hour operation, which § 3290.113(g) regulates by capping the operator at sixteen working hours in any twenty-four.

Three counting words do all the work, and each has a defined meaning that is narrower than ordinary English. "At any one time." This is a SIMULTANEOUS-PRESENCE test, not an enrollment test and not a headcount-over-the-day test. The phrase appears in the definition, in § 3290.3(a), in § 3290.11(c), in § 3290.51 and twice in § 3290.52. If you enroll ten children who rotate through in two shifts of five, you have never exceeded the Chapter 3290 count — you have five at any one time. If you enroll six and a seventh unrelated child is present for twenty minutes at handover, you have exceeded it. The test bites on the instant, which is exactly the instant an unannounced inspector walks in. "Unrelated to the operator." § 3290.4 defines the relatives who do not count against the unrelated total: "Relative—A parent, child, stepparent, stepchild, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew." That list is closed and it is worth memorizing what is NOT on it. Cousins are not relatives. Great-grandchildren are not relatives. Great-nieces and great-nephews are not relatives.

Godchildren, foster children placed with someone else, the children of a live-in partner to whom you are not married — none of these are relatives under § 3290.4. A first cousin's child in your care is an unrelated child and counts toward your four-five-six. Conversely, § 3290.3(b)(1) excludes "Care provided by relatives" from the chapter entirely, so a grandmother minding four grandchildren is outside Chapter 3290 no matter how many hours she does it. "Operator." § 3290.4: "Operator—The legal entity or a person designated by the legal entity to serve as the staff person." This definition creates a two-headed relationship structure and § 3290.51 exploits it in a way that trips people up. Relatedness is measured against the operator — but § 3290.51 measures the six-child ceiling against "either the legal entity or the staff person," which are potentially two different people. If you are a sole proprietor who is also the caregiver, legal entity and operator are the same person and the distinction collapses. If you form an LLC, or if you designate a second adult as the staff person, they diverge, and the arithmetic of § 3290.51 changes with them.

The regulation separates three roles and you should be able to say which one you are before you file anything. § 3290.4: "Legal entity—A person, corporation or partnership that is legally responsible for the administration of the facility." "Applicant—A legal entity that applies to operate a certified family child care home." "Operator—The legal entity or a person designated by the legal entity to serve as the staff person." "Staff person—A person included in the staff:child ratio who is responsible for child care activities." "Facility person—A staff person, a substitute staff person or a volunteer." "Volunteer—A person 16 years of age or older who is not included in the staff:child ratio and who assists in implementing daily program activities under the supervision of a staff person." The certificate is issued to the LEGAL ENTITY (§ 3290.11(c), § 3290.4 definition of regional office of child care). The daily duties in the chapter are almost all imposed on the OPERATOR. Records are kept on every FACILITY PERSON who is a staff person (§ 3290.191). And a VOLUNTEER, by definition, does not count in ratio and must be "directly supervised at all times by a staff person" (§ 3290.31(c)). § 3290.4 also defines "Facility" tautologically but usefully: "Facility—A family child care home."

Every time the chapter says "the facility," it means your house. That includes your outdoor space: § 3290.113(a) states "Outdoor play space used by the facility is considered part of the facility premises." Now the floor of four, which is where Pennsylvania differs sharply from most states. If you care for THREE or fewer unrelated children at any one time, Chapter 3290 does not apply to you and DHS will not certify you. There is no Pennsylvania certificate available for a one-, two- or three-child home. This is not an exemption you claim; it is the outer edge of the Department's jurisdiction, written into both the definition and § 3290.3(a). Practically, three-or-fewer care in Pennsylvania is unregulated by DHS — though it may still be reachable by the Child Protective Services Law, by local zoning, and by the subsidy program's own relative/in-home care rules, and it cannot be advertised or held out as a certified facility. The ceiling of six, and what sits above it. Above six unrelated children at one time you are no longer a Chapter 3290 facility; you are a GROUP CHILD CARE HOME under 55 Pa.

Code Chapter 3280, or a CHILD CARE CENTER under Chapter 3270. § 3280.4 defines the middle tier: "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." § 3280.3(a) restates it: "This chapter applies to facilities in which out-of-home care is provided, at one time, for part of a 24-hour day to more than six but fewer than 16 older school-age level children or more than six but less than 13 children of any other age level." So the true tier structure in Pennsylvania is: 0—3 unrelated children, outside DHS jurisdiction; 4—6, family child care home under Chapter 3290; 7—12 (or 7—15 if every child is an OLDER SCHOOL-AGE CHILD, i.e. 4th grade through 15 years of age per § 3290.4), group child care home under Chapter 3280; 13 or more (16 or more for older school-age only), child care center under Chapter 3270. Announcement C-26-01, issued June 10, 2026, restates the top tier: "Child Care Center – The premises in which child care is provided at any one time for seven or more children unrelated to the operator," which reflects Chapter 3270's own definition; the practical boundary between center and group home is drawn by Chapter 3280's numeric ceilings and by whether the premises is a residence.

The crucial point about the 6/7 boundary is that it is not a matter of choosing a business model. It is jurisdictional and it is instantaneous. A family child care home that admits a seventh unrelated child for an afternoon has operated a group child care home without a certificate for that afternoon. There is no "occasional overage" allowance anywhere in Chapter 3290, no averaging, and no notification mechanism to make it lawful. The remedy for wanting a seventh child is a Chapter 3280 certificate, which triggers an entirely different and considerably heavier rule set — staff qualifications for group supervisors and assistant group supervisors, square-footage requirements, a water-supply verification (the CD 633 form's item 12 asks for water supplier documentation and instructs "FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME APPLICANTS, SKIP, ALL OTHERS MUST ANSWER"), and a different building-code classification. Who is OUTSIDE the chapter. § 3290.3(b) gives only two exclusions, and they are short: "This chapter does not apply to the following: (1) Care provided by relatives. (2) Care furnished in places of worship during religious services."

That is the complete list in the regulation — two items. Chapter 3280's parallel provision, § 3280.3(b), is longer, adding "Care provided in a facility where the parent is present at all times child care is being provided" and "Care provided during the hours of instruction in nonpublic schools and in private nursery schools and kindergartens." Chapter 3290's list does not include those. Announcement C-26-01 (June 10, 2026), however, sets out a broader exemption list across all three settings — describing exempt programs as including relative care, care furnished in places of worship during religious services, programs where parents are present, tutoring centers licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, part-day programs operating fewer than 90 days annually, and programs operating two hours or less per day on three or fewer days per week — and describes covered programs as including care at work sites when parents are absent, before- and after-school programs in nonpublic schools, and extended hours surrounding Head Start programs. That announcement is OCDEL's reading of the statutes and regulations, not a regulation itself; where it goes beyond the two exclusions written into § 3290.3(b), it is policy guidance and you should get it in writing from your regional office before relying on it.

The "religious services" exclusion is narrower than it looks and Pennsylvania providers regularly overread it. § 3290.3(b)(2) exempts care "furnished in places of worship DURING RELIGIOUS SERVICES" — the nursery staffed while the congregation is at worship. It does not exempt a weekday preschool that happens to meet in a church basement, and C-26-01 makes the point that labels are not dispositive: names like "preschool," "nursery school," "Mother's Morning Out" or "church school" do not by themselves place a program outside certification. The test is functional. A definitional subtlety that matters for anyone taking foster children or student interns: § 3290.4 defines "Child care experience—Care for a child in lieu of care by the parent or guardian for part of a 24-hour day. The term includes care of foster children in a court-supervised arrangement. The term does not include care of related children who reside with an individual. The term does not include supervised onsite training in the case of a student who is fulfilling the requirements of a secondary or postsecondary child care training or educational curriculum."

That definition governs how experience is credited toward qualifications, not how children are counted for capacity — do not confuse the two. And § 3290.4 defines "Parent—The biological or adoptive mother or father, legal guardian or foster mother or father of the child," which means a foster parent has full parental rights of access, consent and release under the chapter. Finally, the physical premises must be a HOME. The definition says "A home other than the child's own home." Two consequences follow. First, care in the CHILD'S own home — a nanny arrangement — is categorically outside Chapter 3290 no matter how many children. Second, the home must be a dwelling, which is why the building-code hook lands where it does. 34 Pa. Code § 403.23(a), as amended effective January 1, 2026, provides: "A dwelling unit where child day care services are provided for less than 24 hours for 4 to 12 children is an R-3 occupancy if the dwelling unit is used primarily as a private residence and the provision of day care services is accessory to the principal use of the dwelling unit as a residence."

Read the conditions: primarily a private residence, and the child care must be ACCESSORY to the residential use. If you buy a house, move out, and run six children in it as a pure business, you have arguably lost the R-3 classification and fallen into § 403.23(d) — "All other child day care facilities shall be classified under Chapter 3 of the 'International Building Code of 2021.' The facilities shall meet all Uniform Construction Code standards for these occupancy classifications" — which is a commercial classification with commercial construction requirements. Nothing in Chapter 3290 says this; it is the L&I rule that DHS makes a precondition. It is the single most expensive trap in the Pennsylvania definition, and it is invisible if you read only the DHS materials. One historical remnant worth knowing if you inherit or buy a going concern: § 3290.213, headed "Age and training," preserves a grandfather right — "The operator of a facility who is lawfully operating a family child care home registered by the Department as of September 22, 2008, is permanently qualified as an operator of a family child care home."

That is a real, live provision, and it is the only place in the current chapter where the word "registered" survives as anything but history. It protects an operator's personal qualification; it does not make the old two-year registration certificate valid, and it does not travel to a new legal entity or a new location, both of which void the certificate under § 3290.11(j)(2).

How many children you can care for in Pennsylvania

Six children — but the sentence that says so is one of the most misread sentences in the Pennsylvania Code, and getting it wrong in either direction costs money. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.51, headed "Maximum number of children," reads in full: "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. At any one time, the related children of either the legal entity or the staff person, but not both, may be excluded in determining compliance with this section." Take it in two halves. FIRST HALF. "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." The ceiling counts UNRELATED children only, and it measures relatedness against TWO people — the legal entity and the staff person — not one. In the ordinary sole-proprietor case those are the same human being and the rule reads exactly as you would expect: at most six children who are not your parent, child, stepparent, stepchild, grandparent, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew (the closed list in § 3290.4). Where they are different people — an LLC or partnership as legal entity, or a designated staff person other than the owner — a child related to EITHER of them is not "unrelated to either," and so is outside the six-count for purposes of the first sentence.

SECOND HALF. "At any one time, the related children of either the legal entity or the staff person, but not both, may be excluded in determining compliance with this section." This is the sentence that gets read backwards. It does NOT say that all related children are free. It says that at any given moment you may exclude the related children of ONE of those two adults, and the related children of the OTHER adult must be counted. "But not both" is a limitation, not a permission. If you and your co-worker each bring two of your own children into the home, you may exclude one adult's two children from the compliance count and the other adult's two children go into the number alongside the paying children. Choose whichever exclusion is more favourable at that instant — the regulation says "at any one time," so the election is made moment by moment, not once at application. Why the drafting is like this: the Department was closing an abuse in which two adults could each park an unlimited number of "related" children in the home and effectively run a large group setting under a family home certificate.

The December 2020 rulemaking rewrote § 3290.51 ("The provisions of this § 3290.51 amended December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133. Immediately preceding text appears at serial pages (335132) to (335133)"). The preamble discussion touching this point notes that the operator's children and grandchildren are considered related, which is the ordinary reading of § 3290.4's relative list — grandchild is explicitly on it. THE EXCLUSION DOES NOT TRAVEL. This is the trap. § 3290.51's related-child exclusion applies, by its own words, "in determining compliance with THIS SECTION" — section 3290.51 only. It does not apply to § 3290.52, and § 3290.52 was written to make that unmistakable. § 3290.52 reads: "The operator may provide care to no more than five related and unrelated infants and toddlers at any one time. No more than two related and unrelated infants may receive care at any one time." The phrase "related and unrelated" appears twice, deliberately. Your own infant counts against the two-infant ceiling. Your own toddler counts against the five-infants-and-toddlers ceiling.

There is no exclusion, no election, no "but not both." An operator with two babies of her own has already exhausted § 3290.52's infant allowance and may not accept a single additional infant, even though under § 3290.51 those two babies might be excluded from the six-count entirely. So the true capacity envelope of a Pennsylvania family child care home, at any given instant, is the intersection of three constraints: - at most SIX children unrelated to the legal entity or the staff person (§ 3290.51, with the one-adult related-child exclusion); - at most FIVE infants and toddlers combined, related and unrelated (§ 3290.52); - at most TWO infants, related and unrelated (§ 3290.52). And § 3290.52 spells out the permitted infant/toddler mixes explicitly, which removes any argument: "The following numbers of infants and toddlers are permitted in a family child care home: (1) If no infants are in care, five toddlers are permitted. (2) If one infant is in care, four toddlers are permitted. (3) If two infants are in care, three toddlers are permitted."

Read that list against the § 3290.4 age levels, because "toddler" in Pennsylvania is not one age band but two. § 3290.4: "Age level—The grouping category appropriate for the child's age. (i) Infant—A child from birth to 1 year of age. (ii) Young toddler—A child from 1 to 2 years of age. (iii) Older toddler—A child from 2 to 3 years of age. (iv) Preschool child—A child from 3 years of age to the date the child enters kindergarten in a public or private school system. (v) Young school-age child—A child who attends kindergarten to the date the child enters the 4th grade of a public or private school system. (vi) Older school-age child—A child who attends the 4th grade of a public or private school system through 15 years of age." So "infants and toddlers" in § 3290.52 sweeps in every child from birth to the third birthday: infants (0—1), young toddlers (1—2) and older toddlers (2—3). A home with five two-year-olds has hit the § 3290.52 ceiling and may accept exactly one more child, who must be three or older. Working the arithmetic all the way out, the lawful compositions of a six-child Pennsylvania family child care home are: - 2 infants + 3 toddlers + 1 child aged 3 or over. (Infants at ceiling; infants+toddlers = 5, at ceiling.) - 1 infant + 4 toddlers + 1 child aged 3 or over. (Infants+toddlers = 5, at ceiling.) - 0 infants + 5 toddlers + 1 child aged 3 or over. - Any mix with 4 or fewer children under three, plus enough over-threes to reach six. - 6 children aged 3 and over, with zero under-threes.

There is NO lawful composition with six children under the age of three, and none with three or more infants — regardless of whose children they are, and regardless of the § 3290.51 exclusion. Three further ceilings interact with the headcount and are easy to miss because they live in other sections. SWIMMING AND WADING. § 3290.115(a)(5) imposes a separate, much tighter ratio table whenever children are in water: Infant 1 staff : 1 child; Young or older toddler 1:2; Preschool 1:5; Young school-age 1:6; Older school-age 1:6. § 3290.115(a)(4) requires that "A staff person shall be physically present with a child who is wading or swimming," § 3290.115(a)(6) requires that "When children are swimming, supervision shall include at least one person who has completed lifeguard training," and § 3290.115(a)(7) provides that "The person certified in lifeguard training may not be included in the staff:child ratio." For a sole operator, the practical effect is severe: with one infant in the water you are at 1:1 and can supervise nobody else, and any swimming at all requires a second adult holding a lifeguard certificate who does not count toward ratio.

In a one-adult home, swimming is effectively impossible without hiring in. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR CARE. § 3290.113(g): "When a family child care home operator provides services for 24 hours per day, the operator may not work for a period of more than 16 hours in a 24-hour time period. The operator must secure a designated staff person to ensure that there is appropriate supervision as required in subsection (a)." This is a ceiling on the ADULT, not on the children, and it is the reason a genuinely round-the-clock Pennsylvania home needs at least two qualified staff persons — each of whom needs their own clearances, health assessment, training record and staff file. REST SPACE. § 3290.105(f): "At least 2 feet of space is required on three sides of a bed, cot, crib or other rest equipment while the equipment is in use." Six children napping simultaneously, each requiring two feet of clearance on three sides of their own labelled rest equipment (§ 3290.105(a): "Individual, clean, age-appropriate rest equipment shall be provided for preschool, toddler and infant children as agreed between the parent and the operator. The rest equipment must be labeled with the child's name and used only by the named child while enrolled in the program"), is a real spatial constraint in an ordinary house and is frequently the practical limiter on how many under-threes a home can actually take.

Note also § 3290.105(c), "Stacked cribs may not be used," which forecloses the obvious workaround. Unlike Chapter 3280 and Chapter 3270, Chapter 3290 imposes NO minimum square footage per child. There is no "35 square feet of indoor space" rule in Chapter 3290. The space constraint is expressed entirely through the rest-equipment clearance rule above, the general prohibition in § 3290.18 ("Conditions at the facility may not pose a threat to the health or safety of the children"), the physical-site rules of §§ 3290.61—3290.78, and the fire-safety requirement in § 3290.94(a)(6) that "Evacuation plans provide for the removal of all persons from the facility in a single trip." That last one is a genuine capacity constraint in disguise: if a sole operator physically cannot evacuate two infants and a non-ambulatory toddler in a single trip, the plan does not comply, and no headcount arithmetic saves it. Enforcement of the count. Ratio and capacity are enforced through supervision, because § 3290.113(a) welds them together: "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." So a capacity breach is simultaneously a supervision breach, and supervision breaches are what the unannounced monitoring instrument is built to catch. The certificate itself will state a capacity; § 3290.4 defines the certificate as "permitting the entity to operate a specific type of facility at a specific location for a specific period of time," and the specific type carries the six-child limit by operation of § 3290.11(c) — "An applicant shall obtain a valid certificate of compliance to operate a family child care home to care for four, five or six unrelated children at a specific location." And the FLOOR. Do not lose sight of it. § 3290.4 and § 3290.3(a) both say "four, five or six." If your business plan is three children, Pennsylvania has no certificate for you. If your business plan is three children now and six later, you still need four unrelated children present at some point to be within the chapter's scope — and DHS does certify homes that intend to reach four, but the pre-certification inspection is conducted, per the DHS instrument title, as a "Family Child Care Home Initial Inspection Checklist — No Children in Care," which tells you the Department inspects the readiness of the premises, not an operating census. Confirm your regional office's practice on a home that will start below four; the regulation is silent on the transition and the answer is administrative, not textual.

Adult-to-child ratios

Pennsylvania does NOT express family child care home ratios as a staff-to-child fraction. There is no "1:4 for infants, 1:5 for toddlers" table in Chapter 3290 the way there is in Chapter 3270 for centers or Chapter 3280 for group homes. The section is even titled "Ratio requirements," and it contains no ratio. Understanding this is the difference between reading Pennsylvania correctly and importing another state's mental model onto it. What Pennsylvania does instead is cap the NUMBER OF CHILDREN BY AGE LEVEL, on the assumption that a family child care home is run by one adult. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.52, headed "Ratio requirements," reads in full: "The operator may provide care to no more than five related and unrelated infants and toddlers at any one time. No more than two related and unrelated infants may receive care at any one time. The following numbers of infants and toddlers are permitted in a family child care home: (1) If no infants are in care, five toddlers are permitted. (2) If one infant is in care, four toddlers are permitted. (3) If two infants are in care, three toddlers are permitted."

Read alongside § 3290.51's ceiling of six unrelated children at any one time, that is the whole of Pennsylvania's ratio law for this setting. One adult, six children, of whom at most five may be under three and at most two may be under one. Adding a second staff person does NOT raise the six. Nothing in Chapter 3290 scales capacity with staffing. That is the structural distinction between a family child care home and a group child care home: in a group home under Chapter 3280 you buy more children by hiring more qualified staff; in a family home you cannot, at any price. If you want more than six you must move to Chapter 3280, with its own definition — "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" (§ 3280.4) — and its own staff qualification, space and program requirements. THE AGE LEVELS. § 3290.4 fixes six of them and everything numeric in the chapter keys to these labels rather than to raw ages: "Age level—The grouping category appropriate for the child's age. (i) Infant—A child from birth to 1 year of age. (ii) Young toddler—A child from 1 to 2 years of age. (iii) Older toddler—A child from 2 to 3 years of age. (iv) Preschool child—A child from 3 years of age to the date the child enters kindergarten in a public or private school system. (v) Young school-age child—A child who attends kindergarten to the date the child enters the 4th grade of a public or private school system. (vi) Older school-age child—A child who attends the 4th grade of a public or private school system through 15 years of age."

Two of these are behaviourally, not chronologically, defined. "Preschool child" ends "the date the child enters kindergarten," not at age five — a six-year-old not yet in kindergarten is still a preschool child. "Young school-age child" and "older school-age child" are defined by grade attendance, not birthday, so a child held back a year stays in the younger bracket. This matters for the § 3290.115 swimming ratios and for the Chapter 3280 threshold (fifteen versus twelve), both of which turn on age level rather than on age. "Toddler" in § 3290.52 is the union of young toddler and older toddler — every child from the first birthday to the third. So "five toddlers" means five children aged one to three, in any mix of young and older. And the pairing "infants and toddlers" therefore sweeps birth to three entirely. There is no lawful Pennsylvania family child care home with six children under three. THE "RELATED AND UNRELATED" QUALIFIER IS THE HEART OF § 3290.52. It appears twice, in both operative sentences, and it is there to defeat the exclusion granted by § 3290.51. § 3290.51 lets you exclude "the related children of either the legal entity or the staff person, but not both" from the six-count. § 3290.52 does not.

Your own baby is an infant for § 3290.52 purposes; your own two-year-old is a toddler. An operator whose own children are aged eight months and two years has, before a single client walks in, consumed one of her two infant slots and one of her five infant-and-toddler slots — while quite possibly excluding both children from the § 3290.51 six-count. The two sections give different answers about the same two children, on purpose, and both answers are binding simultaneously. SUPERVISION IS THE ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM. § 3290.113(a): "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 (relating to maximum number of children; and ratio requirement)." Three things follow. First, the numeric limits are folded INTO the supervision duty, so a count breach is automatically a supervision breach.

Second, the outdoor play space is inside the perimeter — you cannot park a child in the yard and treat her as off-premises. Third, excursions carry the same numbers; the six/five/two limits do not relax on a walk to the park. "Supervise" itself is defined and the definition is demanding. § 3290.4: "Supervise—To be present in the child care facility with the children or with the facility person under supervision. Supervision is critical oversight in which the supervisor can see, hear, direct and assess the activity of the supervisee." Four verbs: see, hear, direct, assess. All four, continuously. A monitor in another room fails "direct." A child out of earshot fails "hear." THE SINGLE-OPERATOR RELIEF VALVE, AND ITS LIMITS. Because Pennsylvania contemplates a one-adult home, it had to answer the obvious question: what happens when the one adult has to cook lunch or use the bathroom? § 3290.113(f) answers it, and it is the most consequential single addition of the December 2020 rulemaking for family homes: "When there is only one operator present in the family child care home and the operator is unable to be physically present with the children because the operator is preparing snacks or meals for children in care or the operator is using the restroom, the operator may comply with the supervision requirement in subsection (a) through the use of an electronic monitor, camera, mirror, or other device or method so the operator can see, hear, direct and assess the children in real time at all times."

Then three conditions: "(1) Supervision by a device or method under subsection (f) is permitted only for a reasonable period of time necessary for the operator to perform the specific task. (2) The operator shall remain on the family child care home premises while supervising children by a device or method under subsection (f). (3) A family child care home operator that provides supervision under this subsection shall include it in its supervision policies under § 3290.121(a) (relating to application)." Every clause of that is a compliance hook. The permitted reasons are exhaustive — meal/snack preparation and the restroom. Not answering the door, not taking a call, not doing laundry, not stepping out for the mail. The device must deliver all four verbs "in real time at all times," which rules out a recording device and arguably rules out an audio-only monitor for a task that requires visual assessment. The duration must be "a reasonable period of time necessary" for that specific task. You must remain ON the premises. And — the one most often overlooked — you must have written the practice into the supervision policies you disclose to parents at application under § 3290.121(a), which requires the operator to "review with the parent, at the time of application, the facility's general daily schedule, hours in which care is provided, fees, responsibilities for meals, clothing, health policies, SUPERVISION POLICIES, night care policies, dismissal policies, transportation and pick-up arrangements," and § 3290.121(b), which requires that "At the time of enrollment, a parent shall receive in writing the information described in subsection (a)." A camera on the wall with nothing in the parent handbook is a citation, not a defence.

This subsection has a cost history worth knowing. The 50 Pa.B. 7133 preamble records that the rulemaking "as it concerns monitoring means and the provision of 24-hour care, will impact the family child care home community," that IRRC and commentators asked the Department to "re-evaluate the fiscal impact of the added family child care home requirements relating to monitoring means and 24-hour care prior to submission of this final-form rulemaking," and that "the family child care community responded to a survey about the monitoring means it would use for increased supervision, which allowed the Department to revise the cost estimates." In other words, the Commonwealth priced the cameras. Expect an inspector to look for one. THE SIXTEEN-HOUR CAP. § 3290.113(g): "When a family child care home operator provides services for 24 hours per day, the operator may not work for a period of more than 16 hours in a 24-hour time period. The operator must secure a designated staff person to ensure that there is appropriate supervision as required in subsection (a)." This is a staffing ratio expressed as a duty cycle. A twenty-four-hour Pennsylvania family child care home needs a second qualified staff person — with clearances, health assessment and training file of their own — for at least eight hours a day.

It also interacts with § 3290.4's definition of "Night care—Care for a child between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m." and with § 3290.121(a)'s requirement to disclose "night care policies" to parents. THE SWIMMING RATIOS ARE THE ONE PLACE PENNSYLVANIA WRITES A FRACTION. § 3290.115(a)(5): "Swimming and wading ratios shall be maintained as follows: Infant 1 staff : 1 child; Young or older toddler 1:2; Preschool 1:5; Young school-age 1:6; Older school-age 1:6." Surrounding it: "(4) A staff person shall be physically present with a child who is wading or swimming." "(6) When children are swimming, supervision shall include at least one person who has completed lifeguard training as described in § 3290.31(c)(4)(ii) (relating to age and training). (7) The person certified in lifeguard training may not be included in the staff:child ratio. (8) A facility person who is counted in the staff:child ratio shall annually complete water safety instruction." Note the cross-reference in (6): it points to "§ 3290.31(c)(4)(ii)," but § 3290.31(c) in the current text is the volunteer age rule ("A volunteer shall be 16 years of age or older"), and lifeguard training actually lives at § 3290.31(f)(4)(ii).

The December 2020 rulemaking relettered § 3290.31 and did not fix the pointer in § 3290.115. It is a codification error, live in the official text as of 56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026). The substantive requirement is unaffected — "Lifeguard training. Competence is completion of lifeguard training, including first-aid training and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for child and infant" — but if you cite § 3290.31(c)(4)(ii) to an inspector you will be citing a subsection that does not exist. The water rules also contain requirements that have nothing to do with ratio but sit in the same section: "(1) An in-ground swimming pool accessible to children must be fenced with a locked gate. (2) An aboveground swimming pool which is not in use must be made inaccessible to children in accordance with the swimming pool barrier guidelines of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. (3) An indoor swimming pool which is not in use must be made inaccessible to children." And "(9) A sanitizing solution shall be added to water in a wading pool. An acceptable sanitizing solution is 3/4 teaspoon of bleach added to 50 gallons of water. A sanitizing solution shall be handled as a toxic.

See § 3290.64 (relating to toxics). (10) A wading pool shall be emptied daily." Plus § 3290.115(b): "Water play table. A water play table or a container used for water play that contains unfiltered water shall be emptied daily." A backyard pool is not a neutral amenity in a Pennsylvania family child care home; it is a regulated hazard under § 3290.61 as well ("If unsafe areas or conditions are in or near an outdoor play space, fencing or natural barriers are required to restrict children from those unsafe areas or conditions") and one of the ten mandatory pre-service training topics is "Building and physical premises safety, including identification of and protection from hazards that can cause bodily injury such as electrical hazards, BODIES OF WATER, and vehicular traffic" (§ 3290.11(e)(5)). VOLUNTEERS DO NOT COUNT. § 3290.4: "Volunteer—A person 16 years of age or older who is not included in the staff:child ratio and who assists in implementing daily program activities under the supervision of a staff person." § 3290.31(c): "A volunteer shall be 16 years of age or older. A volunteer shall be directly supervised at all times by a staff person."

So a volunteer is a net supervision COST, not a resource — you must supervise them while they help. C-25-01 reinforces this on the safety side: volunteers cannot be alone with children and must remain in the immediate vicinity of qualified permanent staff, and — unlike employees — volunteers may not begin provisionally. THE 16-YEAR-OLD STAFF PERSON EXCEPTION. § 3290.31(d) permits a 16- or 17-year-old to be used as a STAFF PERSON (i.e. counted in ratio) only if enrolled in an approved training curriculum meeting four conditions: the curriculum is "conducted by an institution approved by the Department of Education and accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education or the Council on Post-secondary accreditation and acceptable to the Department of Education"; it "includes acceptable training topics referenced in subsection (f)(2)"; it "includes a minimum total of 600 clock hours, distributed as follows: (i) A minimum of 400 clock hours of classroom training. (ii) A minimum of 200 clock hours of supervised training in a child care facility"; and "A representative of the training institution certifies in writing that the individual has completed the required classroom training and is currently enrolled in the curriculum," with that certification "retained in the staff file at the facility."

Otherwise, § 3290.31(b) governs: "Staff persons shall be 18 years of age or older." Finally, the one absolute staffing rule that is not a ratio at all but functions like one. § 3290.32(d): "One or more facility persons competent in pediatric first-aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques shall be at the facility when one or more children are in care." Not "on call." Not "reachable." AT THE FACILITY, whenever a single child is present. In a one-adult home that means the operator personally holds current pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR at all times, and it means a substitute who lacks it cannot lawfully cover a shift alone. That is the single hardest scheduling constraint in the Pennsylvania family child care regime.

Training you must complete before licensure

Pennsylvania's pre-service obligation splits cleanly in two, and confusing the halves is what delays certificates. One half is what the APPLICANT must have finished before the regional office will issue a certificate of compliance at all. The other half is what any CAREGIVER must have finished before being left alone with children, whether or not a certificate already hangs on the wall. The regulation writes the first half; an OCDEL certification announcement writes the second; and in a one-adult family child care home you are both people, so both halves fall on you at once. THE ORIENTATION COMES FIRST AND IT IS NOT TRAINING YOU CAN BUY. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(b) provides: "An applicant who may be interested in applying for a certificate of compliance shall participate in an orientation training provided by the Department within 12 months prior to issuance of a certificate of compliance. The orientation does not count toward the annual minimum of 12 clock hours of child care training required in § 3290.31(f) (relating to age and training)." Read both sentences. The orientation must be provided BY THE DEPARTMENT — no vendor, no online marketplace course, no Keystone STARS session substitutes — and it earns you nothing toward the ongoing clock.

Operationally DHS runs it as two pieces, and applicants lose months by completing only one. The Department's own orientation page states that "The orientation training program for certified facilities has two pieces - an online module and an in-person training session," that "Upon completion of the online module, you may register to attend the in-person training session," that "You must attend the in-person session within one year of completing the online module for the certificate to be valid," and that when filing an application to open a new Family Child Care Home "the legal entity must submit, along with the application, the certificates of completion for both the online module and the in-person orientation as proof of compliance with the requirement for orientation training. The certificates of completion for both the online module and the in-person session must be less than a year old. If the certificates of completion are not submitted with the application, the application is not complete. Please note that a complete application must be submitted to the Department in order for an initial inspection to be scheduled."

That last sentence is the money sentence: an incomplete application does not merely sit, it blocks the pre-certification inspection required by § 3290.11(i) ("Prior to making a decision about the issuance of a certificate of compliance, the Department's agent shall conduct an announced pre-certification inspection at the location where the family child care home will operate"). The online module for family homes is titled "DHS Orientation: Opening a Family Child Care Home" and is delivered free through Penn State Better Kid Care. Note in passing that the Department's page cites the orientation requirement to "§3290.11(c)"; the codified text places orientation at § 3290.11(b) and puts the certificate requirement at (c). The page is stale on the citation, not on the requirement.

THE TEN TOPICS ARE THE STATUTORY CORE, AND THEY ARE A CONDITION OF ISSUANCE. § 3290.11(e) provides: "Prior to issuance of a certificate of compliance, the applicant or representative of the applicant shall complete professional development in each of the following topics: (1) Prevention and control of infectious diseases (including immunization) and the establishment of a grace period that allows homeless children and children in foster care to receive services under this subchapter while their families (including foster families) are taking necessary action to comply with immunization and other health and safety requirements. (2) Prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and use of safe sleep practices. (3) Administration of medication, consistent with standards for parental consent. (4) Prevention of and response to emergencies due to food and allergic reactions. (5) Building and physical premises safety, including identification of and protection from hazards that can cause bodily injury such as electrical hazards, bodies of water, and vehicular traffic. (6) Prevention of shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma. (7) Emergency preparedness and response planning for emergencies resulting from a natural disaster or a man-caused event (such as violence at a child care facility) within the meaning of those terms under section 602(a)(1) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C.A. § 5195a(a)(1)). (8) Handling and storage of hazardous materials and appropriate disposal of biocontaminants. (9) Precautions when transporting children. (10) Pediatric first aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation."

These are the ten health and safety topics of the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, and the Department said so in terms when it adopted them: the preamble to the December 2020 final-form rulemaking records that the Department was "adding the specific language from the CCDBG into this final-form rulemaking in §§ 3270.11(c), 3280.11(c) and 3290.11(e))" and identifies the standard as 45 CFR 98.41(a)(1)(i)—(x) and 98.44. Pennsylvania implements the federal floor by transcribing it, including the odd grace-period clause inside topic one, which is a funding-eligibility rule the drafters copied wholesale into a training list. Two documentation rules travel with those ten topics and both are enforced literally. § 3290.11(f): "Completion of professional development shall be documented by the signature and title of a representative of the professional development entity and include the date the professional development was completed. Documentation shall be included with the application when it is submitted to the regional office. Documentation of the completion of the professional development under subsection (e) taken from September 30, 2016, forward satisfies this requirement." A certificate without the trainer's TITLE next to the signature is not compliant documentation.

And training completed before September 30, 2016 does not count, however good it was; the Department rejected the request to look further back, explaining that "professional development must adapt over time to reflect current best practices supported by research." Existing operators were not exempted: § 3290.11(g) provides that "Family child care home providers that operate under a certificate of compliance prior to December 19, 2020 shall complete the professional development under subsection (e)." WHAT THE TEN TOPICS ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU GO TO BUY THEM, AND WHY THE HOUR COUNT YOU WILL SEE QUOTED IS WRONG. The regulation names topics and never states clock hours for them. The hour count comes from OCDEL announcement C-24-03, "Updates to Health and Safety Pre-Service Training and Professional Development Requirements," issued December 20, 2024 by Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown and effective January 1, 2025, which replaced announcements C-22-02 and C-22-06. C-24-03 states its own purpose as issuing "updated Health and Safety Pre-Service Training Requirements for new child care providers and staff hired on or after January 1, 2025, and who have not previously completed an acceptable Health and Safety training," and it records the change plainly: "The required Health and Safety Pre-Service training has been broken down into two parts.

This change will allow for staff to meet the requirements to care for children unsupervised after the successful completion of one, three-hour course, in addition to Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Mandated Reporter Trainings. The total hours of the required Health and Safety Pre-Service Training is reduced from ten to six hours with this update." For a family child care home the two courses are named "PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care Part 1" (3 hours) and "PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care Part 2" (3 hours), both offered in English and Spanish. The old ten-hour "Get Started with Home-Based Care-Revised 2022" closed to new enrolment on December 31, 2024 and was withdrawn entirely after March 31, 2025; if you completed it, or one of the listed earlier versions, you are done and need not retake anything. If you did not, you take the two new parts, and C-24-03 is explicit that both are a condition of applying: "Both parts of PA Required Health and Safety for Centers-Group Child Care or PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care must be completed by applicants who have not completed an acceptable previous version of Health and Safety Training, prior to submitting an application to open a new child care facility."

Six hours, not ten, and both parts before the application, not within ninety days of it. Anyone quoting you ten hours is quoting the pre-2025 world, and DHS's own "Early Learning Provider Requirements" page is one of them — it still says that "Effective September 30, 2016, all prospective child care operators must provide verification that they have completed training in 10 health and safety training topics" and still points at a Better Kid Care module "where prospective providers can take 9 of the 10 topics." That page also still refers to "a certificate of compliance or registration," a category the Commonwealth abolished, and still links to pacode.com. Do not plan against it. THE UNSUPERVISED-CONTACT GATE IS NARROWER THAN THE CERTIFICATE GATE, AND IN A SOLO HOME IT IS THE SAME GATE. C-24-03 sets out exactly which topics must be finished before a person may be alone with children: "The following required health and safety training topics must be completed before child care staff can care for children unsupervised.

This means child care staff who have not completed health and safety training must be supervised by a trained, qualified child care staff person until untrained staff have obtained training in the following areas: PA Required Health and Safety for Centers-Group Child Care Part 1, or PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care Part 1, which includes the following topics: Safe sleep practices, including risk reduction of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome/Sudden Unexplained Infant Death (SIDS/SUID); Prevention and control of infectious diseases (including immunizations); Prevention of shaken baby syndrome, abusive head trauma, and child maltreatment; and Prevention of and response to emergencies due to food and allergic reactions" — plus Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric CPR, plus Recognition and Reporting of Child Abuse. Part 2, carrying medication administration, building and premises safety, emergency preparedness and response planning, handling and storage of hazardous materials and biocontaminants, and precautions in transporting children, is the ninety-day tranche. In a family child care home operated by one adult there is no "trained, qualified child care staff person" available to supervise you, so the ninety-day grace of § 3290.31(g) is theoretical for the operator and real only for a second caregiver you hire.

PEDIATRIC FIRST AID AND PEDIATRIC CPR ARE A STANDING CONDITION OF OPERATION, NOT A ONE-OFF. Three provisions stack. § 3290.11(e)(10) makes it one of the ten topics an applicant must complete before issuance. § 3290.31(f)(4)(i) defines what completion means and imposes renewal: "Pediatric first-aid training and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Competence is the completion of training by a professional in the field of first-aid and CPR. All staff persons shall renew their certification in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR on or before the expiration of the most current certification." § 3290.32(d) makes it a presence requirement: "One or more facility persons competent in pediatric first-aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques shall be at the facility when one or more children are in care." In a solo home that is you, every hour you are open, without a lapsed day. C-24-03 adds the sourcing rule the regulation omits: the training must be "Conducted by an approved Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System (PQAS) instructor using an OCDEL recognized curriculum," with the instructor verifiable through the PA PD Registry instructor directory under the "Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric CPR" endorsement. A generic workplace CPR card, an adult-only card, or a card from an instructor who is not PQAS-approved is a citation waiting to happen, and C-24-03 spells out the citation: under § 3290.31(g) where the "Staff person completed Pediatric First Aid and CPR, but the trainer is not PQAS approved" or "in a curriculum that is not PQAS approved," and under § 3290.31(f)(4)(i) where the "Staff person has expired Pediatric First Aid and CPR."

MANDATED REPORTER TRAINING IS THREE HOURS, IT IS STATUTORY, AND THE FREE TWO-HOUR COURSE WILL NOT DO. Chapter 3290 imposes the duty but not the hours. § 3290.16 provides: "(a) An operator or facility person who has reason to believe that a child enrolled in the facility has been abused is required to report suspected child abuse to ChildLine as mandated by the CPSL. (b) A facility person who has reasonable cause to suspect that a child is a victim of child abuse shall immediately make a report of suspected child abuse to ChildLine through the hotline at 1 (800) 932-0313, online or any other method as prescribed by the Department. (c) Within 48 hours, a written report regarding the suspected child abuse shall be submitted by the operator or designated staff person to the CPS unit which has responsibility for investigating the report." § 3290.32(a) adds: "The operator shall comply with the CPSL and Chapter 3490 (relating to protective services)." The Department confirmed in the 2020 preamble that "All facility persons at all child care facilities are mandated reporters" and that "child abuse reporting training is mandated by the CPSL and is not an annual requirement under either the CPSL or these regulations."

The hours and the interval come from the Child Protective Services Law itself, 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383, which requires operators and caregivers to receive three hours of training prior to the issuance of a license or approval certificate and three hours of training every five years thereafter, and requires employees who have direct contact with children to receive three hours within six months of the issuance of a license or approval certificate and three hours every five years thereafter. C-24-03 restates the length for child care unambiguously — "Mandated Reporter Training must be 3 hours" — and tells you to check the "# of hours" column and the "Target Audience" column on the DHS approved-course list, accepting audiences such as "All mandated reporters," "Educators," "Human Services Professionals," "Early education, childcare, and school-aged care professionals," "Neighbor/relative childcare providers" and "Volunteers in childcare programs." This is where money is lost: the DHS list, whose current edition is dated June 2, 2026, is dominated by providers offering BOTH a two-hour and a three-hour version of the same course, because two hours satisfies the Department of State's Act 31 continuing-education requirement for health-related licensees.

Two hours does not satisfy child care certification. Take the three-hour version, keep the certificate, and note that since January 1, 2025 DHS "is no longer accepting new Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting Training Curricula for review and approval," so the approved list is closed and shrinking — verify your chosen course is still on it before you pay. FIRE SAFETY IS NOT A COURSE IN PENNSYLVANIA; IT IS AN OCCUPANCY DOCUMENT PLUS A DRILL CALENDAR. Applicants search for a mandatory fire-safety class and do not find one because there is none for family child care homes. What exists instead is, first, § 3290.14(a): "A certificate of compliance will not be granted by the Department until the legal entity provides a certificate of occupancy as proof of compliance with the applicable requirements in 34 Pa.

Code § 403.23 (relating to child day care facilities) and under section 1016(c) of the act (62 P.S. § 1016(c))," with continuing compliance required by § 3290.14(b); second, § 20.35(b) of the licensure chapter: "A facility shall have written fire safety approval, if applicable, prior to issuance of a certificate of compliance"; third, § 3290.95(a): "Fire detection devices or systems must be in compliance with standards established under section 1016(c) of the act"; and fourth, the drill regime of § 3290.94(a), which since December 19, 2020 requires that "Fire drills are conducted at least once every 60 days," at varying times of day or night, during various program activity times, with the hypothetical fire location rotated so that it "is never the same for consecutive drills," with evacuation routes posted conspicuously on each floor, with plans providing "for the removal of all persons from the facility in a single trip," with facility persons and children participating and exiting the building weather permitting, and with a written record of "the specific time of day of the drill, the hypothetical location of the fire, the evacuation time, and the names of the facility persons and the number of children who participate."

Alongside it sits the emergency plan of § 3290.24, whose subsection (c) is a genuine training obligation with a pre-service leg: "Each facility person shall receive training regarding the emergency plan at the time of initial employment, on an annual basis and at the time of each plan update. The date of each training and the name of each facility person who received the training shall be documented in writing and kept on file at the facility." Get the certificate of occupancy conversation started with your municipality before you book the orientation; DHS's own orientation page warns family home applicants to "contact your local municipality regarding the requirements for operation of a child care business within your home and how soon you can obtain your certificate of occupancy," and it is routinely the longest pole in the tent. THE EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE QUALIFICATION IS THE PLACE WHERE PENNSYLVANIA IS FAR SOFTER THAN APPLICANTS EXPECT, AND WHERE THE TIMING IS COUNTER-INTUITIVE. § 3290.31(a) states the operator's qualifications in full: "(1) Be 18 years of age or older. (2) Have a high school diploma or a general educational development certificate and submit proof to the appropriate regional office of the Department no later than the submission of the second renewal application."

That is the entire academic requirement to operate a family child care home in Pennsylvania — no credit hours, no CDA, no years of experience — and the diploma proof is NOT a pre-service condition. You may be certified, open and operating before you produce it. The Department chose that timing deliberately and said why in the 2020 preamble: it added language "to clarify that the requirement is that a family child care home operator must provide documentation of a high school diploma or GED no later than the second renewal of the certificate of compliance, which is sufficient time to obtain such documentation," and it was "deleting the term 'initial application,' which was included in the proposed rulemaking, to provide the operator a longer time frame to obtain the GED or high school diploma." Certificates are issued "for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date of issue" under § 3290.11(j), so the second renewal is roughly your third year. Operators grandfathered under the 2008 rewrite keep their exemption: § 3290.213 provides that "The operator of a facility who is lawfully operating a family child care home registered by the Department as of September 22, 2008, is permanently qualified as an operator of a family child care home," and the 2020 preamble confirms that such operators "will continue to be grandfathered in under § 3290.213 if they are still providing child care services" while "The Department will not consider grandfathering in any operators that began operating after the effective date of the 2008 regulatory revisions."

For anyone else you put in the ratio, the bar is lower still, and this is the single largest structural difference between a family home and a group home. § 3290.31(b) reads, in its entirety: "Staff persons shall be 18 years of age or older." There is no education requirement, no experience requirement and no qualification level for a staff person in a family child care home. Compare Chapter 3280, where § 3280.34(b) forces a primary staff person into one of five qualification levels — thirty college credit hours in early childhood education, child development, special education, elementary education or human services on top of a diploma or GED; or a diploma plus six hundred or more hours of the secondary training curriculum; or a diploma plus fifteen credit hours plus one year of experience with children; or a diploma plus completion of a postsecondary training curriculum; or a diploma plus two years of experience with children — and § 3280.35 sets a floor even for secondary staff. None of that reaches a family child care home. Two adjacent doors, two different professions on paper.

The only structured route into a family home for someone under eighteen is § 3290.31(d), which permits an individual sixteen or older enrolled in an approved training curriculum to be used as a staff person where the curriculum is run by a Department of Education-approved and accredited institution, covers the acceptable training topics of § 3290.31(f)(2), and "includes a minimum total of 600 clock hours, distributed as follows: (i) A minimum of 400 clock hours of classroom training. (ii) A minimum of 200 clock hours of supervised training in a child care facility," with a written certification from the institution retained in the staff file. Volunteers are governed by § 3290.31(c): "A volunteer shall be 16 years of age or older. A volunteer shall be directly supervised at all times by a staff person" — and a volunteer, by the § 3290.4 definition, "is not included in the staff:child ratio," so a volunteer never relieves you of a supervision duty. If you do hold credentials, § 3290.31(e) converts them: "A Child Development Associate (CDA) credential or a Certified Childcare Professional (CCP) credential is equivalent to 9 credit hours from an accredited college or university in early childhood education or child development and 1 year of experience with children," and "A Pennsylvania school-age professional credential is equivalent to 9 credit hours from an accredited college or university in elementary education or child development and 1 year experience with children."

Those equivalences buy you nothing inside Chapter 3290, where no credit hours are demanded; they matter if you later move to Chapter 3280 or 3270, or for Keystone STARS. THE NON-TRAINING PRE-SERVICE CONDITIONS THAT APPLICANTS FORGET UNTIL THEY STALL THE FILE. Two health and background items are as much a condition of issuance as any course. § 3290.151(a)(1) requires that "The operator shall submit a health assessment to the Department prior to issuance of an initial or renewal certificate of compliance," for every facility person "providing direct care who comes into contact with the children or who works with food preparation"; the assessment must be "conducted and a report written and signed by a physician, physician's assistant or CRNP" with the professional title in the signature, must include a physical examination, "Tuberculosis screening by the Mantoux method at initial employment," an examination for communicable diseases, information on medical problems that might threaten children or prevent adequate care, and "The physician's or CRNP's assessment of the person's suitability to provide child care," and it "is valid for 24 months following the date of signature."

Book that appointment early; § 3290.151a permits a substitute test — "The Department will accept an interferongamma release assay blood test instead of the Mantoux skin test for an adult health assessment" — which is often faster to schedule than a two-visit skin test. And § 3290.11(h)(1) requires that "At initial application for a certificate of compliance, the applicant shall submit clearances for the applicant and for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the child care facility at least 30 days in a calendar year." Your adult household members are in scope even though they never touch a child; a grown son home from college for the summer crosses the thirty-day line. Sequence the whole file so that the orientation certificates, the six hours of health and safety, the three-hour mandated reporter certificate, the PQAS pediatric first aid and CPR card, the health assessments, the clearances and the certificate of occupancy all land inside the same twelve-month window, because the orientation certificates expire at one year and the health assessment at twenty-four months, and a file that ages out at one end while you wait at the other is the commonest way Pennsylvania applicants pay for the same training twice.

Ongoing (annual) training

Twelve clock hours a year, per staff person, and the sentence that says so is nine words long. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.31(f): "A staff person shall obtain an annual minimum of 12 clock hours of child care training." Everything difficult about Pennsylvania's ongoing training clock is in what that sentence does not say — not who counts as a staff person, not when the year starts, not who may teach it, and not what happens when you are short. THE NUMBER WAS SIX UNTIL DECEMBER 19, 2020, AND HALF THE ADVICE ONLINE STILL SAYS SIX. The source note on § 3290.31 reads: "The provisions of this § 3290.31 amended May 23, 2008, effective September 22, 2008, 38 Pa.B. 2437; amended December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, except that current staff in child care facilities have 180 days from the effective date of the final-form rulemaking to meet the requirements in subsection (g), 50 Pa.B. 7133." The Department explained the doubling in the preamble to that rulemaking: "The Department is maintaining the increased clock hours of professional development from the proposed regulation in this final-form rulemaking," because "the increase in hours required is consistent with professional development requirements in 5 of the 6 contiguous states of Delaware (15 hours per year), West Virginia (13.5 hours per year), New York (15 hours per year), Maryland (12 hours per year) and Ohio (15 hours per year)," and because "The 6-hour annual professional development requirement was first implemented in 1992, over 27 years ago, and has not been revised since."

Nothing has changed it since. A week-by-week sweep of the Pennsylvania Bulletin for volume 55 (all of 2025) and volume 56 through issue 56-34 (August 22, 2026) turns up no rulemaking, proposed or final, touching Chapter 3270, 3280 or 3290; the Pennsylvania Code serves Chapter 3290 with a currency stamp of "56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)"; and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission's docket carries no child care certification package for the Department of Human Services. Twelve is the number today, and it has been the number since December 19, 2020. WHO OWES THE TWELVE. The obligation runs to a "staff person," defined at § 3290.4 as "A person included in the staff:child ratio who is responsible for child care activities." The operator is inside that definition by a second definition: "Operator—The legal entity or a person designated by the legal entity to serve as the staff person." So the owner-operator of a family child care home owes twelve hours a year in her own right, personally, and cannot delegate them. A VOLUNTEER does not owe them: § 3290.4 defines a volunteer as "A person 16 years of age or older who is not included in the staff:child ratio and who assists in implementing daily program activities under the supervision of a staff person," and § 3290.31(f) reaches only staff persons.

That is a narrow exemption, not a loophole — a volunteer is still a "facility person," so a volunteer is still a mandated reporter, still owes the emergency-plan training of § 3290.24(c), and still may never be counted toward supervision. A genuine textual gap sits next to it: § 3290.4 defines "Facility person" as "A staff person, a substitute staff person or a volunteer," treating substitutes as their own category, and § 3290.31(f) does not name them. Chapter 3280 closes the equivalent gap explicitly at § 3280.33(a) — "A staff person or a substitute staff person shall meet one of the applicable staff qualifications for the position in which the person is performing" — and Chapter 3290 has no such section. Do not build a staffing plan on that silence. A substitute you leave alone with children is being counted in the ratio while she is there, which makes her a staff person for the duration, and § 3290.31(g) reaches "Staff persons" for the health and safety topics without qualification. Train your substitutes and keep their files.

WHAT COUNTS, WHERE IT MAY COME FROM, AND THE ORDER YOU MUST TAKE IT IN. § 3290.31(f)(1) fixes the acceptable settings: "Acceptable training is conducted in one or more of the following settings: (i) By a secondary or postsecondary institution approved by the Department of Education and accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the United States Department of Education or the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation and acceptable to the Department of Education. (ii) By an entity that is licensed or certified professionally competent in the training topic. (iii) In conferences or workshops. (iv) With audio-visual materials recognized by child care professionals." § 3290.31(f)(2) fixes the topics: "Acceptable training topics include the following: (i) Child or staff health. (ii) Child development, early childhood education and special education. (iii) Supervision, discipline and guidance of children. (iv) Nutrition for children. (v) Child care program development. (vi) Child care staff person or volunteer professional development." And § 3290.31(f)(3) opens the door: "Other training topics may be submitted for the Department's review and approval."

Read (f)(1)(iii) and (iv) carefully. A conference is a setting in its own right. So are audio-visual materials "recognized by child care professionals," which is how self-paced online modules qualify. Pennsylvania's ongoing training market is genuinely open at the regulatory level, and the Department confirmed the breadth in the 2020 preamble: "the topics described in §§ 3270.31(f), 3280.31(f) and 3290.31(g) are clear, acceptable and sufficiently broad to encompass a broad array of topics related to health and safety, as well as early childhood development." Openness ends at the sequencing rule, which is the provision providers most often breach without noticing. § 3290.31(k): "Staff persons shall obtain available ongoing professional development relating to the health and safety topics as specified in subsection (g) prior to obtaining professional development in other topics as permitted in subsection (f)(2)." That is a priority ordering with teeth. If OCDEL has published a refresher on safe sleep, infectious disease control, medication administration, allergic-reaction emergencies, premises safety, shaken baby syndrome, emergency preparedness, hazardous materials, transporting children, or pediatric first aid and CPR, and it is available to you, you take it BEFORE you spend hours on nutrition or curriculum design.

The Department added § 3290.31(k) precisely to defeat the reading that the health and safety topics were a one-time entry ticket, recording that it was "clarifying in this final-form rulemaking under §§ 3270.31(j), 3280.31(j) and 3290.31(k) that the staff persons in certified child care facilities must engage in professional development that maintains and updates the required CCDBG professional development requirements." Your twelve hours are not twelve free hours; they are health and safety first, everything else after. THE ONE-TIME-ONLY CREDIT RULES, WHICH ARE WHERE PROVIDERS MISCOUNT. Four separate provisions govern what may be double-counted, and they do not all point the same way. § 3290.31(j): "Professional development under subsection (g) may count towards the annual clock hours under subsection (f) on a one-time basis." § 3290.11(b): "The orientation does not count toward the annual minimum of 12 clock hours of child care training required in § 3290.31(f)." C-24-03, the OCDEL announcement effective January 1, 2025, refines both: "Health and Safety Trainings (Part 1 and Part 2) or previously completed pre-service training can be used only once toward the annual minimum 12 clock hours"; "Pediatric First Aid, Pediatric CPR and Mandated Reported Training can also count towards annual minimum 12 clock hours based on the renewal of the training certificate"; and, decisively for a new operator, "Pre-Service training completed as part of initial application for a Certificate of Compliance may not be counted toward an annual minimum 12 clock hours."

Put those together and the arithmetic for a first-year family child care home operator is harsh: the orientation gives you nothing, the six hours of health and safety you took to get your certificate give you nothing because they were part of the initial application, and you owe a full twelve hours in your first certificate year on top of everything you already paid for. The one-time credit at § 3290.31(j) is for a person HIRED into an existing facility, not for the applicant who opened it — the Department said in the 2020 preamble that it was adding §§ 3270.31(i), 3280.31(i) and 3290.31(j) "to reflect that completion of professional development by staff in the first year of employment counts toward the 12-hour requirement." Budget the first year at twelve hours net. WHAT IS MANDATORY EVERY CYCLE, AND WHAT ONLY LOOKS MANDATORY. Three recurring obligations sit outside the twelve hours and are separately citable. First, pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR, under § 3290.31(f)(4)(i): "All staff persons shall renew their certification in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR on or before the expiration of the most current certification," reinforced by the standing presence rule at § 3290.32(d) that "One or more facility persons competent in pediatric first-aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques shall be at the facility when one or more children are in care."

Renewal is on the card's own cycle, typically two years, not annual — but the day it expires you are non-compliant, and in a one-adult home you are also unable to lawfully open. Second, the emergency plan, under § 3290.24: the operator "shall review the emergency plan at least annually and update the plan as needed," each review documented in writing and kept on file; "Each facility person shall receive training regarding the emergency plan at the time of initial employment, on an annual basis and at the time of each plan update," with the date and each person's name documented; and "Emergency drills shall be conducted annually. Annual emergency drills shall be documented and on file at the facility." That is a genuine annual training event for every facility person including volunteers, and it is the one most often missing from a family home file. Third, and only if you offer water activity, § 3290.115(a)(8): "A facility person who is counted in the staff:child ratio shall annually complete water safety instruction," where competence under § 3290.31(f)(4)(iii) is "completion of basic instruction in water safety from a certified lifeguard."

Note in passing that § 3290.115(a)(6) directs you to lifeguard training "as described in § 3290.31(c)(4)(ii)" — that cross-reference is stale on the face of the codified regulation, because the December 2020 relettering moved the training-competence list to § 3290.31(f)(4). The requirement is real; the pointer is broken. What only LOOKS mandatory every year is mandated reporter training. It is not annual, and the Department said so in terms: "Training for child abuse reporting and first aid training are separate requirements from the topics listed for the 12-hour annual professional development requirement. Further, child abuse reporting training is mandated by the CPSL and is not an annual requirement under either the CPSL or these regulations. All facility persons at all child care facilities are mandated reporters." The statutory cycle is three hours every five years under 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383, and OCDEL's C-24-03 confirms the length for child care — "Mandated Reporter Training must be 3 hours" — while permitting the renewal to be counted toward the twelve in the year you renew it.

PA KEYS AND THE PD REGISTRY: WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE, AND THE TRAP OF TREATING THEM AS THE LAW. Nothing in § 3290.31(f) requires that your ongoing training come through the Pennsylvania Key, the Professional Development Registry, a Professional Development Organization, or a Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System instructor. Reread the four settings in § 3290.31(f)(1): a Department of Education-approved institution, an entity licensed or certified professionally competent in the topic, conferences or workshops, and recognized audio-visual materials. The PD Registry is not on that list, and the Department described its role accurately in the 2020 preamble as an administrative convenience rather than a gate: "the Professional Development Registry, which houses online professional development data for current staff, is active and available for operators to use to manage the professional development requirements for staff. The Department will make technical assistance available on the use of the Professional Development Registry." So do not turn away a genuinely competent local trainer merely because the course is not in the Registry.

But the converse trap is worse, because there are exactly two places where the Registry and PQAS DO govern, and both are hard requirements. Pediatric first aid and CPR must be, per C-24-03, "Conducted by an approved Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System (PQAS) instructor using an OCDEL recognized curriculum," verified through the PD Registry's instructor directory under the Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric CPR endorsement; a card from a non-PQAS trainer is expressly citable under § 3290.31(g). And mandated reporter training must come from a curriculum on the DHS-approved list published under Keep Kids Safe — a closed list, since DHS announced that "Effective January 1, 2025, the Department of Human Services (DHS) is no longer accepting new Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting Training Curricula for review and approval," with the current edition of the approved-course list dated June 2, 2026 — and it must be the three-hour variant with an acceptable target audience, not the two-hour variant most of those same providers sell for Department of State professional-licensure continuing education.

HOW IT IS DOCUMENTED, AND THE TWO WORDS THAT GET FILES REJECTED. § 3290.31(h): "Completion of professional development shall be documented by the signature and title of a representative of the professional development entity and include the date the professional development was completed." SIGNATURE AND TITLE. A certificate bearing a name but no title is not compliant documentation, and it is the single commonest defect a certification representative finds in a training file. § 3290.31(i) fixes where it lives: "All staff persons shall complete the professional development under subsection (g). Documentation of the completion of training shall be kept in the facility person's file or maintained in an electronic system as designated by the Department." The electronic system is the PD Registry, and C-24-03's closing instruction makes the either/or explicit: "For all staff, appropriate documentation and verification of pre-service and ongoing professional development training of all child care staff is retained in the facility person's file or maintained in an electronic PD Registry." Behind that sit the adult-records sections: § 3290.191, "An individual record is required for each staff person," and § 3290.192, which requires that record to include "(4) Records of training required by the Department" alongside the health assessments, the clearances and the CPSL disclosure statement.

Keep paper even if you keep Registry entries; the Registry is the Department's system, not your evidence of what a private trainer certified. WHEN THE YEAR STARTS — THE QUESTION PENNSYLVANIA NEVER ANSWERS. The regulation says "annual" and defines nothing. There is no calendar-year rule, no hire-anniversary rule and no certificate-anniversary rule anywhere in Chapter 3290 or Chapter 20. What the text does give you is the measuring occasion: § 3290.11(j) provides that "A certificate of compliance is issued in the manner described in Chapter 20 (relating to licensure or approval of facilities and agencies) for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date of issue"; § 3290.11(k) provides that "An agent of the Department will annually conduct at least one onsite unannounced inspection of a child care facility"; and § 20.31 provides that "An authorized agent of the Department will conduct an on-site inspection of a facility or agency at least once every 12 months." In practice the twelve hours are measured against the certificate year at the annual unannounced inspection, and the Department has itself described compliance that way — when it suspended the six-hour rule during the COVID-19 disaster emergency it said it "will begin measuring compliance with this final-form regulation requiring 12 hours of annual professional development at the time of each certified child care facility's next annual inspection following the expiration of the disaster emergency."

Ask your regional office in writing which twelve-month window they will measure, keep the answer in the file, and if you get no answer, run your training year to the certificate year and finish early. Renewal paperwork is due well before expiry in any event: § 20.22(a) requires the legal entity to "complete and submit to the Department an application for a certificate of compliance at least 60 days prior to the expiration of the facility's or agency's existing regular or provisional certificate of compliance," and § 3290.11(o) requires submission "prior to the expiration of the current certificate of compliance." A shortfall discovered sixty days out is a shortfall you cannot fix quietly. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE SHORT. It is not an automatic revocation and it is not nothing. The first step is § 20.52: "If, during an inspection, authorized agents of the Department observe items of noncompliance with licensure or approval regulations, the legal entity shall submit an acceptable written plan to correct each noncompliance item and shall establish an acceptable period of time to correct these items."

Comply with the plan and the matter usually ends there, because § 20.53 issues a regular certificate only where "the facility or agency is in compliance," while § 20.54 provides that "A provisional certificate of compliance is issued if the facility or agency is in substantial, but not complete, compliance with applicable statutes, ordinances, and regulations," that it "is issued for a specified length of time, not to exceed 6 months," and — this is the clock that ends businesses — that "A maximum of four consecutive provisional certificates of compliance may be issued to the legal entity for each specific facility or agency." Four consecutive provisionals is two years of grace and no more.

Beyond that, § 20.71(a) authorises denial, nonrenewal or revocation for, among other things, "(1) Failure to comply with this chapter. (2) Noncompliance with the Department's program licensure or approval regulations. (3) Failure to submit an acceptable plan to correct noncompliance items. (4) Failure to comply with the acceptable plan to correct noncompliance items" — and note that paragraphs (3) and (4) make the paperwork failure independently fatal, which Pennsylvania courts have enforced. C-24-03 names the exact citation sections a certification representative will write, and they differ by defect: under § 3290.31(g) where a "Staff person is employed for more than 90 days and has not completed pre-service training, including mandated reporter training and Pediatric First Aid and CPR," or where the first aid trainer or curriculum "is not PQAS approved"; under § 3290.31(f)(4)(i) where a "Staff person has expired Pediatric First Aid and CPR"; under § 3290.32(a) where a "Staff person has been employed more than 90 days and has not completed mandated reporter training" or "has expired mandated reporter training"; and under § 3290.18 — the one-sentence catch-all that "Conditions at the facility may not pose a threat to the health or safety of the children" — where a "Staff person working unsupervised without having completed the pre-service training."

Every one of those decisions is appealable: § 20.81 lists denial, nonrenewal, revocation, "The issuance of a provisional certificate of compliance" and "The length of time for which a provisional certificate of compliance is issued" among the appealable actions, and § 3290.13(b) sets the deadline — "Appeals related to the Department's approval or licensure shall be made by filing a petition within 30 days after service of notice of the action," a period that expressly "supersedes the appeal period of 1 Pa. Code § 35.20." Thirty days, from service, in writing. TWO LAST CALIBRATIONS. Keystone STARS is voluntary and its professional development requirements sit above these; the Department was explicit that "the Keystone STARS Program is a voluntary program. The STARS professional development requirements represent standards that exceed the annual professional development requirements of this final-form rulemaking, which itself represents the minimum requirements." Do not read a STARS handbook as certification law. And the twelve hours are per PERSON, not per facility: in a home where you and one employee both stand in the ratio, the Commonwealth is buying twenty-four hours a year, and the Department acknowledged the cost, noting that "child care facility operators may incur costs relating to obtaining substitutes or paying for overtime to staff persons who use work time to take the required professional development." Price that into your rates before your first renewal, not after.

Background checks

PENNSYLVANIA DOES NOT REQUIRE THREE CLEARANCES ON A FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME. IT REQUIRES FOUR PENNSYLVANIA-ISSUED CERTIFICATIONS PLUS A FULL OUT-OF-STATE SET, AND IT REQUIRES THEM OF EVERY ADULT WHO SLEEPS IN THE HOUSE. Anyone who says the answer is "State Police, ChildLine, FBI" is quoting the general Child Protective Services Law regime that applies to a school volunteer. Certified child care is a separate and harder tier, and the difference is set by 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(f.1), which the Office of Child Development and Early Learning cites in Announcement C-25-01 as "Additional information for child day-care centers, group day-care homes and family child-care homes." The four Pennsylvania certifications are the Child Abuse History Certification from ChildLine, the Pennsylvania State Police criminal record check, the DHS fingerprint-based FBI criminal history check, and the National Sex Offender Registry verification. The fifth item is a bundle: OCDEL Announcement C-25-01, issued January 15, 2025, effective February 1, 2025, states that "The CPSL requires that an employee, household member, or legal entity, obtain clearances for each state they have resided outside of Pennsylvania within the previous five-year period," and the DHS Keep Kids Safe out-of-state page makes that three checks per state: child abuse registry, criminal history and sex offender registry.

The Bureau of Certification Services enforces this by file inspection: C-25-01 says "Certification representatives will review personnel files at the facility to ensure they contain all four individual clearance certificates, out-of-state clearance certificates (if applicable), and a signed Disclosure Statement for Certified Child Care." If your file has three, the finding writes itself. WHO MUST BE SCREENED, AND THE AGE-AND-RESIDENCY THRESHOLD VERBATIM, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE APPLICATIONS DIE. The regulation that governs your certificate is 55 Pa. Code § 3290.32(a), and it is one sentence: "The operator shall comply with the CPSL and Chapter 3490 (relating to protective services)." That sentence imports the whole statute. The operational list is in 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(h)(1): "At initial application for a certificate of compliance, the applicant shall submit clearances for the applicant and for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the child care facility at least 30 days in a calendar year." Read the threshold twice. It is not "resides in the home." It is 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER AND RESIDES AT LEAST 30 DAYS IN A CALENDAR YEAR — a cumulative annual count, not a continuous-occupancy test. A university-age son home for winter break, spring break and eight weeks of summer has crossed 30 days; so has a parent who stays six weeks after a hospital discharge.

Nothing requires the days to be consecutive, and nothing lets you count only the days when children are in care. On top of the household, the CPSL reaches every worker. C-25-01 lists the individuals requiring clearances as "Employees of a certified child care facility," "Any individual with ownership interest (legal entity) in a certified child care facility and those who participate in the organization or management," "Any legal entity applying to open a new certified child care facility," and "Any individual (age 18 or older) residing in a certified child care facility." Volunteers are in scope separately, and there is a second age line that does not match the first: 55 Pa. Code § 3290.4 defines "Volunteer—A person 16 years of age or older who is not included in the staff:child ratio," while the CPSL only mandates volunteer clearances at 18; a 16-year-old may volunteer without CPSL clearances but must be "directly supervised at all times by a staff person" under § 3290.31(c). Substitutes are not a separate species: § 3290.4 defines "Facility person—A staff person, a substitute staff person or a volunteer," and a substitute staff person is a staff person, so she is 18 or older under § 3290.31(b) and carries the full employee clearance set before she covers a single shift.

THE FBI RESIDENCY WAIVER EXISTS IN PENNSYLVANIA LAW AND IT DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU. This is the most expensive misreading in the state, because the waiver is real, it is printed on an official DHS form, and the form itself warns you off it. The Department's Disclosure Statement for an unpaid/volunteer position, issued under "23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.2 (relating to volunteers having contact with children)," opens with the affirmation that the signer is "NOT required to obtain the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Criminal History Clearance as: I have been a resident of Pennsylvania during the entirety of the previous 10-year period; OR I have received the FBI Criminal History Clearance from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) at any time since establishing residency in Pennsylvania." Then, in the next line of the same form, DHS shuts the door: "I understand that the above exceptions do not apply to volunteers in a child day-care center, group day-care home or family child-care home." OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03, issued May 19, 2022, says the same in departmental voice: "Volunteers in a child-care center, group child-care home or family child-care home must have all three clearances and the NSOR verification as there is no exception to obtaining the FBI Criminal History Clearance for these settings."

The DHS Certified Child Care Providers and Household Members FAQ, revision 03/20/2026, asks "Are there any exceptions to the clearance requirements?" and answers "No, there are no exceptions for applicable employees or household members of certified child care facilities." Two narrower CPSL waivers — for paid minors aged 14 to 17 and for nonimmigrant J-1 visa holders — are closed to child day-care centres, group day-care homes and family child-care homes by their own terms. The residency rule that does bite here is the opposite one: it is not a reason to skip the FBI check, it is a reason to add out-of-state checks, and it runs on a FIVE-year lookback, not ten. The codified regulation says the opposite and is obsolete: 55 Pa. Code § 3490.122(f), last amended July 2, 1999, still reads that an applicant "who is not a resident of this Commonwealth is required to obtain a report of criminal history record from the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Taken at face value that tells a lifelong Pennsylvanian she needs no FBI check. It is wrong, has been wrong since the 2014-2015 CPSL rewrite, and is still in the Pennsylvania Code.

THE CODIFIED REGULATION IS THE STALE LAYER AND THE STATUTE PLUS THE OCDEL ANNOUNCEMENT ARE THE LIVE ONES. Four provisions of 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3490 that formally still govern child care clearances were last touched in 1990 or 1999 and are contradicted by current practice on their face. Section 3490.122(a) says the child abuse request "shall include a check or money order ... which will not exceed $10" and directs you to "call the ChildLine verification unit at (717) 783-6211"; the fee is $13.00 and the ordinary route is the Child Welfare Information Solution portal. Section 3490.122(e) forbids hiring where the clearance "was obtained more than 1 year prior to the date of application"; the live rule is 60 months. Section 3490.122(c) blocks hire only where the applicant is "named in the Statewide Central Register as the perpetrator of a founded report of child abuse committed within 5 years or less prior to the request for verification"; the current child care disclosure statement drops both the five-year window and the founded-only limit. And § 3490.127(b) still sets the provisional period at "Thirty calendar days for an applicant residing in this Commonwealth" and "Ninety calendar days for an out-of-State applicant," which Act 12 of 2022 replaced with a single 45-day period at 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(m) effective February 17, 2022. Do not plan a hire around the 30-day or 90-day numbers in the Pennsylvania Code; they are dead text the codifier has not removed.

THE TRAP IN YOUR BRIEFING PACKET, TESTED AND FAILED: THERE IS NO RECODIFICATION OF TITLE 55 INTO TITLE 6. Verified against the index of regulations in effect rather than a pinned document. The Pennsylvania Code and Bulletin site carries a currency banner reading "The Pennsylvania Code website reflects the Pennsylvania Code changes effective through 56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)," and as of that currency date Title 55 is still headed "TITLE 55 HUMAN SERVICES," still opens "PART I. Department of Human Services," and still carries Chapter 3290, "FAMILY CHILD CARE HOMES." Title 6 of the Pennsylvania Code is headed "AGING," contains "PART I. Department of Aging," and runs Chapter 1 through Chapter 35 on fair hearings, age preference, older adult daily living centers, protective services for older adults, domiciliary care, PACE and area agencies on aging. There is no child care chapter in it and no place for one. The only redesignation in Title 55's history is recorded in the title's own front matter: the heading was redesignated at 46 Pa.B. 3177 under the act of December 28, 2015 (P.L. 500, No. 92), from "Public Welfare" to "Human Services."

That is a renaming of Title 55, not a move out of it. The most recent OCDEL instrument confirms it: Announcement C-26-01, issue date June 10, 2026, states that "Pursuant to 55 Pa. Code § 3270.3, 3280.3, and 3290.3, the following regulatory chapters of Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code" apply, listing "Chapter 3290 (relating to family child care homes)." Cite 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(h) and § 3290.32. Anyone citing a Title 6 child care chapter is citing a chapter that does not exist. THE STATUTORY BASIS AND THE ENUMERATED DISQUALIFYING OFFENCES, AND THE CHILD-CARE-ONLY ADDITIONS THAT NOBODY WARNS YOU ABOUT. The base is 23 Pa.C.S. Chapter 63, which 55 Pa. Code § 3290.4 defines as "CPSL — Child Protective Services Law—Title 23 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes Chapter 63." Section 6344 carries the employee regime and the grounds for denial; § 6344(f.1) the child-care add-ons; § 6344(m) provisional employment; § 6344(n) confidentiality; § 6344.2 volunteers; § 6344.3 continued employment and portability; and § 6344.4 recertification, the source of the 60-month clock, providing that a person identified in section 6344 "shall be required to obtain the certifications required by this chapter every 60 months."

Section 6303 supplies the two definitions that decide who is in scope, and C-25-01 quotes them: direct contact is "the care, supervision or control of children or routine interaction with children" and routine interaction is "regular and repeated contact that is integral to a person's employment or volunteer responsibilities." The general § 6344(c) bar list, as OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03 sets it out, is a conviction "of one or more of the following offenses under Title 18 (relating to crimes and offenses) or an equivalent crime under Federal law or the law of another state": Chapter 25, criminal homicide; 2702, aggravated assault; 2709.1, stalking; 2901, kidnapping; 2902, unlawful restraint; 3121, rape; 3122.1, statutory sexual assault; 3123, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse; 3124.1, sexual assault; 3125, aggravated indecent assault; 3126, indecent assault; 3127, indecent exposure; 4302, incest; 4303, concealing death of child; 4304, endangering welfare of children; 4305, dealing in infant children; a felony under 5902(b), prostitution; 5903(c) or (d), obscene materials and performances; 6301, corruption of minors; and 6312, sexual abuse of children — plus "The attempt, solicitation or conspiracy to commit any of the offenses set forth above."

Those twenty are permanent bars with no lookback. Only two disqualifiers are time-limited: a conviction for "a felony offense under The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act (P.L. 233, No. 64), committed within the five-year period immediately preceding verification," and, in the general regime, being "named in the Statewide database as the perpetrator of a founded report committed within the five-year period immediately preceding verification." Now compare the two disclosure statements DHS publishes, because the child care one is harsher and it is the one your certification representative looks for. The general Disclosure Statement for Employment, revision 02/21/23, tracks the twenty offences and swears only that "I have not been named in the Statewide database as a perpetrator of a founded report of child abuse committed within the past five (5) years." The Disclosure Statement for Application for Child Care Employment, effective February 1, 2025, adds four entries — Section 2718, strangulation; Section 3301, arson and related offenses; 18 U.S.C. § 2261, interstate domestic violence; and 18 U.S.C. § 2262, interstate violation of protection order — and rewrites the abuse-registry affirmation with the five-year window deleted and the word "indicated" added: "I have not been named in the Statewide database as a perpetrator of an indicated or founded report of child abuse."

In a family child care home an INDICATED report — a finding on substantial evidence, not a court adjudication — is disqualifying, and it does not age out after five years as it does for a general employer. That single sentence disqualifies more Pennsylvania applicants than the entire Title 18 list. The added offences and the harder registry test track 45 CFR § 98.43, the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant background-check rule that C-25-01 names as the review standard. There is also a Pennsylvania-only bar that has nothing to do with employment and that most operators never read. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.32(c) provides: "The operator may not allow an individual to ENTER THE FACILITY if the operator knows that the individual has been convicted or is awaiting trial on charges involving a crime of child abuse, child neglect, physical violence or moral corruptness." That is a threshold rule, not a hiring rule; it reaches a boyfriend, an adult brother, a contractor and a delivery driver, it bites on charges "awaiting trial" as well as convictions, and its vocabulary is deliberately broader than the § 6344(c) list. C-25-01 requires such clearances to be "submitted to the regional Office of Child Development and Early Learning ... to be reviewed prior to allowing an individual to work in a certified child care facility," and for household members "upon receipt."

PROVISIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND SUPERVISION WHILE A CLEARANCE IS PENDING, AS REWRITTEN FOR CHILD CARE ON 1 FEBRUARY 2025. The conditions in C-25-01 are conjunctive. An individual may be employed provisionally only where the employer holds on file, no older than 60 months, the PA Child Abuse History Clearance, the NSOR verification, out-of-state clearances if applicable, a signed Disclosure Statement for Child Care Employment, and EITHER the FBI OR the PSP criminal history clearance; and where, "In addition to those obtained, the following clearances must be applied for prior to starting provisional employment: FBI Criminal History Clearance; or PSP Criminal History Clearance." You may start with one criminal check in hand and the other applied for; you may never start with the child abuse certification or the NSOR verification merely pending. Supervision during the period is absolute: "A provisionally hired employee must be supervised at all times by a staff person who has all preservice trainings and qualifications to care for children unsupervised," and the applicant signs that she is "not permitted to work alone with children and must work in the immediate vicinity of a permanent employee during the provisional period."

Two categories are excluded outright: "The Director of a certified child care facility may not be employed provisionally. Volunteers may not begin volunteering on a provisional basis (i.e. without all required clearances on file)." At day 45 the employer has no discretion: "If the required clearances are not obtained within 45-days, the employer must dismiss the employee or move them to a position where they do not have 'direct contact with children'." And a disqualifying result ends it immediately — the applicant "MUST be immediately dismissed," in OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03's capitals. Note what provisional employment is not: it is not a route for the operator herself or for an adult household member, because § 3290.11(h)(1) makes their clearances part of the initial application. THE 60-MONTH CYCLE, THE OLDEST-CLEARANCE RULE, AND THE TWO DHS PAGES THAT CONTRADICT EACH OTHER ON IT. C-25-01 is explicit that all five items ride the same clock: they "are considered current and valid if obtained within the last 60 months (five years). All required clearances need to be renewed prior to expiration of each certificate, every 60 months."

OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03 supplies the arithmetic rule: "THE DATE OF THE OLDEST CLEARANCE MUST BE THE DATE USED when calculating the renewal date for clearances." Beware the contradictory sentence on the DHS "Request a Child Abuse History Clearance" service page: "Clearances are required for an employee or unpaid volunteer at a minimum of every 60 months from the date of the MOST RECENT clearance." Those two sentences are not the same rule and they can differ by years. Renew on the oldest, not the newest. Three events force a check outside the cycle: a new adult in the household, an existing member turning 18, and a "reasonable belief" event. The CPSL's self-reporting duty runs the other way too: "If an employee or volunteer is arrested for or convicted of an offense that would constitute grounds for denying employment or participation in a program, activity or service under the CPSL, or is named as a perpetrator in a founded or indicated report, the employee or volunteer shall provide the employer or designee with written notice not later than 72 hours after the arrest, conviction or notification."

Failing to disclose is not a soft breach: the child care disclosure statement recites that an employee who willfully fails "commits a misdemeanor of the third degree and shall be subject to discipline up to and including termination or denial of employment." When the reasonable-belief trigger fires the bill moves to the employer, the 03/20/2026 FAQ describing that as "The only time an employer must bear the cost." Mandated reporter training rides an identical 60-month clock and is checked in the same file: C-25-01 requires it of all employees, of every legal entity and manager, and of volunteers with direct contact, requires that it "must be a minimum of 3 hours in length," gives new hires 90 days from date of hire, and requires renewal "every 60 months (5 years), prior to the previous certification turning 60 months." A HOUSEHOLD MEMBER WHO TURNS 18 MID-CERTIFICATE: WHAT THE REGULATION SAYS AND WHAT THE DEPARTMENT ACTUALLY DOES. The regulation is narrow and written for the renewal file, not for the day of the birthday. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(h)(2) provides that "At renewal, the legal entity shall submit clearances for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the child care facility at least 30 days in a calendar year if any of the following apply: (i) The individual attained 18 years of age following the date of the previous application for a certificate of compliance. (ii) The individual moved into the child care facility following the date of the previous application for a certificate of compliance." C-25-01 quotes that paragraph without enlarging it.

Read literally the deadline is your next renewal application, and since § 3290.11(j) issues a certificate "for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date of issue," the outer limit is a year. Do not run to that limit: the § 3290.32(c) entry bar operates on knowledge, immediately, and C-25-01 requires household-member clearances showing a conviction or pending charge to be sent to the regional office "upon receipt," which presupposes you obtained them when the trigger occurred. The practical sequence for an eighteenth birthday is: order the ChildLine certification through the Child Welfare Information Solution portal, the State Police check through PATCH, the NSOR verification on the paper application to the Clearance Verification Unit, and the FBI check by booking an IdentoGO appointment under service code 1KG78K, "Individual >=18 Years in Licensed Child Care Home." A fourth, punitive trigger catches operators who let a certificate lapse: § 3290.11(h)(3) provides that "Clearances are required for the legal entity and for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the facility at least 30 days in a calendar year by the Department if an application for renewal is received following expiration of the current certificate of compliance."

Miss the renewal date and the whole household is re-cleared from scratch regardless of how recent their certifications are. A household member who leaves Pennsylvania but stays in the house part of the year picks up the out-of-state bundle: C-25-01 requires that "out-of-state clearances must be obtained prior to the first expiration date of the individual required Pennsylvania clearances." PORTABILITY, AND THE FOUR WAYS A VALID PENNSYLVANIA CLEARANCE IS STILL THE WRONG CLEARANCE. Under 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.3, certifications current under § 6344.4 travel with the person, and the 03/20/2026 child care FAQ states the condition set: clearances may be used for another employer "so long as: The clearances were obtained within the last 60 months; and Prior to commencing employment, the employee swears or affirms in writing that they have not been disqualified from employment or service under the CPSL." That is the "no more than 60 months old" rule in practice — the document travels, the affirmation is re-signed. Four fences stand around it. First, the FBI check is not portable across departments: "Only the PA Child Abuse and PSP are portable/transferrable for employment under the CPSL.

The FBI is not portable/acceptable." OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03 explains the cause — a federal Criminal Justice Information Services audit "determined that it is no longer acceptable for the Department to accept an FBI Criminal History Clearance obtained through PDE or vice versa" — and states the consequence: "Individuals who work for both the Department and PDE must obtain two separate FBI Criminal History Clearances." C-25-01 repeats it for your setting: "An FBI clearance obtained pursuant to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) requirements is also not valid when working or residing in a certified child care facility. To work or reside in a certified child care facility, the only acceptable FBI clearance must be obtained pursuant to the Department of Human Services (DHS)." Second, the DHS FBI check is purpose-coded, and the wrong code produces a certificate that looks valid and is not: codes "for the purposes of Volunteer, Foster Parent, or Prospective Adoptive Parent cannot be used as a clearance to work or reside in a certified child care facility." The correct IdentoGO codes are 1KG738 for a child care employee or contractor, 1KG74S for a family child care home provider, 1KG78K for an individual aged 18 or over residing in a licensed child care home, and 1KG6ZJ for a DHS volunteer.

Third, volunteer clearances cannot be recycled into employment. OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03 sets out the fee waiver's conditions: the free clearances "may not be used and shall not be valid to satisfy the requirements for employment under § 6344(b)," and they "shall only be provided free of charge to a volunteer once every 57 months." C-25-01 puts it from the operator's side: "Clearances obtained for the purposes of Volunteer cannot be used when working or residing in a certified child care facility." The 57-month free window against a 60-month validity window is deliberate: it gives a volunteer three months of overlap to re-clear at no cost. Fourth, § 6344 lets a person transfer "to another child-care service established and supervised by the same organization" without new reports, but § 3290.11(j) provides that "A certificate of compliance is not transferrable" and "is void without notice if there is a change in the legal entity or the location of the child care facility," so there is rarely such a transfer to make. COSTS, VENDORS AND THE MECHANICS, AT AUGUST 2026 PRICES. The DHS child care FAQ revised 03/20/2026 prices the set: "The PA Child Abuse costs $13.00 (free for volunteers).

The PSP costs $22.00 (free for volunteers). The DHS FBI costs $24.95 ($22.95 for volunteers). The NSOR is free." The ChildLine certification is ordered through the Child Welfare Information Solution portal or on paper form CY 113, results mailed "within 14 days from the date that the application is received." The State Police check is ordered at Pennsylvania Access To Criminal History, and C-25-01 warns that it "will not be mailed to the applicant. The response ... will need to be printed out by the requestor" — print it the day you run it or run it again. The FBI check is fingerprint-based through IdentoGO, and "is not complete until the fingerprint process is finalized." The NSOR verification is the one item with no online path: the application "must be printed, filled out, and mailed, emailed, or hand delivered," and processing is "14 calendar days from the date the application is received at the Clearance Verification Unit." The Department's information sheet on a complete application requires the whole set in the initial package, "not more than 60 months old," plus the same for "any member of the household/ residence who is 18 years of age or older and is in the household for 30 or more calendar days per year."

Retention is regulated: 55 Pa. Code § 3290.192(3) requires each staff record to include "A copy of requests for the criminal history record and child abuse registry clearance information, a copy of the disclosure statement and a copy of the completed clearance information required under the CPSL." Confidentiality is federal as well as state: C-25-01 states that "Individual clearance certificates shall not be publicly released or shared 45 CFR § 98.43(e)(2)(ii)," and 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(n) puts it outside the Right-to-Know Law. Do not post a clearance certificate on a parent bulletin board and do not e-mail one to a family; § 3490.126(a) provides that an administrator "who willfully fails to comply with section 6344 of the CPSL ... is subject to civil penalty not to exceed $2,500." THE APPEAL ROUTE, WHICH IS TWO SEPARATE ROUTES ON TWO DIFFERENT CLOCKS. If the adverse finding is a ChildLine result — you are named as the perpetrator of an indicated report — the fight is with the Department and it is fast. 55 Pa. Code § 3490.105a(a) provides that a perpetrator of an indicated report "may request the Secretary to amend or expunge the report on the grounds that it is inaccurate or is being maintained in a manner inconsistent with the CPSL and this chapter.

The request shall be in writing and POSTMARKED WITHIN 45-CALENDAR DAYS of the mailing date of the letter from ChildLine." The Secretary "will decide within 30-calendar days whether or not to grant the request." If the Secretary refuses, § 3490.106a governs: the appeal "shall be made to the Secretary and postmarked within 45-calendar days of the date of the notification letter," "there is a hearing before the Department's Bureau of Hearings and Appeals" under 2 Pa.C.S. §§ 501—508 and 701—704 and 1 Pa. Code Part II, "The burden of proof ... is on the appropriate county agency," and parties then have "15-calendar days from the mailing date of the final order ... to request the Secretary to reconsider the decision or 30-calendar days to appeal the final order to the Commonwealth Court." Under § 3490.106a(i) the administrative appeal "will be automatically stayed" on notice that a criminal, dependency or delinquency proceeding on the same facts is pending, so a pending prosecution freezes rather than forfeits your expunction case. If instead the adverse decision is about your certificate, the route is 55 Pa.

Code § 3290.13, which gives a shorter window: "Appeals related to the Department's approval or licensure shall be made by filing a petition WITHIN 30 DAYS after service of notice of the action," and § 3290.13(e) makes clear that this period "supersedes the appeal period of 1 Pa. Code § 35.20." Section 3290.13(d) obliges the Department to include appeal information when it notifies you of a denial, a failure to renew, a revocation, or a decision "Limiting or precluding admission of persons into the facility" — that last category is the § 3290.32(c) entry bar, appealable in its own right. Two collateral routes run outside DHS entirely: an erroneous State Police record is challenged under the Criminal History Record Information Act at 18 Pa.C.S. Chapter 91, and an inaccurate FBI identity history record with the FBI under the federal record-challenge procedure. The Department will not adjudicate the accuracy of another agency's rap sheet; it will only decide what to do with the sheet it receives. Finally, a conviction on a clearance is not automatically the end of the file: C-25-01 routes it to the regional office and to Bureau of Certification Services staff for review "based on criteria including, but not limited to, the criteria prohibiting hire as described in 45 CFR § 98.43." If the offence is one of the permanent § 6344(c) bars, or an indicated or founded abuse report, the answer is no and there is nothing to weigh.

If it is outside those lists, do not self-disqualify and do not quietly proceed either: send it to the regional office and get the decision in writing, because an inspection that finds an unreviewed conviction in a household file is a finding against the certificate, not against the individual.

The application, step by step

Work through these in order — the prep packet turns them into a checklist you can tick off:

1. STEP ONE — COUNT THE CHILDREN WHO WILL BE IN YOUR HOUSE AT ONE INSTANT, BECAUSE THAT NUMBER, AND NOTHING ELSE, DECIDES WHICH BODY OF LAW YOU SPEND THE NEXT SIX MONTHS SATISFYING. Pennsylvania runs three separate certification regimes and one zone of no jurisdiction, and they are divided purely by head count. Three or fewer unrelated children at any one time: the Department of Human Services has nothing to say to you. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.3(a) sets the floor as well as the ceiling — "This chapter applies to facilities in which out-of-home care is provided, at any one time, for part of a 24-hour day to four, five or six children who are not related to the operator and who are 15 years of age or younger" — and § 3290.4 repeats it: "Family child care home—A home other than the child's own home, operated for profit or not-for-profit, in which child care is provided at any one time to four, five or six children unrelated to the operator." There is no Pennsylvania certificate for a three-child home. You cannot buy one, and you cannot advertise as certified. Four, five or six unrelated children: Chapter 3290, a FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME, and a Certificate of Compliance issued by a regional office. More than six: you leave Chapter 3290 entirely. 55 Pa. Code § 3280.4 defines the next tier — "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" — and § 3280.51 states the cap plainly: "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." Seven or more of any age, outside a residence, and you are a child care center under Chapter 3270. OCDEL restated the whole taxonomy in Certification Announcement C-26-01, issued and effective June 10, 2026, over Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown's signature. Note what the fork does NOT turn on: not square footage, not whether you charge money — § 3290.3(a) says "private or public, profit or nonprofit" — and not how many staff you hire. Chapter 3290 capacity does not scale with staffing at any price; if you want a seventh child you must move to Chapter 3280 and satisfy its staff qualifications, group sizes and ratio table in § 3280.52. Two exclusions sit outside all of this: § 3290.3(b) removes "Care provided by relatives" and "Care furnished in places of worship during religious services." The cost of guessing wrong is criminal, not administrative. Under 62 P.S. § 1002, "No person shall maintain, operate or conduct any facility, as defined herein, without having a license therefor issued by the department," and 62 P.S. § 1031(a)(1), as amended by Act 92 of 2015, makes a first offence a summary offence carrying "a fine not less than twenty-five dollars ($25) nor more than three hundred dollars ($300), costs of prosecution and, if in default of payment thereof, to imprisonment for not less than ten days nor more than thirty days," escalating to a third-degree felony and a $10,000 floor for a fourth offence or one causing serious bodily injury — with each day of unlicensed operation a separate offence.
2. STEP TWO — TELEPHONE YOUR REGIONAL OFFICE, BECAUSE PENNSYLVANIA WROTE THE PHONE CALL INTO THE REGULATION AS A "SHALL," AND BECAUSE THE ORIENTATION YOU BOOK ON THAT CALL IS A HARD PRECONDITION TO ISSUANCE. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(a): "An individual desiring information about the certification requirements for the operation of a family child care home shall contact the Department at the appropriate regional office." That is mandatory language attached to what looks like an information request, and it tells you how the programme is run — the regional office is not a help desk bolted onto self-service, it is the process. There are four regional child development offices and your assignment follows the county where the HOME sits, not where you live: Western at 301 Fifth Avenue, Suite 370, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, (412) 565-5183 / (800) 222-2149; Central at 555 Walnut St., Forum Place, 6th Floor, P.O. Box 2675, Harrisburg, PA 17105, (717) 772-7078 / (800) 222-2117; Northeast at 100 Lackawanna Avenue, Scranton State Office Building, Scranton, PA 18503, (570) 963-4371 / (800) 222-2108; Southeast at 801 Market Street, Suite 5132, Philadelphia, PA 19107-3126, (215) 560-2541 / (800) 346-2929. Then § 3290.11(b): "An applicant who may be interested in applying for a certificate of compliance shall participate in an orientation training provided by the Department within 12 months prior to issuance of a certificate of compliance. The orientation does not count toward the annual minimum of 12 clock hours of child care training required in § 3290.31(f)." Two things hide in that sentence. First, the twelve months run backwards from ISSUANCE, not from application, so orientation taken too early expires while your file sits in review. Second, orientation is free training that buys you nothing against your annual training obligation. In practice OCDEL splits it in two and you must do both, in order. Part one is an online, free Penn State Extension Better Kid Care module named exactly "DHS Orientation: Opening a Family Child Care Home," taken at extension.psu.edu/youth/betterkidcare/on-demand; DHS's own orientation page states "There is no fee for this course." Part two is a live session run by regional office certification representatives, and the 2026 regional schedules say in capitals: "Attendance is MANDATORY as part of the Certification process." You will not be registered for the live session without emailing your Better Kid Care completion certificate first — Northeast at RA-ocdelcertncscrant@pa.gov then (800) 222-2108, Western at RA-ocdelcertwpittsbu@pa.gov. Sessions are monthly at best: the 2026 Northeast family-home dates were January 15, February 12, March 12, April 16, May 14, June 11, July 16, August 13, September 17, October 22, November 19 and December 10, running 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM at the Scranton State Office Building, Room B-3; the 2026 Western family-home dates were sparser still — January 14, March 4, April 1, June 3, August 5, October 7 and December 2, running 1:15 PM to 3:30 PM. Only two individuals per legal entity may attend, photo ID is required, no children are permitted, and the rule that catches people is stated flatly: arrive more than fifteen minutes late and you will not be admitted. Miss a Western session and you have waited two months for nothing. Book this first; everything else in the application can proceed in parallel while you wait for a seat.
3. STEP THREE — SETTLE ZONING, YOUR DEED AND YOUR LANDLORD BEFORE YOU SPEND A DOLLAR, BECAUSE CHAPTER 3290 CONTAINS NOT ONE WORD ABOUT ANY OF THEM AND DHS WILL NOT PROTECT YOU FROM THE OUTCOME. Read the whole of 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3290 and you will not find the words zoning, deed, covenant, homeowners association or landlord. The Department's jurisdiction begins at the certificate and stops at your property line. What Chapter 3290 does instead is quietly concede local supremacy in three places, and the concessions are one-way. § 3290.91(b): "Protective gates and devices that can be opened easily are permitted, if they open easily and are not disapproved by building codes or local ordinance." § 3290.92: fixed and portable space heaters may be used "if allowed by local ordinance." § 3290.93: fireplaces and woodburning and coalburning stoves, again, "if allowed by local ordinance." A local ordinance can subtract from what the Department permits; nothing in the chapter lets the Department override a municipality. Nor can you buy your way past it: § 3290.25(c) restricts waivers to "Physical site requirements in §§ 3290.61—3290.78" and "Equipment requirements in §§ 3290.101—3290.107," and § 3290.25(d)(5) forbids a waiver that "violate[s] or condone[s] noncompliance with another Federal or State law or regulation." There is no waiver of your township. The burden is explicitly yours, and DHS says so. Its own one-page "Family Child Care Home – Certificate of Occupancy Tip Sheet," still hosted at pa.gov and still linked from the FCCH readiness tool, instructs: "Before trying to get a Certificate of Occupancy, you should first check with your local municipality (city, town, borough or township) to find out if you live in an area zoned for this business use. If the area is zoned for this use, you can start the process to get a Certificate of Occupancy from your local municipality." It even scripts the phone call for you: "I want to establish a family child care home in a private residence. Do I live in an area zoned for this business use?" Renters and residents of subsidised housing face a harder gate, and the tip sheet is unusually blunt about the mechanism: "If you rent your home or live in subsidized housing, you must contact your landlord to get written approval to use your home to provide child care. The name of your landlord or the housing authority will appear on the Certificate of Occupancy." That sentence is the trap. A landlord who will not be named on a municipal occupancy permit is a landlord who has ended your application, and you will discover it at the code office rather than in a conversation you controlled. The same logic applies to a recorded deed restriction or an HOA covenant barring commercial or business use of a dwelling: Pennsylvania has no statute preempting private restrictive covenants for family child care, and no provision of the Human Services Code or Chapter 3290 purports to. Timing: zoning confirmation can take a single phone call or, where a home occupation requires a special exception or variance, a hearing before the zoning hearing board, advertised notice and one to three months. Nothing else in this walkthrough moves until you know the answer, because the Certificate of Occupancy at step four is issued against your zoning status, and § 3290.14(a) makes the Certificate of Occupancy an absolute precondition to your DHS certificate. Do this first, do it in writing, and keep the email.
4. STEP FOUR — GET THE CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY, THE LONGEST POLE IN THE WHOLE APPLICATION AND THE ONE ITEM DHS HAS WRITTEN AS AN ABSOLUTE BAR. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.14(a): "A certificate of compliance will not be granted by the Department until the legal entity provides a certificate of occupancy as proof of compliance with the applicable requirements in 34 Pa. Code § 403.23 (relating to child day care facilities) and under section 1016(c) of the act (62 P.S. § 1016(c))." Subsection (b) makes it permanent: you "shall maintain ongoing compliance … at all times following issuance of any certificate of compliance." The classification you need is R-3. 34 Pa. Code § 403.23(a): "A dwelling unit where child day care services are provided for less than 24 hours for 4 to 12 children is an R-3 occupancy if the dwelling unit is used primarily as a private residence and the provision of day care services is accessory to the principal use of the dwelling unit as a residence." The L&I regulation runs 4 to 12 in one band and then splits the requirements: § 403.23(b) governs 4—6 children (your case), § 403.23(c) governs 7—12. Check the version, but do not panic: § 403.23's source note now ends "amended November 7, 2025, effective January 1, 2026, 55 Pa.B. 7701," yet that triennial rulemaking amended only subsection (d), swapping the "International Building Code of 2018" for the 2021 edition. Subsections (a)—(c) were reprinted as ellipses and are unchanged. Nothing about a 4—6 child home moved on January 1, 2026. WHO ISSUES IT is the question DHS answers ambiguously and the Construction Code answers precisely. DHS's FCCH Provider Readiness Screening Tool asks whether you hold a certificate of occupancy "issued by your local municipality or the Department of Labor and Industry," and the Better Kid Care orientation handout says to "Contact local municipal office to determine if that office conducts inspections or if you will need to call the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry." The governing rule is 34 Pa. Code §§ 403.102—403.103: a municipality that elected to enforce the Uniform Construction Code has its own building code official or a third-party agency; a municipality that elected NOT to enforce it does not push you to Harrisburg for a house — § 403.103(b) provides that "An applicant for a residential building permit shall obtain the services of a third-party agency certified in the appropriate categories to conduct the plan review and inspections." You hire and pay that agency. Two more provisions set your calendar. § 403.62(a) requires a permit before you "change the occupancy of a residential building," which is exactly what accessory child care is. § 403.65(a): "A residential building may not be used or occupied without a certificate of occupancy issued by a building code official," and § 403.65(b) gives the official five business days after the final inspection report — ten in cities of the first class, meaning Philadelphia — to issue it. Philadelphia is separate: OCDEL's complete-application guidance states a family child care home in a residential building there needs City of Philadelphia L&I "License #3397" and a "Residential Day Care Inspection Checklist," not a standard certificate of occupancy. Realistically this runs four to twelve weeks and can require actual construction — an added egress, a handrail, a repaired stair. Start it the day zoning clears; steps five through nine run alongside it.
5. STEP FIVE — INSTALL INTERCONNECTED SMOKE ALARMS, BECAUSE THE REGULATION YOU WILL BE SHOWN AT THE CODE OFFICE IS BEHIND THE STATUTE THAT BINDS YOU. 34 Pa. Code § 403.23(b)(1), untouched by the January 1, 2026 amendment, still requires a 4—6 child home only to "Have a smoke detector on each floor and in the basement." Interconnection appears only at § 403.23(c)(1), for 7—12 children. That is not the law you must satisfy. Act 42 of 2022, signed July 7, 2022, amended the Fire and Panic Act at 35 P.S. § 1223.6(f.1)(1.1): "The smoke alarms required under this section shall be interconnected via hardwire, Bluetooth connectivity or any other means that allow for communication between smoke alarms for family child-care homes. The following shall apply: (i) The activation of each smoke alarm shall result in an alarm that is audible to persons in the indoor child-care space with all intervening doors closed. (ii) Each smoke alarm shall, at the time of installation, be approved by a testing laboratory recognized by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration … to test and certify smoke alarms." Act 3 of 2023 gave existing homes until September 6, 2023 to comply. § 1223.6(f.1)(2) adds that operators "shall maintain, in their fire drill logs, proof of purchase, including the date of purchase of the smoke alarm," and (f.1)(3) requires "a portable fire extinguisher rated for class B fires in the kitchen and other cooking areas." OCDEL's Announcement C-23-01, issued and effective July 25, 2023, is written on this footing and supersedes C-21-02 entirely; C-21-02 had still contemplated family homes with non-interconnected detectors. Do not work from it. The testing duty comes from a third statute again. Act 62 of 2020 added 62 P.S. § 1016(c): "To verify operability, a child care center or a family child care home shall manually test all fire detection devices or systems at least once every thirty days and shall maintain a written record of the testing with the facility's fire drill logs. Operability shall also be demonstrated during the department's annual inspection." Subsection (c)(2) is the escape hatch — a system that cannot be tested monthly must be "tested at least annually by a fire safety professional" with documentation "on the fire safety professional's letterhead." 55 Pa. Code § 3290.95 does nothing but point at the statute. Use OCDEL's form CY 864, the Fire Drill and Fire Detection Log. NOW THE PART THAT DISTINGUISHES A HOME FROM A FACILITY: there is no fire marshal inspection of your house. 55 Pa. Code § 20.35(a) requires "written fire safety approval from either the Department of Labor and Industry or the Department of Health of the Commonwealth—or the local Department of Public Safety in the cities of Scranton and Pittsburgh or the local Department of Licensing and Inspection in Philadelphia—if applicable"; for a home that showing is folded into the R-3 certificate of occupancy at step four. What replaces the fire inspection is a referral power: 62 P.S. § 1016(c)(4) directs that notice of any suspected failure "shall be provided to the building code official charged by law or ordinance with the enforcement of safety requirements," and C-23-01 adds that if you lack operable smoke alarms or a valid certificate of occupancy, "a representative of the Department will make a complaint to the building code official." Your certification representative is not your fire inspector; she is the person who reports you to one.
6. STEP SIX — PULL THREE CLEARANCES FOR YOURSELF AND FOR EVERY ADULT WHO SLEEPS IN THE HOUSE THIRTY DAYS A YEAR, AND START EARLY, BECAUSE THE FBI PRINT IS THE SLOWEST ITEM IN THE FILE AND THERE IS NO WAIVER OF IT FOR A CHILD CARE HOME. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(h)(1): "At initial application for a certificate of compliance, the applicant shall submit clearances for the applicant and for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the child care facility at least 30 days in a calendar year." The statute behind it is 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.1(a). OCDEL's June 2026 application guidance adds the detail that ends most arguments: "The 30 days do not have to be consecutive." A college-age child home for summer, a partner on the lease, an elderly parent in the back bedroom — all in scope, and none of them can decline. THE THREE DOCUMENTS, under § 6344(b), are the Pennsylvania State Police criminal history record (§ 6344(b)(1), form SP 4-164, rev. 10-2025, at epatch.pa.gov, $22.00, or $27.00 notarized; PATCH returns clean records immediately but flags others "under review" for two to four weeks); the Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Certification (§ 6344(b)(2), form CY 113, through the Child Welfare Portal at compass.pa.gov/cwis with a Keystone ID, $13.00, results "mailed to the applicant's address within 14 days"); and the federal fingerprint record (§ 6344(b)(3)). The prints are taken by IDEMIA/IdentoGO and the service code matters: 1KG738, "Pennsylvania DHS – Child Care Services/Program Employees or Contractors." The volunteer code 1KG6ZJ produces a certification you cannot use, because § 6344(b.3) prohibits accepting "a certification that was obtained for volunteering purposes." The FBI fee is $24.95 today; DHS has published that "Effective October 1, 2026, the cost to register and obtain an FBI background check for Employees & Foster/Adoptive Parents will increase from $24.95 to $27.95." Mailing runs seven to ten business days. THE WAIVER YOU HAVE HEARD ABOUT DOES NOT EXIST HERE. 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.2(b.1) lets a ten-year Pennsylvania resident swear an affidavit in lieu of the FBI check — and § 6344.2(b.1)(4) kills it in one sentence: "The exceptions under this subsection do not apply to volunteers in a child day-care center, group day-care home or family child-care home." It fails twice over, since § 6344.2 governs volunteers and an operator is not one. VALIDITY is sixty months. 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.4(1)(i) requires new certifications "every 60 months," and the application guidance restates it as "obtained during the 5 years (60 months) prior to submitting the application." Anyone who lived outside Pennsylvania in the past five years also owes out-of-state clearances. THE DISQUALIFIERS bite on the household, not just on you: § 6344.1(c) directs that "The department shall refuse to issue or renew a certificate of compliance or license or shall revoke a certificate of compliance or license if the day-care home provider or individual 18 years of age or older who has resided in the home for at least 30 days in a calendar year: (1) is named in the Statewide database as the perpetrator of a founded report committed within the immediately preceding five-year period; or (2) has been convicted of an offense enumerated in section 6344(c)." One adult in your house can end your business. Budget six to eight weeks for the full set across every adult, running concurrently with step four.
7. STEP SEVEN — COMPLETE THE TEN PRE-SERVICE HEALTH AND SAFETY TOPICS, ONE PERSON DOING ALL OF THEM, AND SEND THE PAPERWORK INSIDE THE APPLICATION ENVELOPE. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(e) is written as a bar on issuance: "Prior to issuance of a certificate of compliance, the applicant or representative of the applicant shall complete professional development in each of the following topics: (1) Prevention and control of infectious diseases (including immunization) and the establishment of a grace period that allows homeless children and children in foster care to receive services while their families … comply with immunization and other health and safety requirements. (2) Prevention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and use of safe sleep practices. (3) Administration of medication … (4) Prevention of and response to emergencies due to food and allergic reactions. (5) Building and physical premises safety, including identification of and protection from hazards that can cause bodily injury such as electrical hazards, bodies of water, and vehicular traffic. (6) Prevention of shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma. (7) Emergency preparedness and response planning for emergencies resulting from a natural disaster or a man-caused event … (8) Handling and storage of hazardous materials and appropriate disposal of biocontaminants. (9) Precautions when transporting children. (10) Pediatric first aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation." That list is the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant health-and-safety schedule, imported by the final-form rulemaking at 50 Pa.B. 7133. § 3290.11(f) sets the documentary rule applicants break: "Completion of professional development shall be documented by the signature and title of a representative of the professional development entity and include the date the professional development was completed. Documentation shall be included with the application when it is submitted to the regional office. Documentation … taken from September 30, 2016, forward satisfies this requirement." Included WITH the application. A regional office that receives a CD 633 without training certificates does not hold it pending; an incomplete application generates "written notification from DHS returning the application," and you rejoin the queue. Where you take it: Penn State Extension Better Kid Care, tracked through the PA PD Registry at papdregistry.org. The family-home courses are "PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care Part 1" and "Part 2," three hours each; Better Kid Care states "There is no charge for learners in Pennsylvania to complete the course(s) above." The hours changed recently and stale write-ups still say ten: Announcement C-24-03, issued December 20, 2024, effective January 1, 2025, cut the requirement "from ten to six hours" and split it in two. Two further traps. First, OCDEL's June 2026 guidance states: "Preservice training in the ten health and safety topics and pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR must be completed by the same legal entity representative person." You cannot split the burden across two adults and staple the certificates together. Second, § 3290.11(g) reaches backwards: "Family child care home providers that operate under a certificate of compliance prior to December 19, 2020 shall complete the professional development under subsection (e)." No grandfathering. Six hours of self-paced online work, realistically a week, parallel to steps four through six.
8. STEP EIGHT — CERTIFY IN PEDIATRIC FIRST AID AND PEDIATRIC CPR WITH A PQAS-APPROVED TRAINER, AND STOP EXPECTING SOMEONE ELSE TO PAY FOR IT. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.32(d) is a standing operational rule, not merely an application item: "One or more facility persons competent in pediatric first-aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques shall be at the facility when one or more children are in care." In a one-adult family child care home that means you, present, certified, every minute the doors are open — there is no arrangement in which the certified person is elsewhere. § 3290.31(f)(4)(i) defines competence and imposes the renewal duty: "Pediatric first-aid training and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR): Competence requires completion of training by a professional in first-aid and CPR. All staff shall renew certification on or before expiration." Note what the regulation does NOT do. It names no vendor, no brand, no curriculum and no expiry period. Pennsylvania does not tell you your card lasts two years; the regulation defers entirely to "the expiration of the most current certification," which is set by whichever curriculum you took. Do not write a fixed renewal date into your file from memory — read the card. The acceptance test is administrative rather than regulatory, and it lives in OCDEL's June 2026 complete-application guidance, which requires "Current completion of an approved pediatric first aid and pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training conducted by a PQAS-certified trainer," PQAS being the Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System, and directs you to "find a PQAS-certified trainer" through the PD Registry. Announcement C-25-02, issued as PDO-25-01 on June 18, 2025, effective July 1, 2025, restates the standard as training "conducted by an approved Pennsylvania Quality Assurance System (PQAS) Instructor using an OCDEL recognized curriculum." A community class from an instructor who is not in PQAS produces a card the regional office will not count, and you pay twice. THE MONEY CHANGED IN 2025 AND MOST GUIDES HAVE NOT CAUGHT UP. Until July 1, 2025 the Early Childhood Education Professional Development Organizations delivered pediatric first aid and CPR free of charge under Announcement C-22-01. C-25-02 made C-22-01 obsolete and ended that. OCDEL funded a time-limited free window from March to June 2026 through ECELS and the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, announced March 12, 2026, but that was an offer, not an entitlement, and it has closed. Budget for a paid class. There is a second, less obvious constraint carried over from step seven: because pediatric first aid and CPR is item (10) on the § 3290.11(e) list, and because OCDEL requires the whole § 3290.11(e) list to be "completed by the same legal entity representative person," the individual who sits the six hours of Better Kid Care health and safety training must be the same individual who holds the first aid and CPR card. A household that divides the tasks between two adults produces a packet that satisfies neither rule. Practical timing: a single classroom session, usually half a day, available most weeks; this is the fastest item in the application and the one most often left until last, at which point it becomes the reason a certificate is not issued in the month you expected. Take it early, and take it from the Registry.
9. STEP NINE — HAVE A PHYSICIAN SIGN YOUR HEALTH ASSESSMENT, INCLUDING A TUBERCULOSIS SCREEN, AND SEND IT TO THE DEPARTMENT BEFORE THE CERTIFICATE ISSUES — NOT AFTER. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.151(a): "A facility person providing direct care who comes into contact with the children or who works with food preparation shall have a health assessment on file at the facility. (1) The operator shall submit a health assessment to the Department prior to issuance of an initial or renewal certificate of compliance. (2) A health assessment is valid for 24 months following the date of signature …" Two operative facts. The assessment travels to the Department, not merely into your own file, and it does so at initial issuance AND at every renewal — on a twelve-month certificate cycle that means a fresh one every other year, and the clock runs from the date of SIGNATURE, not from your certificate. Who may sign is closed: § 3290.151(b), "A health assessment shall be conducted and a report written and signed by a physician, physician's assistant or CRNP. The signature must include the individual's professional title." A chiropractor, a pharmacist, an urgent-care nurse without CRNP credentials — none produce a valid document, and a missing professional title is a routine reason a packet comes back. The content is a five-part list at § 3290.151(c): "(1) A physical examination. (2) Tuberculosis screening by the Mantoux method at initial employment … (3) Examination for communicable diseases and the results of that examination. (4) Information on medical problems which might threaten the health of the children or prohibit a staff person from providing adequate care to children. (5) The physician's or CRNP's assessment of the person's suitability to provide child care." Item (5) is not boilerplate; it is an affirmative professional opinion your clinician must write, and a form returned without it is incomplete. THE TUBERCULOSIS RULE IS ONE-AND-DONE, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT MOST APPLICANTS ASSUME. The Mantoux is required "at initial employment" only. § 3290.151(c)(2)(iii) then provides that "A person with a positive tuberculin skin test and a negative x-ray is not required to have further tuberculosis testing" unless "(A) The person is exposed to an active case of tuberculosis" or "(B) The person develops a productive cough which does not respond to medical treatment within 14 days." A positive skin test is not a disqualification; § 3290.151(c)(2)(i)—(ii) simply require the record, the chest x-ray and an "evaluation for chemoprophylaxis" on file. And if your provider offers a blood test, take it: § 3290.151a, a statement of policy adopted February 3, 2012 at 42 Pa.B. 675, provides that "The Department will accept an interferongamma release assay blood test instead of the Mantoux skin test for an adult health assessment." That saves the two-visit Mantoux read. DHS publishes CD 322, Child Care Staff Health Assessment; the children's counterpart is CD 51. Note the asymmetry: your adult assessment lasts 24 months, but under § 3290.131(b) a child's health report must be updated "At least every 6 months for an infant or young toddler" and "At least every 12 months for an older toddler or preschool child." Practical timing: one appointment, plus 48 to 72 hours for a Mantoux read. Fully parallel to steps four and six; the only thing that makes it late is a clinician who cannot see you for three weeks. Book it the day you book orientation.
10. STEP TEN — FILE THE APPLICATION, ON FORM CD 633, WITH THIRTEEN ATTACHMENTS AND NO FEE WHATSOEVER. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(d): "An applicant desiring to apply for a certificate of compliance shall submit application documents, on forms prescribed by the Department, to the appropriate regional office." Chapter 20 adds the mechanics: § 20.21(b), a legal entity subject to Article X "may not commence operation until notified that a certificate of compliance will be issued"; § 20.21(e), report any fictitious name registered with the Department of State; § 20.12, a corporation submits its articles of incorporation at initial application. THE FORM IS CD 633, "Application for Certificate of Compliance: Center, Group, and Family Home," and the only revision marker printed on it is CD 633 10/17 — October 2017, unrevised for nearly nine years, still asking at item 9 whether you have "a provider agreement with a CCIS," an entity replaced by the Early Learning Resource Centers. Use it anyway; it is the form DHS lists. OCDEL's guidance "What Is a Complete Certificate of Compliance Application?", rewritten in June 2026, opens with the routing rule — "The first step in obtaining a Certificate of Compliance is the submission of a complete application to the appropriate Regional Office" — and enumerates the packet: CD 633; the certificate of occupancy; the three clearances plus National Sex Offender Registry verification for you and every household adult; a signed, witnessed and dated disclosure statement; proof of mandated reporter training; business formation and tax-exempt papers if applicable; an FEIN or, for an individual owner, a Social Security number; the Civil Rights Compliance form HS 2126, of which the guidance warns that "An initial Certificate of Compliance cannot be processed until the BEO notifies OCDEL of approval"; proof of live orientation within the last twelve months; and the pre-service training documentation. Item thirteen, Safe Drinking Water Act verification, is marked "Not applicable for: … Family Child Care Homes." There is also an online channel — Provider Self-Service inside PELICAN, at pelican.dhs.pa.gov/provider, reached with a Keystone ID and advertised as letting you "apply for or renew child care licensing" — but the June 2026 guidance still describes a regional-office submission. Ask your regional office which channel it wants before assembling anything. NOW THE FEE, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE PENNSYLVANIA IS GENUINELY UNUSUAL AND WHERE THIRD-PARTY GUIDES INVENT NUMBERS. There is none. 55 Pa. Code § 20.42(a) lists fees for adult day care centers, maternity homes, community residential intellectual disability facilities, psychiatric clinics, partial hospitalization programs, private psychiatric hospitals, vocational facilities and personal care homes — no child care category appears in the table — and § 20.42(b) closes it: "No fee is required for a facility or agency not listed in subsection (a)." § 20.41 adds the telling qualifier, "the applicable fee, if any." The statute says the same in words, at 62 P.S. § 1006 as amended by Act 92 of 2015: "No fee shall be required for the annual license in the case of day care centers, family child care homes, boarding homes for children or for public or nonprofit mental institutions." Your entire out-of-pocket cost to Pennsylvania is the clearances and the municipal certificate of occupancy. Anyone quoting an application fee for a family child care home is reading another state.
11. STEP ELEVEN — WRITE THE EMERGENCY PLAN AND MAIL IT TO TWO GOVERNMENT BODIES THAT ARE NOT DHS, BECAUSE IT IS THE ONE WRITTEN POLICY PENNSYLVANIA SPECIFIES IN FULL AND THE ONE CARRYING AN OUTBOUND DISTRIBUTION DUTY. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.24(a): "The facility shall have an emergency plan that provides for: (1) Shelter of children during an emergency including lock-down, shelter in place at the facility and shelter at locations away from the facility premises. (2) Evacuation of children from the facility building and … to a location away from the facility premises … (3) A method for facility persons to contact parents as soon as reasonably possible when an emergency situation arises. (4) A method … to inform parents that the emergency has ended and to provide instruction as to how parents can safely be reunited with their children. (5) Accommodations of infants and toddlers, children with disabilities and children with chronic medical conditions." An inspector reads for all five; a plan covering fire evacuation but silent on lock-down or reunification is a citation. The surrounding duties matter as much as the content. § 3290.24(b): review at least annually, document each review in writing. § 3290.24(c): every facility person is trained "at the time of initial employment, on an annual basis and at the time of each plan update," with dates and names documented. § 3290.24(d): "Emergency drills shall be conducted annually," documented on file. § 3290.24(e): the plan "shall be posted in the facility at a conspicuous location." § 3290.24(f): each parent gets "a letter explaining the emergency procedures described in subsection (a)," and another for every update. And then the provision nobody expects, § 3290.24(g): "The operator shall send a copy of the emergency plan and subsequent plan updates to the local municipality and to the county emergency management agency." Your township and your county EMA each get a copy, every time you revise it. DHS publishes CD 355, Documentation of Emergency Plan Delivery, and CD 356, the Emergency Drill Log, because this is the paperwork applicants forget. Do not confuse the annual emergency drill with fire drills, which run on a far more demanding schedule: § 3290.94(a) requires fire drills "at least once every 60 days," at different times of day or night, during various program activities, with "the hypothetical locations of the fire … rotated around the facility … such that the hypothetical location is never the same for consecutive drills," evacuation routes posted "in a conspicuous location on each floor," evacuation plans that "provide for the removal of all persons from the facility in a single trip," children and facility persons exiting weather permitting, and a written record of "the specific time of day of the drill, the hypothetical location of the fire, the evacuation time, and the names of the facility persons and the number of children who participate." Six fire drills a year, one emergency drill, two logs — CY 864 carries the fire record. A NOTE ON WHAT PENNSYLVANIA DOES NOT REQUIRE: there is no "parent handbook" anywhere in Chapter 3290 and no general written-policies section. What exists is a short list of specific instruments — the § 3290.24(f) emergency letters, the § 3290.121(b) written statement delivered "At the time of enrollment," and the § 3290.123 signed agreement. Nothing lets you substitute a handbook for the items the regulation names one by one.
12. STEP TWELVE — BUILD THE PARENT AGREEMENT AND THE TWO RECORD SETS BEFORE THE INSPECTOR ARRIVES, BECAUSE EACH ITEM IS A NAMED SUBSECTION AND RECORDS ARE READ AT THE PRE-CERTIFICATION VISIT. Start with what the parent gets. § 3290.121(a): the operator "shall review with the parent, at the time of application, the facility's general daily schedule, hours in which care is provided, fees, responsibilities for meals, clothing, health policies, supervision policies, night care policies, dismissal policies, transportation and pick-up arrangements," and § 3290.121(b) requires that at enrollment "a parent shall receive in writing the information described in subsection (a)." Eleven subjects, in writing, before day one. Then the contract, § 3290.123(a): a signed agreement specifying "(1) The amount of fee to be charged per day or per week. (2) The date on which the fee is to be paid. (3) The services to be provided to the family and child, including the Department's approved form … about the child's growth and development. (5) The individuals designated by the parent to whom the child may be released … (7) The services which are to be considered as extra," plus arrival and departure times and the admission date. § 3290.123(b): "A parent shall receive the original agreement. The facility shall retain a copy." DHS publishes CY 321, the Day Care Agreement, and CY 867, the Emergency Contact/Parental Consent Form. CHILD RECORDS are individual: § 3290.181(a) requires "an individual record for each child enrolled," reviewed for accuracy by the parent "at least once in a 6-month period." § 3290.182 sets the contents: health reports; dates of application, admission and withdrawal; "Signed parental consent for emergency medical care for the child. Written consent is required prior to admission"; consent for medications or special diets; consent "for administration of minor first-aid procedures by facility staff," again "required prior to admission"; consent "for transportation, walking excursions, swimming and wading"; accident and illness reports in triplicate, the original "given to the parent on the day of the incident," a second in an accident file, a third in the child's file; and the agreement. ADULT RECORDS are a second set. § 3290.191 requires "an individual record … for each staff person," and § 3290.192 requires name, address and telephone number; "A written report of initial and subsequent health assessments, including the results of initial and subsequent tuberculin skin tests, x-rays or other medical documentation necessary to confirm freedom from communicable tuberculosis"; "A copy of requests for the criminal history record and child abuse registry clearance information, a copy of the disclosure statement and a copy of the completed clearance information required under the CPSL"; and training records. Note that it demands the REQUESTS as well as the results. Finally the wall. § 3290.22(a): the current certificate "shall be posted in a conspicuous location used by parents, with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office posted at the same location." § 3290.22(b): give each parent "information on how to access the regulations in this chapter electronically." And § 3290.22(c) turns a bad inspection into a public one: "The operator shall post a copy of each inspection summary issued by the Department next to the facility's certificate of compliance … The inspection summary must remain posted until an agent of the Department verifies that each noncompliance item … has been corrected." Every parent who walks through your door reads your citations until a Department agent, not you, signs them off.
13. STEP THIRTEEN — SKIP THE WELL TEST, THE RADON TEST AND THE LIABILITY INSURANCE POLICY, BECAUSE PENNSYLVANIA REQUIRES NONE OF THEM OF A FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME. Most state family-home regimes bundle a private-well bacteriological test, a lead clearance, a radon measurement and a certificate of liability insurance or a signed notice to parents in lieu of insurance. Chapter 3290 contains none of the four, and this is not an inference from silence — the words well, radon and insurance appear nowhere in the operative text, and the only occurrence of "insurance" in the chapter is at § 3290.182, in a CHILD's record: "Health insurance coverage and policy number for the child under a family policy or Medical Assistance (MA) benefits, if applicable" is information you collect, not coverage you carry. WATER. The entire water requirement is § 3290.67, two sentences: "(a) A safe and adequate supply of drinking water shall be made available to children of all ages throughout the day. (b) Drinking water shall be provided to children who are out-of-doors for a period exceeding 1 hour." No source rule, no test, no laboratory. The contrast with larger settings is visible on the form itself: item 12 of CD 633, "FACILITY WATER SUPPLIER," carries the instruction "(FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME APPLICANTS, SKIP; ALL OTHERS MUST ANSWER)," and OCDEL's June 2026 guidance lists Safe Drinking Water Act verification among the required attachments while marking it "Not applicable for: … Family Child Care Homes." A home on a private well files nothing about that well with DHS. LEAD is regulated as paint condition, not as a blood or dust test. § 3290.75: "(a) Peeled or damaged paint or damaged plaster is not permitted on indoor or outdoor surfaces in the child care space. (b) When indoor or outdoor surfaces are repaired or when new indoor or outdoor surfaces are painted, the paint may not contain more than .06% lead. (c) Children may not be present during removal of paint … (d) Abrasive removal methods which include dry sanding, electrical sanding, sandblasting, open flame burning or a removal process that permits the release of leaded particulate material into the environment are prohibited. (e) Child care may resume when the removal process is completed and when accompanying debris is removed." A visual standard plus a work-practice rule. The only lead SCREENING in the chapter is of the children and it is the parent's doctor's job: § 3290.131(d)(4) requires the child's health report to include "information regarding abnormal results of screening tests for vision, hearing or lead poisoning." Federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rules may still reach a contractor working in a pre-1978 home; DHS does not administer them. RADON does not appear at all. INSURANCE does not appear at all, nor in the statute — Article X of the Human Services Code, 62 P.S. §§ 1001—1088, imposes no insurance requirement on a child care facility of any size and creates no notice-in-lieu-of-insurance mechanism. Pennsylvania does not use that device. This does not mean you should operate uninsured: your homeowner's policy almost certainly excludes a home business, and a family child care rider is ordinary prudence, frequently demanded by a landlord under step three or by a Child Care Works subsidy agreement. But it is a business decision, not a certification requirement, and no regional office will ask for a certificate of insurance before issuing your certificate of compliance.
14. STEP FOURTEEN — SUBMIT ANY WAIVER REQUEST, THEN TAKE THE ANNOUNCED PRE-CERTIFICATION INSPECTION, THE ONLY INSPECTION IN YOUR CAREER THAT WILL EVER BE SCHEDULED IN ADVANCE. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(i): "Prior to making a decision about the issuance of a certificate of compliance, the Department's agent shall conduct an announced pre-certification inspection at the location where the family child care home will operate." § 3290.21(e) says it again, and § 3290.11(n) lays out the life-cycle: "(1) An announced pre-certification inspection. (2) An unannounced inspection, not less than annually. (3) In response to a complaint on an unannounced basis." § 3290.11(l) then provides that "Except for § 20.32 (relating to announced inspections), the requirements in Chapter 20 apply to child care facilities" — and § 20.32 is the general rule that "The facility or agency will be advised in advance of the date of the annual inspection." Every visit after this one is a surprise. Do your waiver thinking now: the deadline is this inspection, not the certificate. § 3290.25(b): "The operator shall submit the request for waiver to the regional office before the facility is inspected for issuance or renewal of a certificate of compliance." § 3290.25(c) limits what is waivable to the physical site sections §§ 3290.61—3290.78 and the equipment sections §§ 3290.101—3290.107 — nothing about ratios, staffing, training, clearances, records or the certificate of occupancy — and § 3290.25(d)(1) catches people: "The waiver is not requested as a substitute for correcting a Departmental citation of noncompliance." A waiver is asked for in advance, never a cure for something already cited. DHS publishes CD 357, Request For Waiver of Child Care Facility Regulation. WHAT THE INSPECTOR MEASURES is defined by scope, not by checklist. § 3290.21(c): "An agent of the Department will inspect for compliance with this chapter in all areas of the facility premises that are accessible to children." That is the whole of your house a child can reach, outdoors included — § 3290.113(a): "Outdoor play space used by the facility is considered part of the facility premises." Bring identification: § 3290.21(f) requires "A valid photo identification of the operator or designated staff person who is responsible for compliance with this chapter." § 3290.21(a) requires "immediate access to the facility and, upon request, to the children and the files and records," and § 20.34 adds "the opportunity for authorized agents of the Department to privately interview staff and clients." Expect the physical site sections to be walked literally: protective electrical covers (§ 3290.63), toxics (§ 3290.64), sanitation (§ 3290.65), hot water pipes (§ 3290.69), a working telephone (§ 3290.71) with emergency numbers posted (§ 3290.72), a first-aid kit (§ 3290.73), paint (§ 3290.75), firearms (§ 3290.76), glass (§ 3290.77), the toilet area (§ 3290.78), exits (§ 3290.91), space heaters and stoves (§§ 3290.92—3290.93), the smoke alarms and fire drill log, rest equipment (§ 3290.105), and small toys (§ 3290.103). Expect the step-twelve records to be opened and the emergency plan to be on the wall. The overarching standard is § 3290.18, one sentence of unlimited reach: "Conditions at the facility may not pose a threat to the health or safety of the children." If noncompliance is found, § 20.52 obliges you to "submit an acceptable written plan to correct each noncompliance item" and "establish an acceptable period of time to correct these items" — not optional, and failing to file one is an independent ground for nonrenewal under § 20.71(a)(3).
15. STEP FIFTEEN — TAKE ISSUANCE OF A TWELVE-MONTH CERTIFICATE, POST IT, AND KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REGULAR ONE AND THE PROVISIONAL ONE YOU MAY BE OFFERED INSTEAD. 55 Pa. Code § 20.51: "A certificate of compliance will be issued to the legal entity by the Department if, after an inspection by an authorized agent of the Department, it is determined that requirements … are met." The term is short: § 3290.11(j), "A certificate of compliance is issued in the manner described in Chapter 20 … for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date of issue," and 62 P.S. § 1009, "All licenses issued by the department under this act shall expire one year next following the day on which issued … shall not be transferable, shall be issued only to the person for the premises and for the facility named in the application and shall specify the maximum number of individuals who may be cared for … at any one time." Twelve months, every year, forever. There is no multi-year certificate in Pennsylvania and has not been one since the two-year registration regime at 62 P.S. §§ 1070—1080 was repealed by section 16 of Act 92 of 2015. WHICH CERTIFICATE YOU GET depends on the inspection. § 20.53: "A regular certificate of compliance is issued if the facility or agency is in compliance with applicable statutes, ordinances and regulations." § 20.54: "(a) A provisional certificate of compliance is issued if the facility or agency is in substantial, but not complete, compliance … (b) [it] is issued for a specified length of time, not to exceed 6 months. (c) A maximum of four consecutive provisional certificates of compliance may be issued to the legal entity for each specific facility." Four consecutive six-month provisionals is twenty-four months of probation, and the Commonwealth Court has held the line: in Holmes Constant Care Center v. Department of Public Welfare, 555 A.2d 282 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1989), appeal denied 562 A.2d 828 (Pa. 1989), "In order to receive a regular license, petitioner was required to be in compliance in the first instance as opposed to responding and correcting violations cited under provisional license reviews." A new operator is often issued a provisional because, as 62 P.S. § 1008(b) recognises, "The department may issue a provisional license … when it is unable to assess compliance with all statutes, ordinances and regulations because the facility has not yet begun to operate" — a normal opening posture, not a mark against you, and § 1008(d) provides that "Upon full compliance by the facility, the department shall issue a regular license immediately." § 20.55(c) requires the document to carry the word "Provisional" and say whether it is the first, second, third or fourth. READ WHAT IS PRINTED ON IT, because the certificate defines your authority. § 20.55(b): it 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, … certificate number, effective and expiration dates of the certificate, and restrictions, if applicable." A capacity of four is not a capacity of six. Then post it, under § 20.56 and § 3290.22(a). Only now may you open: § 20.21(b) forbids commencing operation "until notified that a certificate of compliance will be issued." There is no published departmental timeline between a complete application and issuance — no number of days appears in § 3290.11, in Chapter 20, or in OCDEL's June 2026 guidance, which promises only written notice "of the next step in the certification process." Any "three to four weeks" figure you have read comes from a vendor blog, not DHS.
16. STEP SIXTEEN — REAPPLY SIXTY DAYS BEFORE EXPIRY, EVERY YEAR, AND TREAT THAT DATE AS THE HARDEST DEADLINE IN THE PENNSYLVANIA REGIME. 55 Pa. Code § 20.22(a): "If the legal entity intends to continue operating the facility or agency, it shall complete and submit to the Department an application for a certificate of compliance at least 60 days prior to the expiration of the facility's … existing regular or provisional certificate of compliance." § 3290.11(o) repeats the duty in softer words — "prior to the expiration of the current certificate of compliance" — but § 20.22 supplies the number, and § 3290.3(d) makes Chapter 20 binding on any legal entity "seeking to operate a child care facility." Sixty days, on a twelve-month certificate, means the renewal packet leaves your hands in month ten. Miss it and the penalty is not merely delay. § 3290.11(h)(3) provides that "Clearances are required for the legal entity and for each individual 18 years of age or older who resides in the facility at least 30 days in a calendar year … if an application for renewal is received following expiration of the current certificate of compliance" — a late renewal resets the whole household to a fresh, full set of State Police, child abuse and FBI clearances, at cost and at six to eight weeks, though the sixty-month cycle under 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.4 had years left to run. On a timely renewal, § 3290.11(h)(2) asks for clearances only where an individual "attained 18 years of age following the date of the previous application" or "moved into the child care facility following the date of the previous application." That is the whole difference, and the most expensive avoidable mistake in Pennsylvania family child care. WHAT ELSE RIDES ON RENEWAL: § 3290.151(a)(1) requires a health assessment submitted to the Department "prior to issuance of an initial or renewal certificate of compliance," and since one is valid 24 months from signature, every second renewal carries a fresh physical. THE ANNUAL INSPECTION CADENCE runs independently. § 3290.11(k): "An agent of the Department will annually conduct at least one onsite unannounced inspection of a child care facility." § 3290.21(d) repeats it, and § 20.31 sets the floor for every DHS-licensed facility: "An authorized agent of the Department will conduct an on-site inspection … at least once every 12 months." Add § 3290.11(n)(3), complaint inspections "on an unannounced basis." Because § 3290.11(l) disapplies § 20.32, none carries advance notice. Separately, the Department of Health takes an annual return that has nothing to do with DHS: § 3290.131(e)(4) requires the facility to "comply with the annual immunization reporting requirements in accordance with the Department of Health regulation in 28 Pa. Code § 27.77," and in 2026 that meant the Annual Child Care Immunization Reporting Survey, which DOH announced on August 19, 2026 would close on August 31, 2026. Two agencies, two calendars, one home. FINALLY, WHAT KILLS A CERTIFICATE WITHOUT A HEARING. § 3290.11(j)(2): "A certificate of compliance is void without notice if there is a change in the legal entity or the location of the child care facility." § 20.57(b) is broader still and voids it, again without notice, on a change in "the ownership of the legal entity," "the name of the facility," "the location," or "the profit or nonprofit status." Move house, incorporate, rebrand or convert to a nonprofit, and your authority ends the moment the change takes effect. Where the Department acts against you rather than the certificate simply lapsing, § 20.71 lists the grounds and § 3290.13(b) gives you thirty days: "Appeals related to the Department's approval or licensure shall be made by filing a petition within 30 days after service of notice of the action," a period § 3290.13(e) says supersedes 1 Pa. Code § 35.20.
17. STEP SEVENTEEN — KNOW WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN FLIGHT, BECAUSE THREE OF THE FOUR THINGS YOU WILL BE TOLD ARE COMING TO PENNSYLVANIA CHILD CARE ARE EITHER ALREADY DONE OR NOT HAPPENING. First, the rulemaking that imported the federal health and safety schedule into Chapter 3290. It is not pending; it closed six years ago. IRRC regulation 14-542, IRRC No. 3216, "Child Care Facilities," was proposed at 48 Pa.B. 6564 on October 13, 2018, approved by IRRC on October 15, 2020, and published as final-form at 50 Pa.B. 7133 on December 19, 2020, effective on publication except that staff had 180 days to satisfy § 3290.31(g). Its order amended §§ 3290.1—3290.4, 3290.11, 3290.13, 3290.14, 3290.16, 3290.21—3290.25, 3290.31, 3290.32, 3290.51, 3290.52, 3290.94, 3290.113, 3290.151, 3290.166, 3290.184 and 3290.213, added § 3290.95, and deleted §§ 3290.12, 3290.211 and 3290.212. Anything describing this as a live proposal you can still comment on is years out of date. Second, the rewrite. OCDEL's Child Care Certification Regulation Rewrite Impact Project would replace Chapter 3290 with a new Chapter 3310 (Family Child Care Homes) and Chapter 3270 with a new Chapter 3320 (Child Care Centers). The Pennsylvania Key states that the proposed Chapter 3310 and 3320 regulations "have been submitted to the Formal Regulatory Review Process" and that a thirty-day public comment period will follow. Treat that as an intention, not an event: as of the current Pennsylvania Bulletin, Volume 56, Number 34 of August 22, 2026, no proposed rulemaking creating Chapter 3310 or 3320 has been published, and no such regulation appears on the Independent Regulatory Review Commission's Department of Human Services docket, whose newest entries concern psychiatric residential treatment facilities, crisis intervention services and residential services for children and youth. When it lands it will be visible in the Bulletin and on the IRRC docket months before DHS provider pages mention it. Until then, Chapter 3290 is the law; do not build against a draft. Third, the recodification. There is none. Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code is HUMAN SERVICES and still contains Chapter 20 in Part I and Chapters 3270, 3280, 3290 and 3490 in Part V; Title 6 is AGING, belongs to the Department of Aging, and its ten chapters contain no child care chapter of any kind. What actually happened, and what the rumour garbles, is a heading change: the notice at 46 Pa.B. 3177 of June 18, 2016 records that under Act 92 of 2015, which renamed the Public Welfare Code the Human Services Code, "the designation of Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code is being updated to Human Services effective upon publication of this notice," following Act 132 of 2014's substitution of Department of Human Services for Department of Public Welfare throughout. No chapter was renumbered or moved. The one genuine renumbering nearby was on the subsidy side, where Chapter 3041 was deleted and replaced by Chapter 3042 at 53 Pa.B. 7827 on December 16, 2023; Chapter 3290 was untouched. Fourth, certification versus registration. That distinction is historical and it is settled. Registration lived at 62 P.S. §§ 1070—1080, ran on self-certification and a two-year term, and every section of it was repealed by section 16 of Act 92 of 2015. Since 2016 there is one credential — a Certificate of Compliance — and 55 Pa. Code § 3290.4 concedes what it really is: "A certificate of compliance licenses the operation of a facility subject to Article X of the act." If a page offers to register your family day care home, that page is at least a decade old.

What you must post on your walls

• THE CURRENT CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE, POSTED "IN A CONSPICUOUS LOCATION USED BY PARENTS." This is the anchor posting and its wording matters. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.22(a) reads: "The facility's current certificate of compliance shall be posted in a conspicuous location used by parents, with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office posted at the same location." Read the qualifier "USED BY PARENTS." Chapter 20, which applies to your facility through § 3290.11(l), sets the weaker general standard at § 20.56: "The facility or agency shall post the current certificate of compliance in a public place in the facility or agency." A "public place" and "a conspicuous location used by parents" are not the same test, and in a private house they can be very different rooms. The stricter test governs: the certificate has to hang where the parents who drop off and collect children actually stand, not in a home office, not in a binder, not in a hallway parents never enter. The word "CURRENT" is the second trap. A superseded certificate on the wall is itself the violation, and Pennsylvania homes turn over certificates fast because § 3290.11(j) issues them "for a period not to exceed 12 months from the date of issue" — you replace the posted document every year, and if you are on provisional status you replace it as often as every six months, because § 20.54(b) provides that "a provisional certificate of compliance is issued for a specified length of time, not to exceed 6 months" and § 20.54(c) permits "a maximum of four consecutive provisional certificates of compliance." What the certificate itself says is fixed by § 20.55(b): it "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." That enumeration answers a question applicants often ask badly. Pennsylvania does NOT require a separate capacity sign, and it does not require an age-range sign; capacity travels on the face of the posted certificate, and any age or service restriction travels in the "restrictions" line of the same document. Post the certificate and you have posted your capacity. § 20.55(c) adds that a provisional certificate "also contains the word 'Provisional' and indicates whether it is the first, second, third or fourth provisional certificate issued" — so a provisional posting silently discloses to every parent how deep in the corrective cycle you are. The group child care home rule at 55 Pa. Code § 3280.24(a) is the same first clause and a different second clause: "The facility's current certificate of compliance shall be posted in a conspicuous location used by parents. The operator shall provide the parent of each child enrolled with information on how to access the regulations in this chapter electronically and with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office." A group home GIVES parents the regional office contact; a family child care home POSTS it. See the next element.
• INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONTACTING THE REGIONAL CHILD CARE OFFICE — POSTED, AND POSTED AT THE SAME PLACE AS THE CERTIFICATE. This is the single posting most often missed in a Pennsylvania family child care home, because it is buried as a trailing clause and because the parallel group home rule does not require it at all. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.22(a): the certificate shall be posted "with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office POSTED AT THE SAME LOCATION." Two independent commands sit in that clause. First, the contact instructions must be POSTED, not handed out, not filed, not emailed. Second, they must be posted AT THE SAME LOCATION as the certificate — a notice by the front door and a certificate in the playroom does not comply. Now compare 55 Pa. Code § 3280.24(a) for a group child care home, quoted in full in the previous element: there, the operator "shall PROVIDE the parent of each child enrolled with information on how to access the regulations in this chapter electronically and with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office." Provide, not post. The group home discharges the duty by delivery to each parent; the family child care home discharges it by a sign on the wall next to the certificate — and, separately, by delivery under § 3290.22(b). A family child care home therefore owes BOTH: § 3290.22(b) says "the operator shall provide the parent of each child enrolled in the facility with information on how to access the regulations in this chapter electronically and with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office," which is a delivery duty, and § 3290.22(a) says the contact instructions are posted, which is a display duty. Conflating the two is the classic error and it costs a citation on an unannounced visit, because the inspector reads the wall, not your enrollment packet. What must the posted instructions say? The regulation does not prescribe words, so the safe posting names your region and gives its address and telephone. As published by DHS, the four regional Offices of Child Development and Early Learning are: Western Region, 301 Fifth Ave, Suite 370, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, (412) 565-5183, toll free (800) 222-2149; Central Region, 555 Walnut St., Forum Place, 6th Floor, P.O. Box 2675, Harrisburg, PA 17105, (717) 772-7078, toll free (800) 222-2117; Northeast Region, 100 Lackawanna Avenue, Scranton State Office Bldg., Scranton, PA 18503, (570) 963-4371, toll free (800) 222-2108; Southeast Region, 801 Market Street, Suite 5132, Philadelphia, PA 19107-3126, (215) 560-2541, toll free (800) 346-2929. Note the framing DHS itself puts on that page: "Have a question or complaint about a child care facility? Please contact your regional Office of Child Development and Early Learning." The posting you are required to make is, functionally, a complaint route pinned next to your own licence. That is deliberate, and it is why § 3290.22(a) will not let you post the contact information somewhere else in the house.
• THE MOST RECENT INSPECTION SUMMARY, POSTED NEXT TO THE CERTIFICATE, AND IT COMES DOWN ONLY WHEN THE DEPARTMENT SAYS SO. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.22(c): "The operator shall post a copy of each inspection summary issued by the Department NEXT TO the facility's certificate of compliance in a conspicuous location used by parents. The inspection summary MUST REMAIN POSTED UNTIL AN AGENT OF THE DEPARTMENT VERIFIES that each noncompliance item noted on the inspection summary has been corrected." Three things in that sentence decide citations. First, "EACH inspection summary" — not the last one, each one. If you were inspected twice and both carry uncorrected items, both stay up. Second, "NEXT TO the facility's certificate of compliance." The family child care home rule welds the summary to the certificate physically. The group child care home rule at § 3280.24(b) does not: "The operator shall post a copy of each inspection summary issued by the Department in a conspicuous location used by parents. The inspection summary must remain posted until an agent of the Department verifies that each regulatory noncompliance item cited on the inspection summary has been corrected." Same duration rule, no adjacency requirement. If you are running a Chapter 3290 home and you post the summary across the room from the certificate, you have complied with the group home rule and violated your own. Third, and most expensive: the summary comes down when "an agent of the Department VERIFIES" correction — not when you correct, not when you mail your plan of correction, not when the correction date on the summary passes. Verification is an act of the certification representative. Until that act, the paper stays on the wall in front of every parent. This interacts with 55 Pa. Code § 20.52, which is what generates the correction obligation: "If, during an inspection, authorized agents of the Department observe items of noncompliance with licensure or approval regulations, the legal entity shall submit an acceptable written plan to correct each noncompliance item and shall establish an acceptable period of time to correct these items." Submitting that plan of correction is a filing, not a posting; § 3290.22(c) does not require you to post the plan of correction, and posting it does not substitute for leaving the summary up. Note also what triggers summaries in the first place. § 3290.11(n) fixes the inspection regime: "(1) An announced pre-certification inspection. (2) An unannounced inspection, not less than annually. (3) In response to a complaint on an unannounced basis." § 3290.11(l) removes the announced-inspection protection of Chapter 20 for you specifically — "Except for § 20.32 (relating to announced inspections), the requirements in Chapter 20 apply to child care facilities" — so after the pre-certification visit, everything is unannounced. The wall is being read by someone who did not tell you they were coming. Finally, the negative: Pennsylvania does not require you to post or display your facility's COMPLIANCE HISTORY, only the inspection summaries that are still open. The full history is published by the Department itself; nothing in Chapter 3290 makes the operator display it.
• THE EMERGENCY PLAN ITSELF, POSTED — AND THE FOUR THINGS AROUND IT THAT ARE NOT POSTINGS. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.24(e) is one line: "The emergency plan shall be posted in the facility at a conspicuous location." Note what changed from the certificate rule: this one says "in the facility at a conspicuous location," not "in a conspicuous location USED BY PARENTS." The plan is posted for whoever is in the house during the emergency, so the parent-traffic test does not apply and a hallway or kitchen wall serves. The content that must be on that wall is fixed by § 3290.24(a): the plan "provides for: (1) Shelter of children during an emergency including lock-down, shelter in place at the facility and shelter at locations away from the facility premises. (2) Evacuation of children from the facility building and evacuation of children to a location away from the facility premises. The evacuation routes and evacuation plans to exit the building may be the same as those required by § 3290.94 (relating to fire drills). (3) A method for facility persons to contact parents as soon as reasonably possible when an emergency situation arises. (4) A method for facility persons to inform parents that the emergency has ended and to provide instruction as to how parents can safely be reunited with their children. (5) Accommodations of infants and toddlers, children with disabilities and children with chronic medical conditions." A posted plan missing the reunification method in (4) or the accommodations in (5) is a posted plan that fails inspection. Now the four adjacent duties that are NOT postings, and that inspectors and applicants routinely mislabel. § 3290.24(b): "The operator shall review the emergency plan at least annually and update the plan as needed. Each review and update of the emergency plan shall be DOCUMENTED IN WRITING AND KEPT ON FILE at the facility." Kept on file. § 3290.24(c): training on the plan at initial employment, annually, and at each update, and "the date of each training and the name of each facility person who received the training shall be documented in writing and KEPT ON FILE at the facility." Kept on file. § 3290.24(d): "Emergency drills shall be conducted annually. Annual emergency drills shall be documented and ON FILE at the facility." On file. § 3290.24(f): "The operator shall PROVIDE TO THE PARENT of each enrolled child a letter explaining the emergency procedures described in subsection (a)," and another letter for each update. Delivered, not posted. § 3290.24(g): "The operator shall SEND A COPY of the emergency plan and subsequent plan updates to the local municipality and to the county emergency management agency." Mailed out, not posted. Only subsection (e) is a display obligation. The group child care home carries the identical structure one section earlier, at § 3280.26, with the posting at § 3280.26(d) and the municipality copy at § 3280.26(f) — the subsection letters differ because Chapter 3290 splits the annual drill into its own subsection (d). That renumbering has already produced one live error in Pennsylvania's own paperwork: form CD 355, "Documentation of Emergency Plan Delivery," heads itself "Regulations 3270.27(f); 3280.26(f) and 3290.24(f)," but for a family child care home the municipality-delivery duty the form documents lives at § 3290.24(g), not (f). Subsection (f) is the letter to parents. Use the form; do not copy its citation into your own paperwork.
• EVACUATION ROUTES, POSTED IN A CONSPICUOUS LOCATION ON EACH FLOOR — A SEPARATE POSTING FROM THE EMERGENCY PLAN. This one is buried inside the fire drill section and is missed precisely because it is not in the emergency plan section. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.94(a)(5) requires the operator or designated staff person responsible for compliance to ensure that "EVACUATION ROUTES ARE POSTED IN A CONSPICUOUS LOCATION ON EACH FLOOR OF THE FACILITY." Read "ON EACH FLOOR." A single evacuation diagram by the front door does not satisfy a house where children nap upstairs and play in a finished basement — you need one on every floor of the facility, and "the facility" in a family child care home means the parts of the dwelling used for child care plus everything an inspector may reach, because § 3290.21(c) provides that "an agent of the Department will inspect for compliance with this chapter in all areas of the facility premises that are accessible to children." The route posting is legally distinct from the emergency plan posting even though § 3290.24(a)(2) lets you reuse the drawing: "the evacuation routes and evacuation plans to exit the building MAY BE THE SAME AS THOSE REQUIRED BY § 3290.94." May be the same document; must be two postings if you have two floors and your emergency plan is posted on one of them. The routes have to be drawable at all, because § 3290.94(a)(6) constrains them: "Evacuation plans provide for the REMOVAL OF ALL PERSONS FROM THE FACILITY IN A SINGLE TRIP." A route that requires the operator to carry two infants out and come back for a third is not a compliant route, and that is a ratio-and-architecture problem that a poster cannot paper over. Around the posting sits a record that is kept, not displayed. § 3290.94(a)(9): "A WRITTEN RECORD IS MAINTAINED ON FILE at the facility indicating the specific time of day of the drill, the hypothetical location of the fire, the evacuation time, and the names of the facility persons and the number of children who participate in the fire drill." On file. Nothing in Chapter 3290 requires the drill log to be posted, and posting it is not a substitute for posting the routes. The drill cadence that feeds that log is severe for a home: § 3290.94(a)(1) "at least once every 60 days," (a)(2) "at different times of the day or night, or both, if applicable," (a)(3) "during various program activity times," and (a)(4) "the hypothetical locations of the fire are rotated around the facility for each drill such that the hypothetical location is never the same for consecutive drills." Six drills a year minimum, never twice in a row from the same hypothetical origin. The group child care home rule at 55 Pa. Code § 3280.94 is word-for-word identical on all nine subparagraphs including the each-floor posting, with one substitution: the duty falls on "the primary staff person or designated staff person who is responsible for compliance with this chapter" rather than on "the operator or designated staff person." On evacuation routes, family and group homes owe exactly the same posting.
• EMERGENCY TELEPHONE NUMBERS, POSTED BY EACH TELEPHONE — FIVE NAMED NUMBERS, NOT "911." 55 Pa. Code § 3290.72, in its entirety: "Telephone numbers of the NEAREST HOSPITAL, POLICE DEPARTMENT, FIRE DEPARTMENT, AMBULANCE and POISON CONTROL CENTER shall be posted BY EACH TELEPHONE in the facility." Five categories, enumerated, and the enumeration is the point. Pennsylvania does not accept a card reading "In an emergency dial 911." The regulation demands the number of the NEAREST hospital, the NEAREST police department, the NEAREST fire department, an ambulance service and a poison control centre — five separate, locally-specific numbers, written down. An inspector who finds a 911 sticker and nothing else has found a violation of § 3290.72, and it is one of the cheapest citations in the chapter to avoid and one of the most commonly earned. The location rule is equally literal: "BY EACH TELEPHONE." Not near the certificate, not one list in the house. A wall phone in the kitchen and a second line in the play space means you post twice. If the only telephone is a mobile handset in the operator's pocket, post the list at the fixed location where the phone is normally used and where a substitute would look for it. The section is written around telephones because § 3290.71 makes one a condition of certification: "A facility shall have an OPERABLE TELEPHONE. A facility that has an unpublished telephone number shall make the number available to the parent, the release persons of the children in care, an agency that oversees or funds the facility and the appropriate regional office of the Department." Note that § 3290.72 is one of the few sections a waiver can reach: § 3290.25(c)(1) permits waiver requests for "physical site requirements in §§ 3290.61—3290.78," but § 3290.25(d)(1) forbids granting one "requested as a substitute for correcting a Departmental citation of noncompliance," so you cannot cure a cited missing list afterwards. Now the negative that matters most here, because other states do the opposite. Pennsylvania does NOT require a family child care home to post the ChildLine child abuse reporting number. § 3290.16(b) contains the number — "a facility person who has reasonable cause to suspect that a child is a victim of child abuse shall immediately make a report of suspected child abuse to ChildLine through the hotline at 1 (800) 932-0313, online or any other method as prescribed by the Department" — but it states a reporting duty, not a display duty, and 1 (800) 932-0313 appears nowhere in the five categories of § 3290.72. The absence is deliberate and it is verifiable: the ChildLine posting mandate in the Child Protective Services Law is 23 Pa.C.S. § 6332(c), "Posting Statewide toll-free telephone number IN SCHOOLS — all public and nonpublic schools that enroll students in grades kindergarten through 12 shall publicly display at each school campus a poster uniformly designed by the department," with an 11-by-17-inch specification, and § 6332(d), "Posting Statewide toll-free telephone numbers IN HOSPITALS." Schools and hospitals; those are the only two, and a text search of Chapter 63 for posting language returns nothing else. 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3490 contains the number only at § 3490.31, describing the Department's own duty to operate the line. Posting it in your home is good practice and harms nothing. Claiming it is required, or budgeting for a mandated abuse-reporting placard, is reading a rule Pennsylvania did not write.
• THE WRITTEN EMERGENCY-TRANSPORT AND STAFFING PLAN, "CONSPICUOUSLY POSTED" — AND IT ALSO HAS TO LEAVE THE HOUSE WITH YOU. This is a posting hidden inside the admissions subchapter, which is why applicants who read only the "general requirements" sections never find it. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.124(d): "A WRITTEN PLAN SHALL BE CONSPICUOUSLY POSTED which identifies the MEANS OF TRANSPORTING A CHILD TO EMERGENCY CARE and the FACILITY STAFFING PROVISIONS IN THE EVENT OF AN EMERGENCY. The plan must accompany a staff person who leaves the facility on an excursion with children." One document, two obligations: display it on the wall and carry a copy on every walking or riding excursion. The content is two specific answers, not a narrative. First, HOW a child gets to emergency care — your own vehicle, an ambulance, a named neighbour, and in a family child care home this question is hard, because the operator who drives an injured child to hospital has abandoned the remaining children unless the second half of the plan is real. Second, WHAT HAPPENS TO STAFFING while that transport occurs. That is the half most family homes cannot answer, and it is the half an inspector reads first, because § 3290.113(a) admits no gap: "Children on the facility premises and on facility excursions off the premises shall be supervised by a staff person AT ALL TIMES." The only relief § 3290.113(f) grants a sole operator is electronic monitoring "for a reasonable period of time necessary for the operator to perform the specific task" while "the operator shall remain on the family child care home premises" — which by its terms cannot cover a trip to a hospital. So the posted plan has to name a person. Do not confuse this posted plan with the emergency plan of § 3290.24, which is a different document with different content and its own separate posting under § 3290.24(e). A home that posts the § 3290.24 shelter-and-evacuation plan and nothing else has satisfied § 3290.24(e) and violated § 3290.124(d). The group child care home rule is the mirror image and the wording gap is instructive. 55 Pa. Code § 3280.124(e): "A written plan identifying the means of transporting a child to emergency care and staffing provisions in the event of an emergency shall be DISPLAYED CONSPICUOUSLY IN EVERY CHILD CARE SPACE and accompany a staff person who leaves on an excursion with children." A group home posts it in EVERY child care space, because a group home has multiple spaces with multiple staff; a family child care home posts it once, conspicuously, because the statute assumes one operator in one house. If you are converting a family home to a group home, the same sentence multiplies. Sitting immediately beside this posting is a document that is expressly NOT posted: the emergency contact information itself. § 3290.124(a) requires only that it "shall be PRESENT IN a child care facility for each enrolled child," and § 3290.124(c) requires that on walking and riding excursions "emergency contact information specific to each child on the excursion shall ACCOMPANY A STAFF PERSON." Present and accompanying — never displayed. Displaying children's medical information, insurance numbers and release-person addresses on a wall would breach § 3290.183(a), "A child's record is confidential." Post the transport plan; file the contact forms.
• THE WRITTEN PLAN OF DAILY ACTIVITIES, POSTED "IN A TRAFFIC AREA USED BY PARENTS" — A THIRD LOCATION STANDARD, NOT A SYNONYM. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.111: "(a) A written plan of daily activities, INCLUDING A TIME FOR FREE PLAY shall be established. (b) The written plan shall be POSTED IN A TRAFFIC AREA USED BY PARENTS. (c) Daily activities shall promote the development of skills, social competence and self-esteem. Daily experiences shall recognize the child as an individual and give some choice of activities that respect personal privacy, life-style and cultural background." Pennsylvania now has three distinct location formulas in one chapter and they are not interchangeable: "a conspicuous location used by parents" for the certificate and inspection summary (§ 3290.22), "in the facility at a conspicuous location" for the emergency plan (§ 3290.24(e)) and "on each floor" for evacuation routes (§ 3290.94(a)(5)), and now "a TRAFFIC AREA used by parents" for the schedule. A traffic area is a route, not a destination — an entry hall, a landing, the corridor parents walk. The safest compliant reading is to put the daily schedule on the path parents take and the certificate cluster where they stop; putting all four documents in one frame satisfies every formula at once and is what most inspected homes do. Two content traps. First, "INCLUDING A TIME FOR FREE PLAY" is mandatory content of the posted plan, not a philosophy — a posted schedule that is wall-to-wall directed activity fails § 3290.111(a) on its face, and the failure is visible from the doorway. Second, the posted daily-activity plan is not the same document as the written program information you owe each parent at enrolment. § 3290.121(a) requires the operator to review with the parent, at the time of application, "the facility's general daily schedule, hours in which care is provided, fees, responsibilities for meals, clothing, health policies, SUPERVISION POLICIES, night care policies, DISMISSAL POLICIES, transportation and pick-up arrangements," and § 3290.121(b) requires that "at the time of enrollment, a parent shall RECEIVE IN WRITING the information described in subsection (a)." That is a delivery duty covering ten subjects; § 3290.111(b) is a display duty covering one. Handing a parent a policy binder does not post a schedule, and posting a schedule does not deliver the policies. Note also what § 3290.121(a) does and does not name. It names supervision policies and dismissal policies. It does NOT name a discipline policy, and no section of Chapter 3290 requires a written discipline policy to exist, let alone to be posted — § 3290.113(b) through (e) simply prohibit physical punishment, ridicule, threats, harsh or abusive language and restraint, as conduct rules binding on facility persons directly. If you operate a family child care home and someone tells you Pennsylvania requires a posted discipline policy, they are describing another state. One supervision-policy hook is easy to miss: if you rely on the electronic-monitoring relief of § 3290.113(f), then § 3290.113(f)(3) requires that "a family child care home operator that provides supervision under this subsection shall INCLUDE IT IN ITS SUPERVISION POLICIES under § 3290.121(a)" — which makes it part of the written packet parents receive, not part of the posted schedule. The group child care home rule at § 3280.111(b) is identical: "The written plan shall be posted in a traffic area used by parents."
• THAT IS THE WHOLE LIST — EIGHT DOCUMENTS FROM CHAPTER 3290, PLUS TWO FROM OUTSIDE IT. A full-text reading of all 114 sections of 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3290 as the Pennsylvania Code index serves it today yields exactly eight display obligations for a family child care home, and no more: (1) the current certificate of compliance, § 3290.22(a); (2) instructions for contacting the regional child care office, at the same location, § 3290.22(a); (3) each open inspection summary, next to the certificate, § 3290.22(c); (4) the emergency plan, § 3290.24(e); (5) evacuation routes on each floor, § 3290.94(a)(5); (6) emergency telephone numbers by each telephone, § 3290.72; (7) the written emergency-transport and staffing plan, § 3290.124(d); and (8) the written plan of daily activities in a traffic area used by parents, § 3290.111(b). Eight documents, and one of them travels with you on excursions. Two more come from outside the chapter entirely — the "Non-Discrimination in Employment" and "Non-Discrimination in Services" policy statements that form HS 2126 requires to be "posted in your facility" under the authority of § 3290.23. Ten in total, four or five wall clusters if you group them sensibly. Every other command in the chapter that touches paper uses a different verb — "kept on file," "on file at the facility," "maintained on file," "retained in the child's file," "present in a child care facility," "provide to the parent," "submit to the Department," "send a copy." Pennsylvania's drafters were disciplined about this and you should be too, because the two verbs carry different penalties in practice: a missing posting is visible in ten seconds from the doorway of an unannounced inspection, while a missing file is found only if the certification representative asks for the record. The words the chapter uses for POSTING are "posted," "post" and "conspicuously posted." The words it uses for AVAILABILITY are "on file," "kept," "retained," "maintained," "present," "accompany," "provide" and "submit." Section § 3290.22 is titled "Availability of certificate of compliance and applicable regulations," and that title is itself a trap: the section contains a posting duty in (a) and (c) and an availability duty in (b), and the title names only the weaker one. Do not let the heading tell you the verb. For the group child care home the count differs by two. A group home adds § 3280.171(c) — "Written notification of safe routes shall be POSTED IN THE FACILITY IN A CONSPICUOUS LOCATION," referring to the safe pedestrian crossways, pick-up and drop-off points and bike routes determined under § 3280.171(a) and (b), a posting Chapter 3290 has no counterpart to at all, because the family home transportation subchapter (§§ 3290.171—3290.176) begins with consent and never addresses routes. A group home also displays the emergency-transport plan in EVERY child care space under § 3280.124(e) rather than once. Conversely the group home does NOT post the regional office contact information: § 3280.24(a) has the operator PROVIDE it. If you are reading a Pennsylvania compliance checklist that was written for a group home and applying it to your family child care home, you will over-post safe routes and under-post the regional office contact — and only the second of those is a citation.
• KEPT AVAILABLE, NEVER POSTED: THE REGULATIONS, THE PARENT PACKET, AND THE RECORDS. Conflating "kept available" with "posted" is the classic Pennsylvania error, and Chapter 3290 sets three separate traps for it. First, the regulations themselves. Older guidance for Pennsylvania child care told operators to keep a copy of the regulations available for parents to read. The current rule does not say that. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.22(b): "The operator shall PROVIDE the parent of each child enrolled in the facility with INFORMATION ON HOW TO ACCESS THE REGULATIONS IN THIS CHAPTER ELECTRONICALLY and with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office." Since the December 18, 2020 rulemaking published at 50 Pa.B. 7133, effective December 19, 2020, what you owe is a pointer, delivered to each parent — a URL, in substance — not a binder on a shelf and not a posted copy of Chapter 3290. There is no requirement to keep a printed copy of the chapter in the house at all. Second, the enrolment packet. § 3290.121(b): "At the time of enrollment, a parent shall RECEIVE IN WRITING the information described in subsection (a)" — the general daily schedule, hours, fees, meal and clothing responsibilities, health policies, supervision policies, night care policies, dismissal policies, transportation and pick-up arrangements. Received, in writing, once, at enrolment. Nothing in § 3290.121 makes any of it a posting, and the only one of those ten subjects that is separately posted is the daily schedule, under the different rule at § 3290.111(b). Third, the records. § 3290.21(a): "A staff person shall provide to agents of the Department IMMEDIATE ACCESS to the facility and, upon request, to the children and the files and records." Immediate access on request — an availability standard with no notice period, which is why the files have to be in the house and findable, not in a car or a storage unit. And the counterweight, § 3290.183: "(a) A child's record is confidential. (b) A facility person may not disclose information concerning a child or family, EXCEPT IN THE COURSE OF INSPECTIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS BY AGENTS OF THE DEPARTMENT." § 3290.193 says the same for adult records. Those two sections are the reason almost nothing in a Pennsylvania family child care home may be displayed: the confidentiality rule forbids what a posting would accomplish. § 3290.184(a) gives the parent access to their own child's complete record, and § 3290.184(b) requires that any other release be made only with written parental consent and be logged with "(1) The name and position of the individual to whom the information was released. (2) The date the information was released. (3) The portions of the record which were released. (4) The purpose of the release. (5) The signature of the person who authorized the release." A release log, kept in the child's file. Two more availability-not-posting items worth naming because inspectors ask for them: any court order limiting a parent's access, which under § 3290.20 and § 3290.116(a) must be "ON FILE AT THE FACILITY" before you may refuse a parent; and, for an infant not placed on the back to sleep, the § 3290.118 statement of medical reason "signed by a physician, physician's assistant or CRNP and PLACED IN THE CHILD'S RECORD at the facility."
• WHAT PENNSYLVANIA DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO POST, ITEM BY ITEM, WITH THE TEXT THAT SHOWS IT. Budget nothing for these and do not let a vendor sell you a placard pack. NO MENU POSTING. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.165 is the whole rule and it is one sentence: "The operator shall DISCUSS the general menu plan with the parent so that the daily nutritional needs of the child can be met." Discuss. Not write, not post, not retain. This is the single most transferable false requirement in Pennsylvania, because the CHILD CARE CENTER rule in the neighbouring chapter says the opposite: 55 Pa. Code § 3270.165, "An operator shall CONSPICUOUSLY POST THE MENU at least 1 week in advance or provide a menu to each family." Centers post menus; family child care homes and group child care homes do not, and § 3280.165 is word-for-word identical to § 3290.165. Anyone quoting a posted-menu rule at a Pennsylvania family home has read the wrong chapter. NO POSTED DISCIPLINE POLICY. No section of Chapter 3290 requires a written discipline policy to exist or to be displayed; § 3290.113(b)—(e) impose the prohibitions directly on facility persons, and § 3290.121(a) requires the operator to review "dismissal policies" with the parent at application — dismissal from the program, not discipline of the child. NO POSTED SAFE SLEEP POLICY. § 3290.118 requires infants to be placed in the American Academy of Pediatrics position and requires any medical exception to be documented in a signed statement "placed in the child's record"; safe sleep also appears at § 3290.11(e)(2) and § 3290.31(g)(2) as a mandatory training topic. Training and a filed statement — no sign. NO POSTED CHILDLINE OR ABUSE-REPORTING NOTICE. § 3290.16 imposes reporting duties and gives the number 1 (800) 932-0313, but no display duty, and § 3290.72's five posted numbers do not include it. NO POSTED COMPLIANCE HISTORY. § 3290.22(c) makes you post open inspection summaries only, until the Department verifies correction; the historical record is published by DHS, not by you. NO POSTED NOTICE OF PARENTS' RIGHT OF UNANNOUNCED ACCESS. § 3290.20 grants the right in full — "A parent of a child in care shall be permitted FREE ACCESS, WITHOUT PRIOR NOTICE, throughout the child care space whenever children are in care" — and requires no sign announcing it. NO SEPARATE CAPACITY OR AGE-RANGE POSTING. Capacity is printed on the certificate you already post, because 55 Pa. Code § 20.55(b) puts "maximum capacity" and "restrictions, if applicable" on the face of the certificate. NO POSTED SAFE-ROUTE NOTICE — that is § 3280.171(c), a group child care home rule with no Chapter 3290 counterpart. NO POSTED LIABILITY INSURANCE CERTIFICATE, and no liability insurance requirement at all: § 3280.17 requires a group home to carry "comprehensive general liability insurance to cover all persons who are on the premises" with "a current copy of the insurance policy on file at the facility"; Chapter 3290 has no equivalent. NO POSTED STAFF QUALIFICATIONS, TRAINING CERTIFICATES, CPR CARDS OR CLEARANCES — all of those live in the facility person's file under § 3290.192 and § 3290.31(i), and OCDEL adds that "individual clearance certificates shall not be publicly released or shared." The one non-Chapter-3290 posting that IS real is the pair of civil rights policy statements ordered by form HS 2126; see the separate element.
• WHAT THE INSPECTOR ACTUALLY DOES WITH YOUR WALLS, AND WHY THE POSTINGS ARE THE FIRST THING CHECKED. Pennsylvania's inspection regime makes the postings the cheapest evidence in the house. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(n) lists the three visits: "(1) An announced pre-certification inspection. (2) An unannounced inspection, not less than annually. (3) In response to a complaint on an unannounced basis." Only the first is announced, and § 3290.11(l) removes even the general protection of Chapter 20: "EXCEPT FOR § 20.32 (relating to announced inspections), the requirements in Chapter 20 apply to child care facilities." § 3290.11(i) fixes the first visit — "Prior to making a decision about the issuance of a certificate of compliance, the Department's agent shall conduct an ANNOUNCED PRE-CERTIFICATION INSPECTION at the location where the family child care home will operate" — and § 3290.11(k) and § 3290.21(d) both state the annual floor: "An agent of the Department will annually conduct at least one onsite UNANNOUNCED inspection of a child care facility." When the representative arrives, § 3290.21(a) gives no grace: "A staff person shall provide to agents of the Department IMMEDIATE ACCESS to the facility and, upon request, to the children and the files and records." § 3290.21(b) permits out-of-hours visits "when there is reasonable cause to believe that inspections at other times are necessary to detect violations." § 3290.21(c) fixes the scope — "all areas of the facility premises that ARE ACCESSIBLE TO CHILDREN," which in a house means the inspector walks wherever a child could walk, including the floor your evacuation route posting is missing from. And § 3290.21(f) creates a reciprocal duty most operators do not know about: "A VALID PHOTO IDENTIFICATION of the operator or designated staff person who is responsible for compliance with this chapter shall be provided to the agent of the Department at the time of inspection." You show identification to the inspector. Keep a current driver's licence or state ID on the premises; an expired one is not "valid." What the postings tell the inspector before a single file is opened: whether the certificate on the wall is the current one and whether it matches the legal entity and address in front of them, which bears directly on § 3290.11(j)(2), "A certificate of compliance is VOID WITHOUT NOTICE if there is a change in the legal entity or the location of the child care facility"; whether an inspection summary from the last visit is still up, which tells them whether their colleague ever verified correction under § 3290.22(c); whether the emergency plan on the wall contains the five elements of § 3290.24(a); whether evacuation routes exist on every floor they are about to walk; whether the five telephone numbers of § 3290.72 are beside the telephone rather than a 911 sticker; and whether the daily schedule includes free play under § 3290.111(a). Six determinations, none requiring a file. Anything cited becomes a noncompliance item, and § 20.52 then requires you to "submit an acceptable written plan to correct each noncompliance item and shall establish an acceptable period of time to correct these items" — while the summary stays on the wall in front of every parent until an agent verifies the correction. That is the whole economics of postings in Pennsylvania: they are the fastest violation to earn, the slowest to un-publish, and the only one your customers read.
• THE POSTINGS YOU ARE ABOUT TO PUT ON THE WALL ARE STILL TITLE 55 POSTINGS — AND WHAT IS ACTUALLY COMING. There is a story circulating that Pennsylvania's child care rules are being recodified out of Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code into Title 6, which would make every citation in this section stale. Verified today against the index of rules in effect, not against any pinned document, it is false in both halves. Title 6 of the Pennsylvania Code is "AGING," Part I, Department of Aging, comprising Chapters 1, 3, 5, 11, 15, 20, 21, 22, 30 and 35; it has never contained child care. Title 55 is "HUMAN SERVICES," Part I, Department of Human Services, and under Subpart D it still serves "Chapter 3270. Child Care Centers / Chapter 3280. Group Child Care Homes / Chapter 3290. Family Child Care Homes." The posting sections quoted throughout this field — § 3290.22(a) and (c), § 3290.24(e), § 3290.72, § 3290.94(a)(5), § 3290.111(b), § 3290.124(d) — are served by the Code today, and the Source notes on the ones that were touched all read the same way: "amended December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133." A sweep of every Pennsylvania Bulletin issue table of contents for Volume 55 (2025, issues 1—52) and Volume 56 (2026, issues 1—34, the latest being 22 August 2026) finds no rulemaking, notice or IRRC filing touching Chapters 3270, 3280 or 3290 and no occurrence of "recodification"; the IRRC docket for the Department of Human Services shows the child care package (IRRC #3216 / DHS 14-542) closed on final publication 19 December 2020, with no successor open. Independent confirmation from the agency itself: OCDEL Announcement C-26-01, issued 10 June 2026 by Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown, is subtitled "Clarification of program licensure requirements pursuant to 55 Pa Code Chapters 3270; 3280; 3290; 20; and Articles IX and X of the Human Services Code." What IS coming is a renumbering, and it stays inside Title 55. OCDEL's Certification Regulation Rewrite, branded the Certification Impact Project, states in its own published material 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," with a 30-day public comment period "anticipated Spring 2027" and "Final Publication anticipated mid-year 2028 with one year for providers to come into compliance." Three chapters collapse into two: family child care homes become Chapter 3310 and group child care homes fold into the scheme rather than keeping their own chapter. That last point matters for postings specifically, because every family-versus-group contrast recorded in this field — the regional office contact you post and a group home merely provides, the inspection summary you must hang NEXT TO the certificate, the group home's safe-route posting under § 3280.171(c) that you do not owe, the emergency-transport plan posted once rather than in every child care space — exists only because Pennsylvania currently writes two chapters. Those distinctions are the first thing a merger erases. Until the package reaches the Pennsylvania Bulletin, which it had not as of 22 August 2026, and until it survives IRRC, nothing on your wall changes. Post under Chapter 3290. Re-read the wall when 3310 publishes, not before.
• THE NINTH AND TENTH POSTINGS DO NOT COME FROM CHAPTER 3290 AT ALL — THE TWO CIVIL RIGHTS POLICY STATEMENTS. Every posting so far has a section number in 55 Pa. Code Chapter 3290. These two do not, which is exactly why they are missed: they arrive through the civil rights form, and once your certificate issues nobody points at them again. The regulatory root is § 3290.23(b): "A CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WILL NOT BE GRANTED by the Department to a legal entity unless compliance with civil rights laws and applicable regulations has been met," listing six statutes from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (43 P.S. §§ 951—962.2) to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; and § 3290.23(c): "The appropriate forms to establish compliance shall be included with the application for certification." The form is HS 2126, the DHS Civil Rights Compliance Form, published inside a ten-page packet titled "CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES PROVIDERS" and stamped "HS 2126 9/24" on the pages you sign. It requires two written policy statements as attachments — a "Non-Discrimination in Employment" statement, which its checklist says must be "on your letterhead addressed to your staff with director's name/signature," and a "Non-Discrimination in Services" statement — and then, in the note under Question 1, it says plainly: "BOTH POLICY STATEMENTS ARE REQUIRED TO BE POSTED IN YOUR FACILITY." Posted. In your facility. That is a display obligation, it is enforceable through § 3290.23 and through the Bureau of Equal Opportunity, and it has no counterpart in the posting sections of Chapter 3290 — so a compliance checklist built purely from § 3290.22, § 3290.24, § 3290.72, § 3290.94, § 3290.111 and § 3290.124 will miss both of them. The form does not prescribe a location formula, so the honest reading is the strictest available one already in play: hang them with the certificate cluster, in the conspicuous location used by parents, where an employment statement is visible to any staff person and a services statement to any parent. Two further points. First, this posting renews. HS 2126 states that "all new providers seeking licensure through DHS must complete the Civil Rights Compliance Form (CRC Form) as part of their initial licensing application process. A (CRC RENEWAL FORM) WILL BE REQUIRED TO BE COMPLETED ANNUALLY as part of the licensing renewal process," and the renewal instrument is HS 2125 9/24, which BEO also calls a CRC Attestation. Since § 3290.11(j) caps your certificate at twelve months, that is an annual attestation, and an annual occasion to check that the statements on the wall still match the ones you filed. Second, the gatekeeping is not done by your certification representative. OCDEL's checklist: the form is "emailed to the region's appropriate email address with the subject BEO Compliance ... OCDEL will forward them to the Bureau of Equal Opportunity (BEO) for review ... AN INITIAL CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE CANNOT BE PROCESSED UNTIL THE BEO NOTIFIES OCDEL OF APPROVAL." The two statements you post are the visible end of a review that can stop your certificate cold. Note also what these are NOT. They are not a notice of parents' right of access under § 3290.20, they are not a complaint-procedure poster, and they do not discharge the § 3290.22(a) duty to post regional office contact instructions. Four different documents, one wall.

Enrollment forms for each child

• CD 633, "APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE" — ONE FORM FOR ALL THREE FACILITY TYPES, AND THE ONLY APPLICATION THERE IS. Pennsylvania does not publish a family-child-care-specific application. The Office of Child Development and Early Learning publishes a single instrument titled "APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE," headed "Office of Child Development and Early Learning," footer-stamped "CD 633 10/17" on every page, listed on the DHS Child Care Forms index as "Application for Certificate of Compliance: Center, Group, and Family Home (CD 633)." Its first line is a three-way tick box — "Family Child Care Home / Group Child Care Home / Center" — and its second is a three-way purpose box: "Open new child care facility / Change of facility/legal entity information / Renew existing certificate that expires on: ____." The same paper opens you, amends you and renews you. The regulatory hook is 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(d): "An applicant desiring to apply for a certificate of compliance shall submit application documents, ON FORMS PRESCRIBED BY THE DEPARTMENT, to the appropriate regional office." The Chapter 20 hook, which applies to you through § 3290.11(l), is § 20.21(c): "The application for a certificate of compliance shall be completed and submitted on the form prescribed and provided by the Department," and § 20.21(b) forbids opening first: the legal entity "shall submit an application for a certificate of compliance PRIOR TO COMMENCING OPERATION of the facility or agency and MAY NOT COMMENCE OPERATION UNTIL NOTIFIED that a certificate of compliance will be issued." § 20.21(d) requires "a separate application for a certificate of compliance for each facility." Thirteen numbered blocks. Block 2, tax identifier, is where family homes diverge: "Child care centers and group child care homes enter: FEIN: ____ / Family child care homes enter: SSN: ____ or FEIN: ____." Block 4 forces ownership disclosure and states that "Ownership information below is mandatory when Type of Ownership/Control selected is 'Individual' or 'General Partnership'." Block 5 asks whether the location, the legal entity, the operator or the signer "has ever been denied a Certificate or license, had a Certificate of Compliance or license revoked, or had a Certificate of Compliance or license non-renewed IN PENNSYLVANIA OR ANY OTHER STATE." Block 10B is the household roster and it is the block that catches home-based applicants: "list all individuals, including yourself if applicable, who are living in the residence and are at least 18 years of age. (Include only those who live in the residence at least 30 days in a calendar year.)" Block 12, facility water supplier, carries the instruction "FAMILY CHILD CARE HOME APPLICANTS, SKIP; ALL OTHERS MUST ANSWER" — one of the very few places the form itself relieves you. Who signs: the DECLARATION page, warning that "Any false information or statement knowingly given in this application is punishable under Section 4904 of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code," is signed by "SIGNATURE OF THE LEGAL ENTITY/REPRESENTATIVE," with the printed instruction "(Where the Legal Entity is a corporation, the individual must be a corporate officer.)" For a sole-proprietor family child care home the legal entity is you, so you sign personally, and every clearance in the packet must be yours. Where filed: the appropriate regional Office of Child Development and Early Learning, per § 3290.11(d).
• THE OCDEL PACKET — "WHAT IS A COMPLETE APPLICATION?", THIRTEEN NUMBERED ATTACHMENTS, AND THE TWO THAT DO NOT APPLY TO YOU. CD 633 alone is not an application. OCDEL publishes a companion checklist, "What Is a Complete Application?", which opens by citing the authority chain — "must obtain a Certificate of Compliance from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) prior to beginning operation of the facility (62 P.S. § 1002; 55 Pa. Code § 20.1, et seq.; 55 Pa. Code §§ 3270.11(a); 3280.11(a); 3290.11(c))" — and then enumerates thirteen items. In order: (1) "Completed Application for Certificate of Compliance - CD 633 (55 Pa. Code § 20.21)"; (2) "a certificate of occupancy showing that the building is in compliance with the Uniform Construction Code (UCC) and is acceptable for use as a ... family child care home, as applicable (55 Pa. Code §§ 3270.15; 3280.15; 3290.14)"; (3) the four clearance documents — "Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Clearance, Pennsylvania State Police Criminal History Clearance, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Criminal History Clearance, and National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR) verification"; (4) the Disclosure Statement, which "must be signed, witnessed, and dated"; (5) "Certificate of completion of MANDATED REPORTER TRAINING"; (6) business papers filed with the Pennsylvania Department of State, if applicable; (7) "Fictitious Name approval, if applicable (55 Pa. Code § 20.21(e))"; (8) "Certificate of Tax-Exempt status, if nonprofit (55 Pa. Code § 20.4)"; (9) FEIN verification from the IRS, with the family-home concession "Individual owners of FCCH can provide a FEIN or their Social Security Number"; (10) the "Civil Rights Compliance (CRC) form (HS 2126), including all supporting documents"; (11) documentation of live orientation training within the last 12 months; (12) documentation of pre-service training in the health and safety topics plus pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR; (13) Safe Drinking Water Act verification. Item 13 is expressly "for Child Care Centers ONLY" and the checklist prints the exclusion in a bulleted list that begins "Not applicable for: Group Child Care Homes; Family Child Care Homes." Item 8 is dead letter for most family homes. The certificate of occupancy at item 2 is the one that stops applications for months, because 55 Pa. Code § 3290.14(a) makes it a precondition, not a formality: "A certificate of compliance WILL NOT BE GRANTED by the Department until the legal entity provides a CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY as proof of compliance with the applicable requirements in 34 Pa. Code § 403.23 (relating to child day care facilities) and under section 1016(c) of the act (62 P.S. § 1016(c))," and § 3290.14(b) makes the compliance ongoing thereafter. That certificate is issued by your municipality or by the Department of Labor and Industry, not by DHS, and DHS will not chase it for you. Philadelphia applicants owe two extra documents the checklist names specifically: "Group Child Care and Family Child Care Homes in a Residential building need: 1. License #3397 and 2. Residential Day Care Inspection Checklist," obtainable from the City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections. Item 10 carries its own veto: "An initial Certificate of Compliance CANNOT BE PROCESSED until the BEO notifies OCDEL of approval." The Bureau of Equal Opportunity, not your certification representative, controls that gate.
• HS 2126, THE CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLIANCE FORM — A GATE YOUR CERTIFICATION REPRESENTATIVE DOES NOT HOLD, AND THE ONE FORM THAT ORDERS A POSTING. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.23(b) makes civil rights a condition precedent: "A CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WILL NOT BE GRANTED by the Department to a legal entity unless compliance with civil rights laws and applicable regulations has been met," listing six statutes from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to the ADA; and § 3290.23(c) turns that into paper: "THE APPROPRIATE FORMS TO ESTABLISH COMPLIANCE SHALL BE INCLUDED WITH THE APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATION." The form is HS 2126, "DHS CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLIANCE FORM," in a ten-page packet headed "CIVIL RIGHTS COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR DHS PROVIDERS." Cite it carefully: the packet is internally inconsistent, the cover page still stamped "HS 2126 8/22," the three pages you sign "HS 2126 9/24," the appendices "HS 2125 9/24." The signed pages govern. Who signs: "The CRC Form must be completed in its entirety and SIGNED AND DATED BY AN OFFICIAL OF THE LEGAL ENTITY," under "The information submitted is, to the best of my knowledge, true and I intend to be bound by it," followed by "I WILL RETAIN COPIES OF ALL FORMS AND DOCUMENTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT." Its checklist lists what travels with it: a "Non-Discrimination in Employment" policy statement "on your letterhead addressed to your staff with director's name/signature"; a "Non-Discrimination in Services" policy statement; "one sample of an advertisement which includes your non-discrimination clause"; and "the written procedure regarding the filing of complaints by staff." Now the sentence that puts this form into the postings field too: the note under Question 1 reads "BOTH POLICY STATEMENTS ARE REQUIRED TO BE POSTED IN YOUR FACILITY." That is a display duty with no counterpart anywhere in Chapter 3290: it comes from the form and § 3290.23, not from the posting sections, and it is the only civil-rights posting a Pennsylvania family child care home owes. Where filed: not directly to the Bureau of Equal Opportunity. OCDEL's checklist is explicit — the form goes "emailed to the region's appropriate email address WITH THE SUBJECT BEO COMPLIANCE or mailed to the appropriate Regional Office. Once the completed form and accompanying documents are complete, OCDEL WILL FORWARD THEM TO THE BUREAU OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY (BEO) FOR REVIEW ... AN INITIAL CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE CANNOT BE PROCESSED UNTIL THE BEO NOTIFIES OCDEL OF APPROVAL. This form is required for all certified child care facility types." DHS's CRC FAQs give the service standard as "2-3 business days from the date BEO receives your application," warn that if a request for additional information goes unanswered "within 30 days" the package returns "as denied," and note that "a BEO denial does not allow an applicant or provider to move forward with the licensure process." Finally the renewal cycle, which is annual and on a different form. HS 2126 states that "all new providers seeking licensure through DHS must complete the Civil Rights Compliance Form (CRC Form) as part of their initial licensing application process. A (CRC RENEWAL FORM) WILL BE REQUIRED TO BE COMPLETED ANNUALLY as part of the licensing renewal process." That instrument is HS 2125 9/24, the "Civil Rights Compliance Renewal Form," which BEO also calls a CRC Attestation. Since § 3290.11(j) caps your certificate at twelve months, that means an HS 2125 every year, forever.
• CY 113, "PENNSYLVANIA CHILD ABUSE HISTORY CERTIFICATION," AND CY 999, THE CONSENT/RELEASE THAT MAKES IT USABLE. The child abuse clearance is a two-form transaction and applicants routinely file only the first. CY 113, stamped "CY 113 12/15," is headed "PENNSYLVANIA CHILD ABUSE HISTORY CERTIFICATION" and is sent to "CHILDLINE AND ABUSE REGISTRY, PA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES, P.O. BOX 8170 HARRISBURG, PA 17105-8170." Its "PURPOSE OF CERTIFICATION (Check one box only)" list contains two boxes that matter to a family child care home and they are not the same box: "Self-employed provider of child-care services in a family child-care home," which is the operator's box, and "An individual 18 years or older who resides in the home of a certified or licensed child-care provider for at least 30 days in a calendar year," which is the box for every adult in your household. Tick the wrong one and the certification returns for the wrong purpose. The form demands "PREVIOUS NAMES USED SINCE 1975 (Include maiden name, nickname and aliases.)," "PREVIOUS ADDRESSES SINCE 1975" and "HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS (Please list everyone who lived with you at any time since 1975 to present. Please include parent, guardian or the person(s) who raised you)" — a 1975 lookback that surprises people and that, left incomplete, gets the application returned: "APPLICATIONS THAT ARE INCOMPLETE, ILLEGIBLE OR RECEIVED WITHOUT THE CORRECT FEE WILL BE RETURNED UNPROCESSED." The applicant signs under Section 4904 of the Pennsylvania Crimes Code. The fee printed on the current CY 113 is "$13.00 money order or check payable to the PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES or a payment authorization code," with the volunteer concession that certifications "for the purpose of 'volunteer having direct volunteer contact with children' may be obtained free of charge once every 57 months." Now the trap. ChildLine sends the certification TO THE APPLICANT, not to the agency, unless CY 999 is attached. CY 999, "CONSENT/RELEASE OF INFORMATION AUTHORIZATION FORM FOR THE PENNSYLVANIA CHILD ABUSE HISTORY CERTIFICATION," stamped "CY 999 3/16," is the instrument that redirects it, and it says so in terms: "I understand that the aforementioned information WILL NOT BE RELEASED DIRECTLY TO ME ... as stated on the Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Certification application. I understand that I WILL NOT RECEIVE A COPY of my Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Certification directly from ChildLine; however, I may request a copy ... from [the requesting agency] upon written request." CY 999 is two pages, signed by the applicant and countersigned by the agency representative, who acknowledges liability: persons receiving the information "are subject to the confidentiality provisions of the CPSL and 55 Pa. Code, Chapter 3490 and are required to ensure the confidentiality and security of the information and are liable for civil and criminal penalties for releasing information to persons who are not permitted access." CY 113 itself carries the matching tick box: "Consent/Release of Information Authorization form is attached. Applicant must fill in the 'Other Address' sections." CY 999 closes with the warning that "IF THE PENNSYLVANIA CHILD ABUSE HISTORY CERTIFICATION FORM/APPLICATION (CY 113) IS NOT COMPLETED ACCURATELY OR IF IT IS INCOMPLETE, THE CY 113 WILL BE RETURNED TO THE APPLICANT AND NOT BACK TO A THIRD PARTY."
• WHO NEEDS CLEARANCES AND WHEN — § 6344.1, THE 30-DAY HOUSEHOLD RULE, AND THE 60-MONTH CLOCK THAT RUNS OFF YOUR OLDEST CERTIFICATE. The forms are the easy part; the population and the calendar are where family child care homes get denied. The statutory hook reaching into your house is 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.1(a): an individual applying "for a certificate of compliance or a license to provide CHILD DAY CARE IN A RESIDENCE shall include criminal history record and child abuse record information required under section 6344(b) FOR EVERY INDIVIDUAL 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER WHO RESIDES IN THE HOME FOR AT LEAST 30 DAYS IN A CALENDAR YEAR." § 6344.1(c) makes the consequence mandatory: "The department SHALL REFUSE to issue or renew a certificate of compliance or license or SHALL REVOKE a certificate of compliance or license if the day-care home provider or individual 18 years of age or older who has resided in the home for at least 30 days in a calendar year: (1) is named in the Statewide database as the perpetrator of a founded report committed within the immediately preceding five-year period; or (2) has been convicted of an offense enumerated in section 6344(c)." Your adult son's record can end your business. The regulation implements it at 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(h). At initial application, clearances are due "FOR THE APPLICANT AND FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER WHO RESIDES IN THE CHILD CARE FACILITY AT LEAST 30 DAYS IN A CALENDAR YEAR." At renewal, only for those who "ATTAINED 18 YEARS OF AGE following the date of the previous application" or "MOVED INTO the child care facility following" it. And § 3290.11(h)(3) withdraws that concession entirely if the renewal "is received FOLLOWING EXPIRATION of the current certificate of compliance" — file late and the whole household re-clears. "Thirty days in a calendar year" is cumulative, not consecutive; OCDEL's application checklist spells it out: "This requirement also applies to any member of the household/residence who is 18 years of age or older and is in the household for 30 or more calendar days per year ... THE 30 DAYS DO NOT HAVE TO BE CONSECUTIVE." A university-age child home for the summer, a partner who stays four nights a week: each crosses thirty days. The checklist adds the out-of-state limb — "Out-of-state clearances are required for persons who reside outside of Pennsylvania or have resided outside of Pennsylvania within the past 5 years (60 months)" — tracking 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(f.1), a child-care-only subsection requiring out-of-state child abuse, criminal history and sex offender registry certifications "in each state in which the individual resided within the previous five-year period." Then the clock. 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.4(1)(i): a person identified in § 6344 "shall be required to obtain the certifications required by this chapter EVERY 60 MONTHS," and § 6344.4(3) fixes the trigger date in a way that costs people their certificate: "THE DATE FOR REQUIRED RENEWAL ... SHALL BE FROM THE DATE OF THE OLDEST CERTIFICATION under section 6344(b)." Not each certificate on its own five-year track: all of them keyed to whichever is oldest. OCDEL Announcement C-25-01 of 15 January 2025 says the same: clearances "are considered current and valid if obtained within the last 60 months (five years)." A footnote for the pedantic: § 6344.4(1)(i) excepts "subparagraph (v)," and the Legislative Reference Bureau's own note records that "subparagraph (v) ... does not exist."
• SP 4-164, THE FBI SERVICE CODES, AND THE NSOR VERIFICATION NOBODY REMEMBERS. The second clearance is a State Police instrument, linked from the DHS Child Care Forms index as "SP 4-164: Request for Criminal Record Check." Current revision, stamped top-left: "SP 4-164 (10-2025)," headed "PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE / REQUEST FOR CRIMINAL RECORD CHECK," telephone "1-888-QUERYPA." Read the revision stamp before you file: an out-of-date sheet is a returned sheet, and the form warns "If this form is not legible or not properly completed, it will be returned unprocessed." Completion is "in ink by the requester" and the result "will be mailed to the requester only" — the state-police analogue of the CY 113 problem. The address is "PENNSYLVANIA STATE POLICE / CENTRAL REPOSITORY – 164 / 1800 ELMERTON AVENUE / HARRISBURG, PA 17110-9758"; "DO NOT SEND CASH OR PERSONAL CHECK." Two fee tiers print on its face: $22.00 for an "INDIVIDUAL/NONCRIMINAL JUSTICE AGENCY" and $27.00 "NOTARIZED," by certified check or money order payable to "COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA," and "THE FEE IS NONREFUNDABLE." That optional notarized tier is the only notarization anywhere in this paper trail. The form points you away from itself — "TRY OUR WEBSITE FOR A QUICKER RESPONSE https://epatch.pa.gov" — and the electronic route is the sane one, with one catch C-25-01 flags: a PSP clearance requested online "WILL NOT BE MAILED to the applicant. The response ... will need to be PRINTED OUT BY THE REQUESTOR." An unprinted online result is an empty file. The third clearance, the FBI fingerprint check, has no DHS form number; it is an appointment with the Commonwealth's vendor IdentoGO and it produces a report, not a signed sheet. The SERVICE CODE you book under is the trap, and one household can need three: 1KG74S "Family Child Care Home Provider," 1KG78K "Individual >=18 Years in Licensed Child Care Home," and 1KG738 "Child Care Services/Program Employee or Contractor." OCDEL Announcement C-25-01 warns that codes "for the purposes of Volunteer, Foster Parent, or Prospective Adoptive Parent CANNOT BE USED as a clearance to work or reside in a certified child care facility. An FBI clearance obtained pursuant to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) requirements is ALSO NOT VALID." A wrongly-coded appointment is money and weeks gone. As published by DHS the fee is $24.95 for employees, rising to $27.95 "effective October 1, 2026." The FOURTH document is the one most often omitted: the NSOR verification, required by 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(f.1)(1)(ii) as "notification from the department stating whether the individual's name appears on the National Crime Information Center National Sex Offender Registry" — distinct from the FBI result. Representatives check for all four. Retention: 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(b.1) puts the duty on you — the person responsible for employment decisions "SHALL MAINTAIN A COPY OF THE REQUIRED INFORMATION" — and § 6344(b.2) makes an intentional failure to demand the paperwork before hiring "a MISDEMEANOR OF THE THIRD DEGREE." 55 Pa. Code § 3290.192(3) says where: the facility person's record must contain "a copy of REQUESTS for the criminal history record and child abuse registry clearance information, a copy of the DISCLOSURE STATEMENT and a copy of the COMPLETED CLEARANCE INFORMATION." Request and result, both. One more prohibition worth knowing: § 6344(b.3) bars an employer from "accepting a certification that was obtained for volunteering purposes."
• THE DISCLOSURE STATEMENT — SIGNED, WITNESSED AND DATED, AND THE 45-DAY PROVISIONAL RULE THAT ONE REGULATION STILL CONTRADICTS. OCDEL's application checklist item 4 requires a "Disclosure statement for all applicable members of the legal entity, representative of the legal entity and/or the responsible person as required by the Child Protective Services Law (23 Pa. C.S.A. § 6344 ...). MUST BE SIGNED, WITNESSED, AND DATED." Witnessed: a signature alone is not enough. DHS publishes two versions, not interchangeable. The employment version is titled "DISCLOSURE STATEMENT / APPLICATION FOR CHILD CARE EMPLOYMENT, INCLUDING PROVISIONAL EMPLOYMENT / Required by the Pennsylvania Child Protective Service Law / 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344," footer-dated "01/01/25"; the volunteer version is separate and dated November 2024. Two limbs. First: "I swear/affirm that, IF BEING HIRED ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS, I have applied for the Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Clearance, the Pennsylvania State Police Criminal History Clearance, the ... (FBI) Criminal History Clearance, the National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR) verification, and any clearances for any state other than this Commonwealth ... AND EITHER the Pennsylvania State Police Criminal History Clearance OR the FBI Criminal History Clearance." Then the constraint that catches family homes trying to bring in a substitute quickly: "I understand that I MAY BE HIRED ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS FOR A SINGLE PERIOD NOT TO EXCEED A TOTAL OF 45 DAYS but am NOT PERMITTED TO WORK ALONE WITH CHILDREN and MUST WORK IN THE IMMEDIATE VICINITY OF A PERMANENT EMPLOYEE." A sole-operator home cannot use provisional hiring to cover its own absence: there is no permanent employee in whose vicinity the provisional person could work. The forty-five days is current law, 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(m)(1), restored by the act of February 17, 2022 (P.L. 48, No. 12) after Act 47 of 2019 abolished general provisional hiring. The trap for anyone researching this from the regulations rather than the statute: 55 Pa. Code § 3490.127(b), still served by the Pennsylvania Code today, says "the maximum period of employment allowed for a provisional employe is as follows: (1) THIRTY CALENDAR DAYS for an applicant residing in this Commonwealth. (2) NINETY CALENDAR DAYS for an out-of-State applicant." It is superseded by § 6344(m) and by OCDEL C-25-01, effective 1 February 2025: "If the required clearances are not obtained within 45-days, the employer must dismiss the employee or move them to a position where they do not have direct contact with children." C-25-01 adds two absolutes: "The Director of a certified child care facility may not be employed provisionally. VOLUNTEERS MAY NOT BEGIN VOLUNTEERING ON A PROVISIONAL BASIS." Second, the sworn negative: "I swear/affirm that I have not been named in the Statewide database as a perpetrator of an indicated or founded report of child abuse," followed by a two-page list of disqualifying offences — Chapter 25 criminal homicide, § 2702 aggravated assault, § 2718 strangulation, § 2901 kidnapping, § 3121 rape, § 3301 arson, § 4304 endangering welfare of children, § 6312 sexual abuse of children, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2261 and 2262 among them — reaching also "the attempt, solicitation or conspiracy to commit any of the offenses, or an offense similar in nature." Note the verb: SWEAR OR AFFIRM IN WRITING. Nothing in 23 Pa.C.S. Chapter 63 requires notarisation, so do not call it an affidavit. Retention: a copy in the facility person's file, § 3290.192(3).
• CD 322, "CHILD CARE STAFF HEALTH ASSESSMENT," AND THE SUBMISSION DUTY THAT EXISTS ONLY FOR FAMILY CHILD CARE HOMES. The adult health form is stamped "CD 322 2/12," titled "CHILD CARE STAFF HEALTH ASSESSMENT," and subtitled with its own authority: "(55 Pa. Code §§ 3270.151, 3280.151 and 3290.151)." It has three zones. The employer completes the activity checklist — "Lifting, carrying children / Close interaction with children / Food preparation / Driver of vehicle(s) / Facility maintenance." A "physician, physician's assistant or certified registered nurse practitioner (CRNP)" completes the clinical section, ending with "BASED ON YOUR FINDINGS ... IS THIS INDIVIDUAL SUITABLE TO PROVIDE CHILD CARE?" and signing with date, title and printed name. The third zone is tuberculosis, headed "TESTING FOR TUBERCULOSIS BY THE INTRACUTANEOUS MANTOUX OR INTERFERONGAMMA RELEASE ASSAY BLOOD TEST METHOD." Now the regulation, 55 Pa. Code § 3290.151(c): the assessment must include "(1) A physical examination. (2) TUBERCULOSIS SCREENING BY THE MANTOUX METHOD AT INITIAL EMPLOYMENT. Subsequent tuberculosis screening is not required unless directed by a physician, CRNP, the Department of Health or a local health department. (i) If a person's medical record demonstrates a positive tuberculin skin test, that record shall be placed on file at the facility. (ii) A record of a person with a positive tuberculin skin test must include the results of a chest x-ray and evaluation for chemoprophylaxis. (iii) A person with a positive tuberculin skin test and a negative x-ray is not required to have further tuberculosis testing unless ... (A) The person is exposed to an active case of tuberculosis. (B) The person develops a productive cough which does not respond to medical treatment within 14 days. (3) Examination for communicable diseases and the results of that examination. (4) Information on medical problems which might threaten the health of the children ... (5) The physician's or CRNP's assessment of the person's suitability to provide child care." The Mantoux monopoly in (2) is relaxed by a statement of policy codified as its own section, § 3290.151a: "The Department will accept an interferongamma release assay blood test instead of the Mantoux skin test for an adult health assessment" — which is why the form's heading names both. Once, at initial employment, then never again unless directed: providers who budget for annual TB testing are buying something no regulation requires. Here is the family-home-only duty. § 3290.151(a): "A facility person providing direct care who comes into contact with the children or who works with food preparation shall have a health assessment ON FILE at the facility. (1) THE OPERATOR SHALL SUBMIT A HEALTH ASSESSMENT TO THE DEPARTMENT PRIOR TO ISSUANCE OF AN INITIAL OR RENEWAL CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE. (2) A health assessment is VALID FOR 24 MONTHS following the date of signature, if the person does not contract a communicable disease or develop a medical problem." Subsection (a)(1) has no counterpart in the group home chapter: 55 Pa. Code § 3280.151(a) requires only that the assessment "be conducted within 12 months prior to providing initial service in a child care setting and every 24 months thereafter," on file, with nothing sent to Harrisburg. A family child care home operator therefore MAILS a health assessment with every renewal packet. A group child care home operator files it and waits to be asked.
• CD 51 "CHILD HEALTH REPORT," AND THE IMMUNIZATION TRAIL THAT RUNS THROUGH HEALTH, NOT DHS. The child health form is stamped "CD 51 09/08," listed by DHS as "CD 51 (formerly CY 51) Child Health Assessment" and titled "CHILD HEALTH REPORT (55 PA CODE §§ 3270.131, 3280.131 AND 3290.131)". Anything citing "CY 51" predates the renumbering. The parent signs "I authorize the child care staff and my child's health professional to communicate directly ... about my child"; the clinician's block ends with "SIGNATURE OF PHYSICIAN, CRNP OR PHYSICIAN'S ASSISTANT," "TITLE," "LICENSE NUMBER" and "DATE FORM SIGNED," because § 3290.131(c) provides that "a health report must be written and signed by a physician, physician's assistant or a CRNP. THE SIGNATURE MUST INCLUDE THE INDIVIDUAL'S PROFESSIONAL TITLE." A signature without a title is incomplete. The deadline is generous; the dating rule is not. § 3290.131(a): the parent must provide an initial report "NO LATER THAN 60 DAYS FOLLOWING THE FIRST DAY OF ATTENDANCE," but it must be dated "NO MORE THAN 3 MONTHS" before that day for an infant, "NO MORE THAN 6 MONTHS" for a young toddler, "NO MORE THAN 1 YEAR" for an older toddler or preschool child, and per 28 Pa. Code § 23.2 for a school-age child. A nine-month-old physical for a four-month-old fails even inside the sixty-day window. Updates, § 3290.131(b): every 6 months for an infant or young toddler, every 12 for an older toddler or preschool child, nothing for school-age. The eight contents required by § 3290.131(d) map onto the CD 51 fields one for one, including "abnormal results of screening tests for vision, hearing or LEAD POISONING." The special-needs care plan lives inside this form: CD 51 says "ATTACH ADDITIONAL SHEETS IF NECESSARY TO DESCRIBE THE PLAN FOR CARE THAT SHOULD BE FOLLOWED FOR THE CHILD, INCLUDING SPECIAL TRAINING REQUIRED FOR STAFF, EQUIPMENT AND PROVISION FOR EMERGENCIES." There is no separate special-needs care plan form; § 3290.15(b) obliges you to admit an outside specialist "as specified in the child's IEP, IFSP or written behavioral plan" but never requires you to hold it. Immunization is a separate trail. § 3290.131(e) bars retaining a child past 60 days without "WRITTEN VERIFICATION ... of the DATES (MONTH, DAY AND YEAR) the child was administered immunizations in accordance with the recommendations of the ACIP." Two exemption instruments, § 3290.131(e)(2): religious objection "documented by a written, signed and dated statement FROM THE CHILD'S PARENT OR GUARDIAN," medical need "from the child's physician, physician's assistant or CRNP." Both "kept in the child's record." Then § 3290.131(e)(4) hands you off to "the ANNUAL IMMUNIZATION REPORTING REQUIREMENTS in accordance with the Department of Health regulation in 28 Pa. Code § 27.77." Read § 27.77(a)(4): "The caregiver shall ensure that a CERTIFICATE OF IMMUNIZATION IS COMPLETED AND SIGNED FOR EACH CHILD ... The immunization status of each enrolled child shall be SUMMARIZED AND REPORTED ON AN ANNUAL BASIS TO THE DEPARTMENT ... ON THE FORM PROVIDED BY THE DEPARTMENT." That is the Annual Child Care Immunization Reporting Survey, invisible from the DHS forms index; OCDEL published "August 31 Deadline Approaching for the 2026 Annual Child Care Immunization Reporting Survey" on 19 August 2026. And § 27.77(a)(3) supplies a retention period Chapter 3290 never states: retain the verification or objection "FOR 60 DAYS FOLLOWING THE TERMINATION OF THE CHILD'S ATTENDANCE."
• CY 321 "AGREEMENT" AND CD 208 "CHILD SERVICE REPORT" — THE PARENT CONTRACT AND THE FORM IT MUST NAME BUT DOES NOT. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.123(a) requires "an AGREEMENT SIGNED BY THE OPERATOR AND THE PARENT" specifying seven terms: the fee per day or week; the date the fee is paid; "the services to be provided to the family and child, INCLUDING THE DEPARTMENT'S APPROVED FORM TO PROVIDE INFORMATION TO THE FAMILY ABOUT THE CHILD'S GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT ... The operator shall complete and update the form and provide a copy to the family in accordance with the updates regarding emergency contact information in § 3290.124(e)"; arrival and departure times; "the individuals designated by the parent to whom the child may be released as specified in § 3290.116"; the date of admission; and "the services which are to be considered as extra." § 3290.123(b) reverses the usual instinct: "A PARENT SHALL RECEIVE THE ORIGINAL AGREEMENT. THE FACILITY SHALL RETAIN A COPY." § 3290.182(8) repeats it. The Department's form is CY 321, listed as "CY 321: Day Care Agreement" but titled on its face "AGREEMENT," subtitled "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.123 & .181(C); 3280.123 & .181(c); 3290.123 & .181(c)," stamped "CY 321 - 12/99," NCR stock 03892A. Its fields are the seven statutory terms plus two parent acknowledgements — "received complete written program information at the time of enrollment" and "agree to update the emergency contact/parental consent form information whenever changes occur or every 6 months at a minumum" — operator and parent signature lines, and a "PERIODIC REVIEW" block that captures the § 3290.181(c) six-month re-attestation. Now the trap, and it is the Department's own. CY 321 is dated December 1999. The growth-and-development term at § 3290.123(a)(3) was added by the rulemaking adopted 18 December 2020, effective 19 December 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133. CY 321 predates it by twenty-one years and contains no reference to it. Fill in CY 321 as printed and you have an agreement that fails § 3290.123(a)(3). Add the term yourself, naming the Department's approved form: CD 208, "CHILD SERVICE REPORT," stamped "CD 208 9/17." CD 208 states its own cadence on its face — "This report describes your child's growth and development in the context of the services provided by our facility. YOU ARE TO RECEIVE THIS REPORT ABOUT YOUR CHILD EVERY SIX MONTHS" — matching the cross-reference in § 3290.123(a)(3) to § 3290.124(e), "once in a 6-month period." Its content is aligned to "Pennsylvania's Learning Standards for Early Childhood and the Pennsylvania Academic Standards" and asks three questions — strengths, next milestones, what the family can do at home — across four domains: physical, "Knowledge and Skills," "Social Emotional (personal-social)" and "Communication, Language and Literacy." Two signature blocks: "Facility person who completed this child's report" and "This report was REVIEWED WITH AND A COPY GIVEN TO the following parent/guardian," with signature and date. Unsigned CD 208s evidence that the review never happened. Note the copy rule runs the other way from the agreement: § 3290.123(a)(3) says "provide a COPY to the family," so you keep the signed original. And note the second breach available here: a home that completes CD 208s faithfully but never amended its agreement to name them is still in breach of § 3290.123(a)(3) — the breach lives in the contract. The group home rule is identical at § 3280.123(a)(3), cross-referring to § 3280.124(f).
• CY 867, "EMERGENCY CONTACT / PARENTAL CONSENT FORM" — SIX SEPARATE PARENTAL CONSENTS ON ONE SHEET, UPDATED TWICE A YEAR. This is the workhorse of the child's file, and its design carries the regulation's structure. CY 867 is footer-stamped "CY 867 10/22," titled "EMERGENCY CONTACT / PARENTAL CONSENT FORM," and subtitled with its authority: "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.124 (a) (b), 3270.181 & 182; 3280.124 (a) (b), 3280.181 & .182; 3290.124 (a) (b), 3290.181 & .182." The emergency-contact half tracks 55 Pa. Code § 3290.124(b) field by field: the child's name and birth date; "the name, address and telephone number of the child's source of medical care"; "the home and work addresses and home and work telephone numbers of the enrolling parent"; "a written consent signed by a parent for emergency medical care"; "information on the child's special needs, as specified by the child's parent, physician, physician's assistant or CRNP, which is needed in an emergency situation"; "health insurance coverage and policy number for the child under a family policy or Medical Assistance (MA) benefits, if applicable"; and "the name, address and telephone number of the individual designated by the parent to whom the child may be released." The form marks the insurance policy number "(REQUIRED)". The consent half collects on one page every consent § 3290.182 demands: "PARENT'S SIGNATURE IS REQUIRED FOR EACH ITEM BELOW TO INDICATE PARENTAL CONSENT — OBTAINING EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE / ADMIN. OF MINOR FIRST-AID PROCEDURES / WALKS AND TRIPS / TRANSPORTATION BY THE FACILITY / SWIMMING / WADING," followed by "PERIODIC REVIEW." Match those to § 3290.182(3)-(6): consent for "emergency medical care for the child. WRITTEN CONSENT IS REQUIRED PRIOR TO ADMISSION"; for "administration of medications or special dietary needs"; for "administration of minor first-aid procedures by facility staff. WRITTEN CONSENT IS REQUIRED PRIOR TO ADMISSION"; and for "transportation, walking excursions, swimming and wading." Two of the six — emergency medical care and minor first aid — must be signed BEFORE admission, not within sixty days. The transportation consent has an independent home at § 3290.171: "The operator shall obtain written consent from the parent for transportation by the facility staff." Six-month refresh, § 3290.124(e): "Emergency contact information shall be UPDATED IN WRITING BY THE PARENT once in a 6-month period or as soon as there is a change in the information" — updated by the parent, in writing, which is what the PERIODIC REVIEW block captures, and which dovetails with § 3290.181(d): "Following review, a parent shall attest to the record's accuracy by AFFIXING A DATED SIGNATURE to the record." The form is printed in triplicate with a colour legend: "WHITE COPY (Original) / YELLOW COPY (Child Care Space) / PINK COPY (Excursion)." That legend is written for centres and group homes. For a family child care home, § 3290.124(a) requires only that the information "be PRESENT IN a child care facility for each enrolled child" — one house, one location — while § 3290.124(c) requires that "when children leave the facility on walking and riding excursions, emergency contact information specific to each child on the excursion shall ACCOMPANY A STAFF PERSON." You need the white and the pink; the yellow is the group home rule at § 3280.124(c), which requires the information present "in a child care space for children receiving care in that space."
• CY 862, "MEDICATION LOG," AND THE SPECIAL-DIET PAPERWORK THAT TRAVELS WITH IT. Pennsylvania does not oblige a family child care home to give medication at all, and the sentence that says so is the most valuable one in § 3290.133 for a sole operator: "FACILITY PERSONS ARE NOT REQUIRED TO ADMINISTER MEDICATION OR SPECIAL DIETS which are requested or required by a parent, a physician, a physician's assistant or a CRNP but are NOT TREATMENT RELATED TO THE CHILD'S SPECIAL NEEDS." What you cannot refuse is accommodation of treatment tied to a special need: "The operator shall make reasonable accommodation in accordance with applicable Federal and State laws to facilitate administration of medication or a special diet that is prescribed by a physician, physician's assistant or CRNP as treatment related to the child's special needs." Once you do administer, eight conditions attach under § 3290.133(1)-(8): original container only, and "the medication must remain in the container in which it was received"; prescription medication only with written instructions from the prescriber, though "instructions for administration contained on a prescription label are acceptable"; the label must name the medication and the child; storage "in a locked area of the facility or in an area that is out of the reach of children"; "A PARENT SHALL PROVIDE WRITTEN CONSENT FOR ADMINISTRATION"; and the log. § 3290.133(7): "An operator is responsible to establish and maintain a MEDICATION LOG if prescription OR NONPRESCRIPTION medication is administered," with eight minimum fields — "(i) The name of the medication. (ii) The name of the child receiving the medication. (iii) A requirement for refrigeration. (iv) The amount of medication administered. (v) The date of administration. (vi) The time of administration. (vii) The initials of the staff person who administered the medication. (viii) Special notes related to problems of administration." Nonprescription is in the rule: a dab of teething gel triggers the same log as an antibiotic. The Department's form is CY 862, "MEDICATION LOG," subtitled "55 Pa. Code § 3270.133; § 3280.133; § 3290.133," footer-stamped "CY 862 10/04." One sheet per child per medication — header block "Child's Name / Medication / Prescription or Non-Prescription / Refrigeration Required / If Prescription, Prescriber's Name / Dosage Amount / Time to Administer / Dates for Administration: From ___ To ___" — followed by the parent consent line "I give permission to administer medication to my child as stated above," a parent signature and date, and then a repeating grid the operator completes: "Date Administered / Time Administered / Amount of Medication Administered / Comments/Reactions / Staff Initials." Its foot carries the confidentiality warning: "This information is confidential and may not be shared or released without the parent's written permission" — § 3290.183 in miniature. Special diets get their own paper, § 3290.133(8): "If a special diet is prescribed for a child and if the diet is administered to the child, WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS AND THE PARENT'S WRITTEN CONSENT SHALL BE RETAINED IN THE CHILD'S FILE." Two documents, both retained, and the consent is also one of the four § 3290.182 consents captured on CY 867. Chapter 3290 fixes no retention period for the completed medication log; the safe practice is to keep it as part of the child's record, which under § 3290.181(a) you "establish and maintain" for each enrolled child.
• CY 866, "INCIDENT REPORT FORM," AND THE 24-HOUR / 72-HOUR CLOCK THAT STARTS WITHOUT YOU. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.17(a): "The operator or the operator's designee shall IMMEDIATELY NOTIFY A CHILD'S PARENT and shall notify the appropriate regional office of the Department WITHIN 24 HOURS if one or more of the following occurs: (1) INPATIENT HOSPITALIZATION OR EMERGENCY ROOM TREATMENT of a child receiving care at the facility. (2) A DEATH of a child receiving care at the facility. (3) A FACILITY FIRE THAT REQUIRES THE SERVICES OF A FIRE DEPARTMENT." Then § 3290.17(b): "The operator shall MAIL OR DELIVER A WRITTEN REPORT to the appropriate regional office of the Department WITHIN 72 HOURS after the occurrence." Two clocks, both running from the event. Note the trigger in (1): emergency room TREATMENT counts, not just admission — a child taken for stitches and sent home is reportable. The eight mandatory contents, § 3290.17(c): facility name, address and telephone; the child's name, address and birth date; the parent's name and address; "a description of the incident, including the date, time and location of the incident and the EQUIPMENT INVOLVED"; "the name and telephone number of LOCAL AUTHORITIES NOTIFIED"; "the nature of the treatment"; "the name and address of the place treatment was received"; and "the REQUIRED FOLLOW-UP." § 3290.17(d): "The staff person WHO PREPARED THE REPORT shall sign and date it." § 3290.17(e): "COPIES OF REPORTS SHALL BE KEPT IN A FILE AT THE FACILITY." The Department's form is CY 866, "INCIDENT REPORT FORM," subtitled "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.20 & .182(7); 3280.19 & .182(7); 3290.17 & .182(7)," footer-stamped "CY 866 - 1/93," NCR stock 03893A, headed "THIS FORM CAN BE USED TO MEET THE REPORTING REQUIREMENTS FOR ACCIDENT, INJURY, ILLNESS, HOSPITALIZATION, EMERGENCY ROOM TREATMENT, DEATH OR FIRE." Its lower band prints the clocks: "COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING SECTION ONLY IF THE INCIDENT RESULTED IN INPATIENT HOSPITALIZATION, EMERGENCY ROOM TREATMENT, SERVICES OF A FIRE COMPANY, OR THE DEATH OF A CHILD RECEIVING CARE AT THE FACILITY. NOTIFY REGIONAL DAY CARE OFFICE WITHIN 24 HOURS ... MAIL OR DELIVER WRITTEN REPORT TO REGIONAL OFFICE WITHIN 72 HOURS," with fields for date and time of notification and the regional staff person notified. It is a multi-part form, and distribution is set by § 3290.182(7): the child's record must contain "reports of accidents, injuries and illnesses involving a child while in care at the facility. THE ORIGINAL REPORT IS GIVEN TO THE PARENT ON THE DAY OF THE INCIDENT. THE SECOND COPY OF THE REPORT IS RETAINED AT THE FACILITY IN AN ACCIDENT FILE. THE THIRD COPY OF THE REPORT IS RETAINED AT THE FACILITY IN THE CHILD'S FILE." Three copies, two files: a chronological accident file and the child's individual record. A single copy filed once is a violation even if the report is perfect. Three further events are reportable, added by a codified statement of policy at § 3290.17a: reports must be made under § 3290.17 if "(1) A child receiving care in the facility is LOST OR MISSING from the facility. (2) A child in the care of the facility is LEFT BEHIND ON A FACILITY EXCURSION. (3) A child receiving care in the facility is LEFT UNATTENDED IN THE FACILITY WHEN THE FACILITY IS CLOSED." No injury need occur. Separately, § 3290.132(a) requires that if the parent cannot be reached, "the operator shall RECORD IN WRITING the reason emergency care was required and the attempts made to inform the parent."
• CY 863, "VERBAL REQUEST FOR RELEASE OF CHILD," AND THE RELEASE PAPERWORK AROUND IT. Release is a two-tier system in Pennsylvania and each tier has its own paper. The normal tier is written designation in advance: 55 Pa. Code § 3290.116(a), "A child shall be released from care ONLY to the child's parent or to an individual DESIGNATED IN WRITING BY THE ENROLLING PARENT. A child shall be released to either parent unless a COURT ORDER ON FILE AT THE FACILITY states otherwise." Two documents there — the written designation, which § 3290.123(a)(5) makes a mandatory term of the parent agreement and § 3290.124(b)(7) makes a mandatory field of the emergency contact form, and the court order, which is not filed with anybody but must physically be at the facility before you may refuse a parent. The same rule appears at § 3290.20 for access: a parent's free access "without prior notice" yields only where "a court of competent jurisdiction has limited the parental right of access to the child AND A COPY OF THE ORDER IS ON FILE AT THE FACILITY." No order in the house means the parent walks in. The exceptional tier is oral designation, and it generates a form. § 3290.116(b): "In an emergency, a child may be released to an individual UPON THE ORAL DESIGNATION OF THE PARENT, providing the identity of the person can be verified by the operator or a staff person." § 3290.116(c) then requires five items to be "LOGGED IN THE CHILD'S RECORD": "(1) The name of the parent making the request. (2) The date and time of the request. (3) The name of the individual to whom the child is to be released. (4) The name of the staff person taking the call. (5) The name of the staff person releasing the child." The Department's instrument is CY 863, "VERBAL REQUEST FOR RELEASE OF CHILD," subtitled "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.117(c) and 3280.117(c) and 3290.116(c)," footer-stamped "CY 863 - 1/00." Its own headline states the scope: "THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETED TO DOCUMENT THE VERBAL REQUEST BY A PARENT FOR THE RELEASE OF A CHILD TO A PERSON(S) NOT INDICATED ON THE AGREEMENT (CHAPTERS ... 3290.123(a)(5), 3290.124(b)(7))." That parenthetical is the useful part: the form is for people NOT already named on the agreement or the emergency contact form, which is why keeping those two documents current is the cheapest way to never need CY 863. The form adds two safeguards the regulation does not require but the Department clearly expects, and an inspector will notice their absence: a callback block — "CALL THE ENROLLING PARENT BACK TO CONFIRM THE INFORMATION IF POSSIBLE," with fields for the confirming parent, the date and time, and the name of the staff person confirming — and a closing instruction in capitals, "BE SURE TO ASK FOR IDENTIFICATION WHEN THE INDIVIDUAL ARRIVES TO PICK UP THE CHILD." It also captures the telephone number the parent is calling from, which is not one of the five statutory items. Retention: § 3290.116(c) says the information is logged in the child's record, so the completed CY 863 lives in that child's individual file under § 3290.181, subject to the confidentiality rule of § 3290.183 and the release-log rule of § 3290.184(b). The group child care home rule is materially identical, at § 3280.117(a)-(c), which is why one form serves all three facility types.
• CY 864 FIRE DRILL AND FIRE DETECTION LOG, CD 356 EMERGENCY DRILL LOG, CD 355 EMERGENCY PLAN DELIVERY — THREE LOGS, THREE CADENCES, AND A CITATION ERROR ON ONE OF THEM. These are the recurring records a certification representative asks for by name. First, the fire drill log. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.94(a)(9) requires "a WRITTEN RECORD ... MAINTAINED ON FILE at the facility indicating the SPECIFIC TIME OF DAY of the drill, the HYPOTHETICAL LOCATION of the fire, the EVACUATION TIME, and the NAMES OF THE FACILITY PERSONS and the NUMBER OF CHILDREN who participate." Names for adults, a count for children. The cadence is § 3290.94(a)(1)-(4): at least once every 60 days, at varying times of day or night, during various program activity times, and with the hypothetical fire location "NEVER THE SAME FOR CONSECUTIVE DRILLS." The Department's form is CY 864, listed as "CY 864: Fire Drill Log" but titled on its face "FIRE DRILL AND FIRE DETECTION LOG," subtitled "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.94; 3280.94; 3290.94 and 3270.95; 3280.95; 3290.95," marked "Updated 4/8/2021 ... CY0864." Note what the form adds. Its lower half, "FIRE DETECTION DEVICES OR SYSTEMS," asks for "MANUAL FIRE DETECTION TESTING DATE (Every 30 Days)" OR "FIRE SAFETY PROFESSIONAL TESTING DATE (Annually) – (Documentation must be attached)," plus the device purchase date. Chapter 3290 does not state that cadence: § 3290.95 says only that "fire detection devices or systems must be in compliance with standards established under section 1016(c) of the act (62 P.S. § 1016(c))." The thirty-day/annual test is the Department's operationalisation of an external standard, printed on the form. Follow the form; do not cite it as the regulation. Second, the emergency drill log. § 3290.24(d) is much lighter: "EMERGENCY DRILLS SHALL BE CONDUCTED ANNUALLY. Annual emergency drills shall be documented and on file at the facility." Once a year, and a different drill from the fire drill. CD 356, "EMERGENCY DRILL LOG," stamped "CD 356 12/20," subtitled "55 PA CODE CHAPTERS 3270.27; 3280.26; 3290.24," tells you to "schedule drills based on your hazard analysis": "Flood, Tornado, Gas Leak, Chemical Spill, Impaired Adult, Shelter in Place, Lock-down." Its fields go beyond § 3290.24(d): time to complete, names of adult participants, "SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS THE FACILITY USED FOR ANY CATEGORY OF CHILDREN (Infants, Toddlers, Children with Special Needs)," totals, and "LIST PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED OR OBSERVATIONS DURING THE DRILL (For use in updating the Emergency Plan)," signed and dated. Third, CD 355, "DOCUMENTATION OF EMERGENCY PLAN DELIVERY," stamped "CD 355 11/20," evidencing the duty to send the plan out of the house: "Facilities must retain documentation that they submitted their initial emergency plan and any updated plan to their local and county municipalities." It captures, for the local municipality and the county alike, name, address, phone, "Method Submitted (i.e. mail, fax, email, hand delivered)" and date submitted, and closes with a self-certification signed with title and date. The trap: CD 355 heads itself "Regulations 3270.27(f); 3280.26(f) and 3290.24(f)." For a family child care home that citation is wrong. § 3290.24(f) is the letter to parents; the municipality and county emergency management delivery the form documents is § 3290.24(g). The group home citation, § 3280.26(f), is correct, because Chapter 3290 splits the annual drill into its own subsection (d) and shifts the letters down by one.
• THE ADULT FILE: FOUR ITEMS, THE MANDATED REPORTER CERTIFICATE, AND A GAP IN § 3290.191 THE GROUP HOME CHAPTER DOES NOT HAVE. What an adult record must contain is short. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.192: "A record shall include a copy of the following information: (1) The name, address and telephone number of the staff person. (2) A written report of initial and subsequent health assessments, including the results of initial and subsequent TUBERCULIN SKIN TESTS, X-RAYS OR OTHER MEDICAL DOCUMENTATION necessary to confirm freedom from communicable tuberculosis. (3) A copy of REQUESTS for the criminal history record and child abuse registry clearance information, a copy of the DISCLOSURE STATEMENT and a copy of the COMPLETED CLEARANCE INFORMATION required under the CPSL. (4) RECORDS OF TRAINING required by the Department." Item (4) carries more than it looks. It is the file home of the twelve annual clock hours under § 3290.31(f), of the ten health-and-safety topics under § 3290.31(g) due "WITHIN 90 DAYS OF THE DATE OF HIRE," of pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR, and of MANDATED REPORTER TRAINING. That last has no section number in Chapter 3290 at all, and it is not in the statute either: 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383 imposes publicity and training duties on "the department and each county agency," not on providers. The operator-facing rule is OCDEL policy issued under §§ 3290.11(d) and 3290.32(a), stated in Announcement C-25-01: the training "must be a minimum of 3 hours in length"; "evidence of completion of Mandated Reporter training is required to be maintained on file"; facility persons must obtain it "within 90 days of their date of hire" and without current documentation "may not care for children unsupervised"; and it "must be renewed every 60 months (5 years)." At application it is a hard attachment — checklist item 5, "Certificate of completion of mandated reporter training," and for a partnership "both members must show completion." Compare § 3280.192 for a group child care home: six items, adding verification of age and of "child care experience, education and training prior to service at the facility" and "TWO WRITTEN, NONFAMILY REFERENCES from individuals attesting to the person's suitability to serve as a facility person." A family child care home owes neither; a checklist telling you to collect two references was written for Chapter 3280. DHS publishes two hiring forms that are useful but not mandatory here: CY 142, "CHILD CARE EMPLOYEE DATA SHEET," stamped "CY 142 6/18," and the unnumbered "CHILD CARE EMPLOYMENT VERIFICATION FORM." Finally the gap. § 3290.191 reads, in full: "AN INDIVIDUAL RECORD IS REQUIRED FOR EACH STAFF PERSON." Staff person, not facility person — and § 3290.4 separates them: "Facility person—A staff person, A SUBSTITUTE STAFF PERSON OR A VOLUNTEER"; "Staff person—A person INCLUDED IN THE STAFF:CHILD RATIO"; "Volunteer—A person 16 years of age or older who is NOT included in the staff:child ratio." Read literally, § 3290.191 requires no record for a volunteer or substitute. The chapter then contradicts itself: § 3290.31(i) keeps training documentation "in THE FACILITY PERSON'S FILE," and §§ 3290.153 and 3290.154(a) require notifications "retained in the facility person's file." The group home chapter has no such gap: § 3280.191 reads "An individual record is required for EACH FACILITY PERSON." Do not exploit the drafting error — the CPSL reaches volunteers and substitutes regardless of what § 3290.191 says.
• WHAT IS OWED ONLY AT RENEWAL — AND THE SIXTY-DAY DEADLINE THAT IS NOT IN CHAPTER 3290. Renewal is the same CD 633 with a different tick box, but four obligations attach to it that do not attach to routine operation. First, the deadline. 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(o) says only: "A legal entity desiring to renew a certificate of compliance shall submit a correct, completed application and other required materials to the appropriate regional office of the Department PRIOR TO THE EXPIRATION of the current certificate of compliance." Read that alone and you file on the last day. Chapter 20 applies through § 3290.11(l), and § 20.22(a) is specific: submit "AT LEAST 60 DAYS PRIOR TO THE EXPIRATION of the facility's or agency's existing regular or provisional certificate of compliance." Since § 3290.11(j) caps the certificate at twelve months, you are back in the application file two months before every anniversary, permanently. Second, the health assessment. § 3290.151(a)(1): "The operator shall SUBMIT a health assessment TO THE DEPARTMENT prior to issuance of an INITIAL OR RENEWAL certificate of compliance." CD 322 goes in the renewal envelope, and § 3290.151(a)(2) makes it valid twenty-four months from signature, so one assessment covers two renewals and no more. Third, the clearances: § 3290.11(h)(2) limits renewal clearances to household adults newly turned 18 or newly moved in, but § 3290.11(h)(3) withdraws that concession "if an application for renewal is received FOLLOWING EXPIRATION of the current certificate of compliance." A late renewal is not merely late; it is expensive. Add the annual HS 2125 Civil Rights Compliance Renewal Form, which HS 2126 requires "ANNUALLY as part of the licensing renewal process." Fourth, the one-time document with a renewal-linked deadline: § 3290.31(a)(2) requires the operator to "have a high school diploma or a general educational development certificate AND SUBMIT PROOF to the appropriate regional office of the Department NO LATER THAN THE SUBMISSION OF THE SECOND RENEWAL APPLICATION." You may be certified twice without proving it and not a third time. One qualification is grandfathered outright by § 3290.213: an operator "lawfully operating a family child care home REGISTERED BY THE DEPARTMENT AS OF SEPTEMBER 22, 2008, is PERMANENTLY QUALIFIED." Now the fee, because applicants budget for one that does not exist. § 20.41 says "the legal entity shall pay the applicable fee, IF ANY," and § 20.42(a) lists the types that owe one — adult day care center, maternity home, community residential intellectual disability facility, psychiatric clinic, partial hospitalization program, private psychiatric hospital, vocational facility — followed by § 20.42(b): "NO FEE IS REQUIRED FOR A FACILITY OR AGENCY NOT LISTED IN SUBSECTION (a)." Child care is not listed. There is no DHS certificate fee for a Pennsylvania family child care home, ever. Finally, changes between renewals are their own filing and the trigger list is broader than Chapter 3290's. § 3290.11(j)(2) voids the certificate without notice on a change of legal entity or location; § 20.57(b) adds a change in the NAME of the facility and a change in PROFIT OR NONPROFIT STATUS; § 20.58 requires notice "AT LEAST 30 DAYS IN ADVANCE" plus a new application, with lesser changes such as a new responsible person notified "WITHIN 30 DAYS AFTER the change occurs."
• THE RECODIFICATION SCARE IS FALSE — BUT THE CHAPTER RENUMBER BEHIND IT IS REAL, AND IT IS NOT TITLE 6. You will be told that Pennsylvania's child care regulations are moving from Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code to Title 6, and that the forms and citations above are therefore about to be obsolete. Checked against the index of rules in effect rather than any pinned document: that is false. The Pennsylvania Code table of contents for Title 6 today serves "TITLE 6 — AGING, PART I. Department of Aging," containing Chapters 1, 3, 5, 11, 15, 20, 21, 22, 30 and 35 — fair hearings, age preference, older adult daily living centers, protective services for older adults, domiciliary care. No child care. The Title 55 table of contents today serves "TITLE 55 — HUMAN SERVICES, PART I. Department of Human Services," and under Subpart D, Nonresidential Agencies, Facilities and Services, it lists "Chapter 3270. Child Care Centers / Chapter 3280. Group Child Care Homes / Chapter 3290. Family Child Care Homes." A section-by-section sweep of all 114 sections of Chapter 3290 as the Code serves them confirms the chapter is live and that its last substantive rulemaking remains the one adopted 18 December 2020, effective 19 December 2020, published at 50 Pa.B. 7133. A sweep of every Pennsylvania Bulletin issue table of contents for Volume 55 (2025, issues 1—52) and Volume 56 (2026, issues 1—34, the most recent being 22 August 2026) turns up no proposed rulemaking, no final rulemaking, no notice and no Independent Regulatory Review Commission filing touching Chapters 3270, 3280 or 3290, and no occurrence of "recodification." The IRRC docket for the Department of Human Services confirms it: the child care package, IRRC #3216 / DHS Reg. #14-542, "Child Care Facilities," covering 55 Pa. Code Chapters 20, 3041, 3270, 3280 and 3290, closed on publication as final on 19 December 2020, and the only open DHS regulations today are #3483 (Residential Services for Children and Youth), #3466 (Mental Health Procedures) and #3460 (Crisis Intervention Services). None is child care. What is real, and is almost certainly the story's origin, is OCDEL's Child Care Certification Regulation Rewrite, branded the Certification Impact Project. Its own published material states: "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. 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)," with formal public comment "anticipated Spring 2027" and "Final Publication anticipated mid-year 2028 with one year for providers to come into compliance." So the coming change is a renumbering of three chapters into two — 3290 becomes 3310, group homes fold in — INSIDE Title 55, not a move to Title 6. And it has not yet reached either the Bulletin or the IRRC docket. Two independent confirmations that Chapter 3290 is current law today: OCDEL Announcement C-26-01, issued 10 June 2026 over the signature of Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown, is subtitled "Clarification of program licensure requirements pursuant to 55 Pa Code Chapters 3270; 3280; 3290; 20; and Articles IX and X of the Human Services Code," and Announcement C-25-01 of 15 January 2025 anchors the clearance regime in "55 Pa. Code §§ 3270.32, 3280.32, 3290.32." File under Chapter 3290. Watch 3310.

What's specific about getting licensed in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania draws unusually sharp lines that most states don't. A "family child care home" is defined by an exact headcount — 4, 5, or 6 unrelated children (§ 3290.4); care for fewer than 4 and you generally fall outside certification, while 7 or more pushes you into the separate "group child care home" or center rules. Layered on top is the infant/toddler sub-cap (max 2 infants, max 5 infants-and-toddlers combined) that quietly overrides the "6 children" headline. And since 2020 these homes are formally CERTIFIED with annual unannounced inspections and a required certificate of occupancy — not the light-touch "registration" many out-of-state guides still describe. That specific combination (a strict 4–6 bracket + infant sub-limits + full certification) is what makes the Pennsylvania path distinct.

How long it takes and what it costs in Pennsylvania

Timeline: Realistically plan for about 2 to 4 months from first step to an issued Certificate of Compliance. The pace is set by three parallel bottlenecks: the FBI fingerprint clearance (often 2 to 6 weeks), completing and documenting the 10 required pre-service training topics, and obtaining a certificate of occupancy from your municipality — all of which must be in hand before the DHS regional office schedules its on-site inspection. Once issued, the certificate is valid for no more than 12 months (§ 3290.11) and must be renewed annually, with unannounced inspections in between.

Cost: The certificate itself is inexpensive, but I could not confirm the exact annual certificate fee from the official DHS pages, so verify that figure directly with your DHS regional certification office. The concrete out-of-pocket costs are the three clearances — the PA Child Abuse History (ChildLine) certification, the PA State Police criminal record check, and the FBI fingerprint check — which together typically run under about $50 per adult; many family child care applicants qualify for reduced clearance costs, so check current rates when you apply. Multiply that by every adult 18+ in the household. The required pre-service and 12-hour annual training (§ 3290.31(f)) is often available free or low-cost through the Pennsylvania PD Registry / Keystone STARS system. Budget separately for your municipal certificate of occupancy, which varies by town.

Source: PRIMARY SOURCES ACTUALLY OPENED DURING RESEARCH, FIELD BY FIELD (not summarised from memory). [annual_training_hours] https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — full text of 55 Pa. Code Ch. 3290 as served 2026-08-26, currency "56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)". Source of every verbatim quotation of § 3290.31(f) ("A staff person shall obtain an annual minimum of 12 clock hours of child care training"), (f)(1)(i)-(iv) (the four acceptable settings), (f)(2)(i)-(vi) (the acceptable topics), (f)(3) (other topics on Department approval), (f)(4)(i)-(iii) (pediatric first aid and CPR renewal "on or before the expiration of the most current certification"; lifeguard training; water safety instruction), (g) (the ten health and safety topics within 90 days of hire), (h) (documentation "by the signature and title of a representative of the professional development entity"), (i) (file or "an electronic system as designated by the Department"), (j) (one-time credit toward the annual hours), (k) (health and safety topics must be taken before other topics); and of §§ 3290.4 (definitions of Staff person, Operator, Volunteer, Facility person), 3290.11(b) (orientation does not count), 3290.11(j)-(k) and (o), 3290.16, 3290.18, 3290.24(b)-(d) (annual review, annual training for each facility person, annual emergency drills), 3290.32(a) and (d), 3290.115(a)(6) and (a)(8) (annual water safety instruction; and the STALE internal cross-reference to "§ 3290.31(c)(4)(ii)" where the current text is § 3290.31(f)(4)), 3290.13(b) (30-day appeal), 3290.191 and 3290.192(4) (adult records must include "Records of training required by the Department").

Also established the amendment history of § 3290.31 (May 23, 2008, 38 Pa.B. 2437; December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133, with 180 days for current staff on subsection (g)) — i.e. no amendment since. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/chap3280toc.html — 55 Pa. Code Ch. 3280. Used for one point only: § 3280.33(a) expressly reaches "A staff person or a substitute staff person", establishing by contrast that Chapter 3290 has no equivalent clause and that substitutes are a textual gap in the family-home chapter. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/chap20toc.html — 55 Pa.

Code Ch. 20. Established §§ 20.22(a) (renewal 60 days before expiry), 20.31 (on-site inspection at least once every 12 months), 20.52 (plan of correction), 20.53 (regular certificate), 20.54(a)-(c) (provisional certificate, not to exceed 6 months, maximum four consecutive), 20.71(a)(1)-(4) (grounds for denial, nonrenewal or revocation, including failure to submit or to comply with an acceptable plan of correction), and 20.81(1)-(7) (appealable decisions, including the issuance and the length of a provisional certificate). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pabull?file=/secure/pabulletin/data/vol50/50-51/1772.html — final-form rulemaking, 50 Pa.B. 7133 (Dec. 18/19, 2020). Established verbatim: the increase from 6 to 12 hours and the contiguous-state comparison (Delaware 15, West Virginia 13.5, New York 15, Maryland 12, Ohio 15); "The 6-hour annual professional development requirement was first implemented in 1992, over 27 years ago, and has not been revised since"; that the topics are "sufficiently broad"; that "Training for child abuse reporting and first aid training are separate requirements from the topics listed for the 12-hour annual professional development requirement.

Further, child abuse reporting training is mandated by the CPSL and is not an annual requirement under either the CPSL or these regulations.

All facility persons at all child care facilities are mandated reporters"; that § 3290.31(k) was added so that staff "must engage in professional development that maintains and updates the required CCDBG professional development requirements"; that § 3290.31(j) exists "to reflect that completion of professional development by staff in the first year of employment counts toward the 12-hour requirement"; the Keystone STARS statement that its requirements "exceed the annual professional development requirements of this final-form rulemaking"; the PD Registry statement that it "is active and available for operators to use to manage the professional development requirements for staff"; the acknowledgement that operators "may incur costs relating to obtaining substitutes or paying for overtime"; and the COVID-era statement that the Department "will begin measuring compliance ... at the time of each certified child care facility's next annual inspection following the expiration of the disaster emergency." https://www.pakeys.org/c-24-03/ — OCDEL Announcement C-24-03, issued Dec. 20, 2024, effective Jan. 1, 2025, retrieved in full 2026-08-26. Established the professional-development credit rules verbatim ("Health and Safety Trainings (Part 1 and Part 2) or previously completed pre-service training can be used only once toward the annual minimum 12 clock hours"; "Pediatric First Aid, Pediatric CPR and Mandated Reported Training can also count towards annual minimum 12 clock hours based on the renewal of the training certificate";

"Pre-Service training completed as part of initial application for a Certificate of Compliance may not be counted toward an annual minimum 12 clock hours"); the PQAS instructor / OCDEL-recognized-curriculum requirement for pediatric first aid and CPR and how to verify it in the PD Registry instructor directory; "Mandated Reporter Training must be 3 hours"; the documentation instruction that records are "retained in the facility person's file or maintained in an electronic PD Registry"; and the exact citation sections used for each defect (§§ 3290.18, 3290.31(g), 3290.31(f)(4)(i), 3290.32(a)). https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/keep-kids-safe/mandated-reporter-training.html and https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/documents/approved-child-abuse-recognition-reporting-training-courses.pdf — DHS Keep Kids Safe page and the approved-curricula list, edition dated JUNE 2, 2026. Established that DHS closed the list to new curricula effective January 1, 2025 while preserving existing approvals, and that the list carries both 2-hour (Act 31 professional-licensure) and 3-hour variants of the same courses. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pabull?file=/secure/pabulletin/data/vol56/56-N/index.html for N=1..34 and vol55/55-N/index.html for N=1..52 — issue-by-issue sweep of the Pennsylvania Bulletin for 2025 and for 2026 through issue 56-34 (August 22, 2026). Established that no rulemaking has amended § 3290.31 or any other section of Chapters 3270/3280/3290 since 50 Pa.B. 7133, and that no Chapter 3310/3320 proposal has been published. https://www.irrc.state.pa.us/regulations/RegSrchRslts.cfm — IRRC regulation list read 2026-08-26; highest IRRC number 3496, highest DHS regulation 14-559, no child care certification package.

Corroborates that the 12-hour rule is not under active formal review. https://codes.findlaw.com/pa/title-23-pacsa-domestic-relations/pa-csa-sect-23-6383.html — 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383 as reproduced by FindLaw. Established the three-hours-every-five-years mandated reporter cycle relied on for the "not annual" point. UNVERIFIED: the definition of the "annual" measuring year. Neither Chapter 3290 nor Chapter 20 defines whether the twelve clock hours run on a calendar year, a hire anniversary or the certificate year. The field text says so explicitly rather than guessing, and offers only the measuring occasion (§§ 3290.11(j)-(k), 20.31) and the Department's own COVID-era practice statement as evidence of how it is applied. No OCDEL announcement defining the window was found. UNVERIFIED: 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383 was not read on a Commonwealth server — palegis.us and legis.state.pa.us were unreachable (connection refused / timeout), justia and findlaw refused direct retrieval (HTTP 403), and the quotation reached this entry via the fetch tool's rendering of FindLaw. The three-hour length is independently corroborated by OCDEL C-24-03; the five-year interval is not.

UNVERIFIED: OCDEL announcement C-26-01 (June 10, 2026) and C-25-02/PDO-25-01 (Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric CPR training through ECE PDOs) could not be retrieved — pakeys.org returned HTTP 403 for those pages via every route attempted. C-25-02 in particular may change WHO may deliver pediatric first aid and CPR; nothing from it is asserted here, and the PQAS/OCDEL-curriculum rule stated in the field text rests on C-24-03 alone. UNVERIFIED: the 2025-2026 session acts of the Pennsylvania General Assembly were not swept act by act, the legislature's servers being unreachable.

No claim in the field text rests on a session law; the Bulletin sweep covers rulemakings only. [background_check] VERIFICATION DATE: 2026-08-26. Pennsylvania Code currency banner served on that date: "The Pennsylvania Code website reflects the Pennsylvania Code changes effective through 56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)." https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — index of Chapter 3290 as served today; confirms chapter heading "FAMILY CHILD CARE HOMES" still sits in Title 55, and that there is NO section in Chapter 3290 dedicated to clearances (the rule lives inside § 3290.11(h) and § 3290.32). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.11.html — full text of § 3290.11 read in the browser; source of the verbatim § 3290.11(h)(1), (h)(2)(i)-(ii) and (h)(3) quotes, the "18 years of age or older ... at least 30 days in a calendar year" threshold, the 12-month certificate under (j), the non-transferability and void-on-change rules at (j)(1)-(2), and the amendment history "amended May 23, 2008, effective September 22, 2008, 38 Pa.B. 2437; amended December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133." https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.32.html — § 3290.32 in full: (a) duty to comply with the CPSL and Chapter 3490, (b) questions to the regional office, (c) the ENTRY bar on any individual "convicted or ... awaiting trial on charges involving a crime of child abuse, child neglect, physical violence or moral corruptness."

Amended December 18, 2020, effective December 19, 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.4.html — definitions of CPSL, Facility person, Volunteer (16+), Staff person, Operator, Supervise, Appeal. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.31.html — § 3290.31(a)-(c): operator 18+, staff persons 18+, volunteer 16+ and directly supervised at all times. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.192.html — § 3290.192(3), the record-content rule quoted verbatim. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.13.html — § 3290.13(a)-(e): 30-day petition, the four notice categories including "Limiting or precluding admission of persons into the facility," and the supersession of 1 Pa. Code § 35.20. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/chap3490toc.html — Chapter 3490 index; located the subchapter "VERIFICATION OF THE EXISTENCE OF CHILD ABUSE AND STUDENT ABUSE RECORDS FOR CHILD CARE SERVICES" at §§ 3490.121—3490.127. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.122.html — § 3490.122(a)-(f) verbatim.

Establishes the STALE LAYER: fee "will not exceed $10," the (717) 783-6211 paper route, the "more than 1 year prior" staleness test at (e), the founded-report-within-5-years-only bar at (c), and the FBI-only-for-non-residents rule at (f). Last amended July 2, 1999, 29 Pa.B. 3513. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.127.html — § 3490.127(b) "Thirty calendar days ... Ninety calendar days," (d) no working alone, (e) the three options at expiry. Superseded in substance by Act 12 of 2022; still codified. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.126.html — § 3490.126(a) civil penalty not to exceed $2,500; (b) confidentiality cross-reference to § 3490.102. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.105a.html — 45-day postmark to ask the Secretary to amend or expunge an indicated report; 30-day Secretary decision. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.106a.html — BHA appeal, 45-day postmark, burden on the county agency, 15 days reconsideration / 30 days to Commonwealth Court, automatic stay for a parallel criminal or juvenile proceeding. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/055toc.html — Title 55 table of contents as served today: heading "TITLE 55 HUMAN SERVICES", "PART I. Department of Human Services".

Used to disprove the recodification claim. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?titleNumber=006&file=/secure/pacode/data/006/006toc.html — Title 6 table of contents as served today: heading "AGING", "PART I. Department of Aging", Chapters 1—35. No child care chapter, no Chapter 3290. https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/C-25-01-CPSL-Requirements-FINAL-1.13.2025.pdf — OCDEL Announcement C-25-01, Bureau of Early Learning Policy and Professional Development and Bureau of Certification Services, issue date January 15, 2025, effective February 1, 2025, signed Shante' A. Brown, Deputy Secretary. Replaces C-19-02 in its entirety. Source of: the individuals-requiring-clearances list; the four required PA clearances plus out-of-state; the IdentoGO service codes 1KG738 / 1KG74S / 1KG78K / 1KG6ZJ and the Appendix A definitions; the "only acceptable FBI clearance must be obtained pursuant to the Department of Human Services" rule and the PDE-FBI exclusion; the volunteer-code exclusion; the file-inspection sentence about "all four individual clearance certificates"; the 60-month renewal rule; the February 1, 2025 provisional-employment conditions including the exclusion of the Director and of volunteers; the 45-day dismissal rule citing 23 Pa.C.S. § 6303, § 6344(m) and § 6344(f.1); the § 6303 definitions of direct contact and routine interaction; the 45 CFR § 98.43 review criterion and the § 98.43(e)(2)(ii) non-release rule; and the mandated reporter training regime (3 hours, 90 days, 60 months). https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FINAL-OCDEL_C-26-01-Applicability-of-Regulations-Accessible.pdf — OCDEL Announcement C-26-01, issue date June 10, 2026. The most recent OCDEL instrument found.

Still cites "Title 55 of the Pennsylvania Code" and "Chapter 3290 (relating to family child care homes)". Independent confirmation, two months before the verification date, that no Title 55 → Title 6 move has occurred. Does not touch clearances. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/clearances/documents/kks-child-care-providers-faq.pdf — DHS Keep Kids Safe "CERTIFIED CHILD CARE PROVIDERS & HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS" FAQ, footer revision date 03/20/2026. Source of the five-clearance list, the fees ($13.00 / $22.00 / $24.95 and $22.95 for volunteers / NSOR free), "No, there are no exceptions for applicable employees or household members of certified child care facilities", the 45-day provisional conditions from the employer side, the "every 60 months" statement, the portability conditions, and "Only the PA Child Abuse and PSP are portable/transferrable ...

The FBI is not portable/acceptable." https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/clearances/documents/kks-employees-faq_2024-08-23.pdf — DHS Employees FAQ, 08/23/2024. Source of the minor (14-17) and J-1 visa exceptions and of the sentence that they "do not apply to employees in child day-care centers, group day-care homes and family child-care homes"; the 45-day provisional regime under Act 12 of 2022; "Employment clearances must be obtained every 60 months." https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/clearances/documents/kks-volunteers-faq_2024-08-23.pdf — DHS Volunteers FAQ, 08/23/2024. Source of the § 6344.2 10-year residency alternative to the FBI check, the 57-month free-clearance cycle, and the 30-day nonresident volunteer rule. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/resources/documents/kks-disclosure-statement-for-child-care-employment-effective-february-1-2025.pdf — DHS "DISCLOSURE STATEMENT — APPLICATION FOR CHILD CARE EMPLOYMENT, INCLUDING PROVISIONAL EMPLOYMENT", cited to 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344, page footer 01/01/25, effective February 1, 2025. THE child-care offence list, read line by line.

Confirms the four child-care-only additions (18 Pa.C.S. § 2718 strangulation, § 3301 arson, 18 U.S.C. § 2261, 18 U.S.C. § 2262), the 5-year drug-felony bar, the NSOR/state-registry bars, the 45-day provisional recital, the 60-month portability affirmation, the 72-hour arrest notice, and — decisively — the abuse-registry affirmation with NO five-year window and with "indicated" included. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/resources/documents/kks-disclosure-statement-for-employment-02-21-2023.pdf — the GENERAL employment disclosure statement, 02/21/23. Read side by side with the child care form to establish the four added offences and the harsher registry test.

This form retains "founded report of child abuse committed within the past five (5) years." https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/resources/documents/disclosure-statement-for-volunteers.pdf — DHS volunteer disclosure statement, cited to 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.2, footer 02/25/25. Source of the verbatim 10-year FBI waiver AND of the sentence "I understand that the above exceptions do not apply to volunteers in a child day-care center, group day-care home or family child-care home." https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/docs/publications/documents/forms-and-pubs-ocyf/OCYF_Bulletin_3490_22_03-FINAL_UPDATED.pdf (also mirrored at https://swantoolkit.org/wp-content/uploads/OCYF-Bulletin-3490-22-03-Changes-to-the-Child-Protective-Services-Law-as-it-Pertains-to-Clearances.pdf) — OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03, issue date May 19, 2022, Deputy Secretary Jonathan Rubin; rescinds and replaces 3490-21-04. Source of the enumerated § 6344(c) offence list as the Department states it, the two five-year time-limited disqualifiers, the Act 12 of 2022 45-day provisional regime and its exclusion of child-care institutions, the § 6344.2 volunteer FBI exception and the express statement that it does not exist for child care settings, the 57-month free-clearance conditions, the CJIS audit finding that killed DHS/PDE FBI portability, the 60-month renewal rule with the OLDEST-clearance calculation, the 72-hour notice duty, and the § 6344(n) confidentiality rule. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/keep-kids-safe/child-abuse-clearances — DHS Child Abuse Clearances landing page;

states the 60-month rule "from the date of the oldest clearance" and lists the NSOR as "Certified Child Care Only". https://www.pa.gov/services/dhs/request-a-child-abuse-history-clearance — DHS service page: "$13.00" for employees, free for volunteers, waived "one time every 57 months", 14-day processing, CWIS portal or paper CY 113. NOTE THE CONFLICT: this page says 60 months "from the date of the most recent clearance", which contradicts the OCYF bulletin and the clearances landing page.

The oldest-clearance rule is the one published in the Department's own bulletin and is the one relied on in the field text. https://www.pa.gov/services/dhs/request-a-national-sex-offender-registry-verification-for-child — NSOR service page: who must request it (including "any relative child care providers caring for children receiving subsidized child care"), "NSOR verification is a free service", 14-calendar-day processing at the Clearance Verification Unit, paper-only submission. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/keep-kids-safe/child-abuse-clearances/out-of-state-clearances — five-year out-of-state residency rule and the three per-state checks. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/documents/early-learning/certification/new-for-the-child-care-licensing-program/Make%20Sure%20Your%20Application%20Package%20is%20Complete%20-%20Child%20Care%20Centers%20Group%20Child%20Care%20Homes%20and%20Family%20Ch.pdf — OCDEL "APPENDIX C – Information Sheet - What Is A Complete Application?" Confirms that the ChildLine, PSP, NSOR and FBI results "not more than 60 months old" plus the disclosure statement must be in the INITIAL application package, and that the same applies to "any member of the household/ residence who is 18 years of age or older and is in the household for 30 or more calendar days per year."

CONTRADICTION OF THE BRIEF, STATED EXPLICITLY AS METHOD REQUIRES. (1) The brief said "the three certifications Pennsylvania actually requires." That is FALSE for a certified family child care home. Pennsylvania requires FOUR Pennsylvania-issued certifications — ChildLine child abuse, PSP criminal history, DHS fingerprint FBI, and National Sex Offender Registry verification — plus a per-state out-of-state bundle for anyone who has lived outside Pennsylvania in the previous five years. The NSOR verification is child-care-only and is the item most often missing from a file. (2) The brief said there is "an announced recodification of title 55 to title 6." VERIFIED FALSE against the index of regulations in effect on 2026-08-26: Title 55 is still "HUMAN SERVICES" and still contains Chapter 3290; Title 6 is "AGING" and contains only Department of Aging chapters 1—35. The only redesignation on record is the 2015-2016 renaming of Title 55's heading from "Public Welfare" to "Human Services" at 46 Pa.B. 3177. OCDEL Announcement C-26-01 of June 10, 2026 still cites Title 55. (3) The brief invited a "residency exemption or waiver rule for the FBI check."

The waiver exists in Pennsylvania law (23 Pa.C.S. § 6344.2, 10 years' continuous PA residency, for UNPAID volunteers) but is expressly unavailable in a child day-care centre, group day-care home or family child-care home, on the face of the Department's own volunteer disclosure form. The five-year residency rule that does apply to child care triggers ADDITIONAL out-of-state checks; it never removes the FBI check. (4) The METHOD's stale-layer warning landed on the regulation, not the statute: 55 Pa. Code §§ 3490.122 and 3490.127, last amended in 1990/1999, still publish a $10 fee cap, a one-year staleness test, an FBI-for-non-residents-only rule and 30/90-day provisional periods, all of which are contradicted by 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344 as amended (notably Act 12 of 2022, effective February 17, 2022) and by OCDEL Announcement C-25-01. UNVERIFIED: the consolidated statutory text of 23 Pa.C.S. §§ 6344, 6344.1, 6344.2, 6344.3 and 6344.4 could not be opened directly. Both official hosts — www.palegis.us and www.legis.state.pa.us, which resolve to the same address 216.157.112.153 — timed out or refused connection on every attempt (curl, curl with browser user-agent, curl with --resolve pinning, and the WebFetch tool), and every third-party mirror tried (law.justia.com, codes.findlaw.com, casetext.com, lawserver.com) returned 403, 410 or a redirect loop.

Every statutory subsection quoted in the field text is therefore quoted AS THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES RESTATES IT in OCYF Bulletin 3490-22-03, OCDEL Announcement C-25-01, the DHS disclosure statements and the DHS Keep Kids Safe FAQs — official Departmental instruments, but not the codified statute. Per METHOD rule 3, treat the exact subsection lettering (§ 6344(c), § 6344(f.1), § 6344(m), § 6344(n)) as departmentally attested rather than independently read. The § 6344.4 sentence "shall be required to obtain the certifications required by this chapter every 60 months" and the § 6344.3 portability language reached me only through a web-search summary of Justia's 2025 edition and are the weakest links in the note; the 60-month rule itself is independently corroborated four times over in Departmental documents. UNVERIFIED: the session-act sweep required by METHOD rule 2 could not be completed. The Pennsylvania General Assembly's acts index for the 2025 and 2026 sessions is hosted only on the unreachable palegis.us. Searches surfaced no 2025 or 2026 act amending 23 Pa.C.S. Chapter 63 as it pertains to clearances, and the two most recent OCDEL instruments (C-25-01 of January 2025 and C-26-01 of June 2026) describe Act 12 of 2022 as the latest change to the provisional-hiring rule, which is consistent with no later amendment.

But absence of evidence here is not evidence of absence: a 2025 or 2026 CPSL amendment could exist and be invisible to me. Re-run this sweep from the acts index when the General Assembly host is reachable. UNVERIFIED: the $22.00 Pennsylvania State Police fee is taken from the DHS child care FAQ of 03/20/2026 only; epatch.pa.gov returned a JavaScript shell that could not be parsed, so the fee was not confirmed at the vendor. Likewise the $24.95 / $22.95 IdentoGO fees are DHS-stated, not vendor-confirmed (uenroll.identogo.com returned no parseable price). UNVERIFIED: no Pennsylvania Bulletin proposed or final rulemaking amending Chapter 3290 or Chapter 3490 after 50 Pa.B. 7133 (December 18, 2020) was located, but the Bulletin's full-text search could not be driven programmatically; this was checked only through the Code's per-section Source notes, which are current through 56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026). [cpr_first_aid_required] OCDEL announcement C-24-03 and 55 Pa. Code § 3290.11(e) — the health and safety pre-service package requires "Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)" alongside the mandated reporter training in order "to care for children unsupervised", and the certification must be delivered by a PQAS-approved instructor.

This rule and announcement text, read during the preservice_training research, is what establishes the value `true`. [max_group_size] https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — full text of 55 Pa. Code Ch. 3290 as served 2026-08-26, currency stamp on the page reads "56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)". Established by exhaustive text search of the served document that the strings "group size" and "maximum group" do NOT occur anywhere in Chapter 3290, and that the subchapter "STAFF-CHILD RATIO" contains only §§ 3290.51 and 3290.52. Also the verbatim text of §§ 3290.51, 3290.52, 3290.113(a), 3290.115(a)(5)-(7), and the physical-site sections 3290.61—3290.78 (none of which measures space per child). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/chap3280toc.html — full text of 55 Pa. Code Ch. 3280 (Group Child Care Homes). Established the verbatim § 3280.52(b) "Maximum Group Size" table (infant 1:4/12/3 staff; young toddler 1:5/12/3; older toddler 1:6/12/2; preschool 1:10/12/2; young school-age 1:12/12/1; older school-age 1:15/15/1), the § 3280.52(c) mixed-age rule, § 3280.51 (12 unrelated, 15 for older school-age only), § 3280.53 (related/foster children counted for ratio and space but not for the § 3280.51 twelve), § 3280.61(c) (square feet divided by 40), § 3280.173(a) ("The maximum group size requirements at § 3280.52 do not apply during transportation"), and the § 3280.4 definition of "Group child care home". https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/055toc.html — Title 55 index of chapters in effect.

Established that Chapters 3270, 3280 and 3290 are all still in Title 55 today and that no child care chapter has been moved out of Title 55. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/006/006toc.html — Title 6 index. Established that Title 6 of the Pennsylvania Code is AGING (Department of Aging: Chapters 1, 3, 5, 11, 15, 20, 21, 22, 30, 35) and contains no child care chapter. This DISPROVES the brief's "announced RECODIFICATION of title 55 to title 6"; see the correction paragraph below. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/chap20toc.html — 55 Pa. Code Ch. 20. Established § 20.55(b) (the certificate lists "maximum capacity", not a group size) and § 20.81(6)-(7) (only capacity reductions/increases are appealable quantities). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pabull?file=/secure/pabulletin/data/vol50/50-51/1772.html — final-form rulemaking at 50 Pa.B. 7133 (Dec. 18/19, 2020). Established the full list of sections amended (§§ 3290.51 and 3290.52 amended; no new section added to the family-home ratio subchapter; § 3280.52 not amended), and the Department's response on § 3290.51 stating it "may address remaining concerns ... through a future regulatory amendment that restricts the number of children irrespective of relationship." https://www.pakeys.org/certification-rewrite-project/ — The Pennsylvania Key, "Child Care Certification Regulation Rewrite Impact Project" (OCDEL).

Established verbatim 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" with "a formal, 30-day Public Comment period while the package is being reviewed by Legislative Committees and the Independent Regulatory Review Commission (IRRC)." https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pabull?file=/secure/pabulletin/data/vol56/56-N/index.html for N=1..34, and vol55/55-N/index.html for N=1..52 — issue-by-issue sweep of the Pennsylvania Bulletin for all of 2025 and 2026 through 56-34 (August 22, 2026). Established that NO rulemaking, proposed or final, touching Chapters 3270/3280/3290 or creating Chapters 3310/3320 has been published; the only child-care items in either volume are the annual "Income limits and co-payments for the Subsidized Child Care Program" notices (55-24, June 14, 2025; 56-27, July 4, 2026). https://www.irrc.state.pa.us/regulations/RegSrchRslts.cfm — IRRC regulation list, read 2026-08-26. Highest IRRC number on the list is 3496; the highest Department of Human Services regulation is 14-559 "Residential Services for Children and Youth".

No child care certification rewrite (3310/3320) appears. Corroborates that the OCDEL rewrite has not yet entered formal review as a published proposed rulemaking. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF (the official text outranks the hint, per METHOD): the brief's "announced RECODIFICATION of title 55 to title 6" is FALSE. Title 6 of the Pennsylvania Code is AGING and always has been. What actually exists is an OCDEL project to REWRITE the child care certification regulations WITHIN Title 55 as new Chapter 3310 (Family Child Care Homes) and Chapter 3320 (Child Care Centers) — note that group child care homes are not given a chapter in OCDEL's own description. The brief's chapter assignments are otherwise correct (ch. 3290 = family, ch. 3280 = group), but the chapter TITLES no longer contain the word "day": since the December 2020 rulemaking they are "FAMILY CHILD CARE HOMES" and "GROUP CHILD CARE HOMES", not "family child day care homes". The brief's Certification-vs-Registration distinction is real and is confirmed in the sources note for preservice_training.txt. UNVERIFIED: the text of proposed Chapters 3310/3320 themselves.

They are not published in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, are not on the IRRC docket, and OCDEL's own posting of the draft was not directly readable (pakeys.org served HTTP 403 to repeated requests for individual announcement pages). Nothing about their content is asserted in the field text beyond OCDEL's own quoted sentence. UNVERIFIED: the Pennsylvania General Assembly's session-act list for 2025-2026 could not be swept act by act — palegis.us and legis.state.pa.us were unreachable from this environment (connection refused / timeout on both hosts, both via curl and via the fetch tool). No session-law claim is made in the field text. The Bulletin sweep is the substitute evidence and it covers rulemakings, not acts. [preservice_training] https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — full text of 55 Pa.

Code Ch. 3290 as served 2026-08-26, currency "56 Pa.B. 3438 (June 6, 2026)". Source of every verbatim quotation of §§ 3290.4 (definitions of Operator, Staff person, Volunteer, Facility person, Certificate of compliance, Supervise), 3290.11(b) (orientation, and that it does not count toward the 12 hours), 3290.11(e)(1)-(10) (the ten CCDBG topics as a condition of issuance), 3290.11(f) (signature-and-title documentation, filed with the application, September 30 2016 cut-off), 3290.11(g) (pre-2020 operators must also complete them), 3290.11(h)(1) (clearances for applicant and every resident 18+ present 30 days in a calendar year), 3290.11(i) (announced pre-certification inspection), 3290.11(j) (certificate not to exceed 12 months), 3290.14 (certificate of occupancy under 34 Pa. Code § 403.23 and 62 P.S. § 1016(c)), 3290.16 (child abuse reporting, ChildLine 1-800-932-0313, 48-hour written report), 3290.18 (general health and safety), 3290.24(c) (emergency plan training at initial employment, annually, and at each update), 3290.31(a)-(g) (operator 18+ and diploma/GED by the second renewal;

staff 18+; volunteers 16+ directly supervised; the 600/400/200 clock-hour curriculum route; CDA/CCP and PA school-age credential equivalences; pediatric first aid and CPR competence and renewal; the 90-day post-hire tranche), 3290.32(a) and (d) (CPSL compliance; a competent facility person present whenever a child is in care), 3290.94 (fire drills every 60 days and the written record), 3290.95 (fire detection), 3290.151 and 3290.151a (health assessment submitted before issuance, Mantoux at initial employment, valid 24 months, IGRA accepted), and 3290.213 (permanent qualification for operators registered as of September 22, 2008). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/chap3280toc.html — 55 Pa.

Code Ch. 3280. Used only for contrast: §§ 3280.31, 3280.33(a), 3280.34(b)(1)-(5) and 3280.35 establish that group child care homes impose education/experience qualification levels on primary and secondary staff that Chapter 3290 does not impose at all. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/chap20toc.html — 55 Pa. Code Ch. 20. Established § 20.35(b) (written fire safety approval before issuance of a certificate of compliance) and § 20.22(a) (renewal application at least 60 days before expiry). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pabull?file=/secure/pabulletin/data/vol50/50-51/1772.html — final-form rulemaking, 50 Pa.B. 7133 (Dec. 18/19, 2020). Established: that the ten topics were transcribed from 45 CFR 98.41(a)(1)(i)—(x) and 98.44; the Sept. 30, 2016 acceptance cut-off and the Department's reason for it; the 180-day transition for current staff on § 3290.31(g); the Department's statement that "All facility persons at all child care facilities are mandated reporters" and that "child abuse reporting training is mandated by the CPSL and is not an annual requirement"; and the § 3290.31(a)(2) response explaining that diploma/GED proof is due "no later than the second renewal of the certificate of compliance" and that "initial application" was deliberately deleted from the proposal.

ALSO established the Certification-vs-Registration history verbatim: "Section 16 of the act of December 28, 2015 (P.L. 500, No. 92) repealed Article X(c) of the act (62 P.S. §§ 1070—1080) that set forth registration provisions ...

This final-form rulemaking now requires all family child care homes to be certified", and "Registered family child care homes were not regularly inspected, but instead self-certified compliance with regulations, and received 2-year registration certificates." https://www.pakeys.org/c-24-03/ — OCDEL Announcement C-24-03, "Updates to Health and Safety Pre-Service Training and Professional Development Requirements", Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown, issue date Dec. 20, 2024, effective Jan. 1, 2025, retrieved in full 2026-08-26. Established: that it replaces C-22-02 and C-22-06; the reduction "from ten to six hours"; the two three-hour family-home courses "PA Required Health and Safety for Family Child Care Part 1 / Part 2"; the acceptable earlier versions and their end dates; the unsupervised-contact gate and its four Part 1 topics; the Part 2 topic list and the 90-day deadline; the requirement that both parts be completed "prior to submitting an application to open a new child care facility"; the PQAS instructor and OCDEL-recognized-curriculum requirement for pediatric first aid and CPR;

"Mandated Reporter Training must be 3 hours" and the acceptable Target Audience values; the professional-development credit rules; and the exact citation sections (§§ 3290.18, 3290.31(g), 3290.31(f)(4)(i), 3290.32(a)). https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/for-providers/child-care-for-providers/child-care-orientation.html — DHS "Orientation Training for Child Care Providers", retrieved 2026-08-26. Established the two-piece structure (Better Kid Care online module "DHS Orientation: Opening a Family Child Care Home" plus in-person session with a certification representative), the one-year validity of each certificate of completion, that both must accompany the application or "the application is not complete", that "a complete application must be submitted to the Department in order for an initial inspection to be scheduled", and the municipality/certificate-of-occupancy warning.

ALSO established a stale citation on the page: it cites orientation to "§3290.11(c)" where the codified text places it at § 3290.11(b). https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/for-providers/child-care-for-providers/early-learning-provider-requirements.html — DHS "Early Learning Provider Requirements", retrieved 2026-08-26. Used as a documented example of a stale agency page: it still says "prior to receiving a certificate of compliance or registration", still describes the superseded ten-topic / "9 of the 10 topics online" regime, and still links the regulations to the dead pacode.com domain. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/keep-kids-safe/mandated-reporter-training.html — DHS Keep Kids Safe. Established verbatim: "Effective January 1, 2025, the Department of Human Services (DHS) is no longer accepting new Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting Training Curricula for review and approval.

All Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting Trainings that are currently approved by DHS will maintain approval." https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/keepkidssafe/documents/approved-child-abuse-recognition-reporting-training-courses.pdf — DHS approved Child Abuse Recognition and Reporting curricula, edition dated JUNE 2, 2026, retrieved and parsed 2026-08-26. Established that the list carries both 2-hour and 3-hour versions of the same courses from the same providers, with a "# of Hours" column and a "Target Audience" column, and that the 2-hour versions are the Department-of-State Act 31 continuing-education variants. https://codes.findlaw.com/pa/title-23-pacsa-domestic-relations/pa-csa-sect-23-6383.html — 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383 as reproduced by FindLaw, read 2026-08-26. Established the quoted requirement that "operators and caregivers shall receive three hours of training prior to the issuance of a license or approval certificate and three hours of training every five years thereafter" and that "Employees who have direct contact with children and foster parents shall receive three hours of training within six months of the issuance of a license or approval certificate and three hours of training every five years thereafter."

UNVERIFIED: 23 Pa.C.S. § 6383 was NOT read on a Commonwealth server. palegis.us and legis.state.pa.us were unreachable from this environment (connection refused / timeout), and law.justia.com and codes.findlaw.com returned HTTP 403 to direct retrieval; the quotations above come from FindLaw via the fetch tool and are corroborated for the child-care setting only by OCDEL's own "Mandated Reporter Training must be 3 hours" in C-24-03 and by the Department's 2020 preamble statement that the CPSL training is not annual. The 3-hours-every-5-years interval is therefore reported as statutory but is one hop from the legislature's own text. Treat the interval, not the 3 hours, as the softer of the two. UNVERIFIED: OCDEL announcements C-26-01 (Clarification of program licensure requirements pursuant to 55 Pa. Code Chapters 3270, 3280, 3290 and 20, issued June 10, 2026) and C-25-02/PDO-25-01 (Pediatric First Aid and Pediatric CPR training through ECE PDOs) could not be read — pakeys.org served HTTP 403 to every request for those pages, including via the fetch tool and the WordPress REST endpoint, after C-24-03 had been retrieved successfully.

Nothing from either announcement is asserted in the field text. C-26-01 is the newest certification announcement touching Chapter 3290 and should be read before this entry is next revised; it is titled as a clarification of LICENSURE APPLICABILITY, not of training, but that is inferred from its title alone. [required_forms] https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/055toc.html — index of Title 55 (HUMAN SERVICES) rules in effect, opened 2026-08-26; confirms Chapters 3270, 3280 and 3290 are live under Subpart D. Start point, not a pinned URL. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/006/006toc.html — index of Title 6, opened 2026-08-26; Title 6 is AGING (Department of Aging, Chapters 1—35). No child care. Disproves the announced "55 → 6 recodification". https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — Chapter 3290 table of contents; used to enumerate all 114 section files, every one of which was then downloaded and read. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.11.html — application, orientation, pre-service topics, clearances (h)(1)-(3), pre-certification inspection, 12-month term, renewal (o), Chapter 20 incorporation (l).

Amended 18 Dec 2020, eff. 19 Dec 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.14.html — certificate of occupancy precondition, 34 Pa. Code § 403.23, 62 P.S. § 1016(c). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.15.html — service to a child with special needs; IEP/IFSP/behavioral plan; no duty to obtain or hold the plan. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.16.html — ChildLine reporting, hotline 1 (800) 932-0313, 48-hour written report to the CPS unit. No form named. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.17.html and s3290.17a.html — injury/death/fire report: 24-hour oral, 72-hour written, eight contents, signature, copies on file; statement of policy extends to lost/left-behind/left-unattended child. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.23.html — civil rights precondition; "the appropriate forms to establish compliance shall be included with the application for certification". https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.24.html — emergency plan: five contents, annual review documented, training documented, annual drills, posting (e), parent letter (f), municipality/county copy (g).

Establishes that CD 355's "3290.24(f)" citation is wrong. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.25.html — waivers limited to §§ 3290.61—3290.78 and 3290.101—3290.107; CD 357. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.31.html — operator qualifications, HS diploma proof "no later than the submission of the second renewal application", 12 annual clock hours, ten health-and-safety topics within 90 days of hire, documentation in the facility person's file. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.32.html — CPSL and Chapter 3490 compliance; prohibition on entry. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.94.html — fire drill contents and 60-day cadence; written record on file. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.116.html, s3290.118.html, s3290.121.html, s3290.122.html, s3290.123.html, s3290.124.html — release and verbal-release log; infant sleep physician statement; enrolment information; admission interview; agreement (seven terms, original to parent);

emergency contact information (seven fields, six-month parent update, excursion copy). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.131.html, s3290.132.html, s3290.133.html, s3290.136.html, s3290.137.html — child health report schedule and contents; emergency medical care documentation; medication log eight fields and special-diet consent; disease reporting; exclusion (note the Editor's Note abrogating § 3290.137 as to COVID-19 symptoms under section 37.1 of the act of July 11, 2022, P.L. 540, No. 54). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.151.html and s3290.151a.html — adult health assessment, the family-home-only duty to SUBMIT it to the Department before an initial or renewal certificate, 24-month validity, Mantoux at initial employment;

statement of policy accepting an interferon-gamma release assay. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.171.html — written parental consent for transportation. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.181.html, s3290.182.html, s3290.183.html, s3290.184.html — child record, six-month parent review and dated signature, eight record contents including three-copy accident report distribution, confidentiality, release log. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.191.html and s3290.192.html — "an individual record is required for each STAFF PERSON" (the gap) and the four adult-record contents. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.213.html — operators registered as of September 22, 2008 permanently qualified. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/ (sections 11, 13, 16, 17, 21—26, 32, 94, 111, 117, 121, 123, 124, 131, 133, 151, 181, 182, 191, 192) — group child care home contrasts actually read: § 3280.17 liability insurance;

§ 3280.151(a) no submission duty; § 3280.191 "each FACILITY PERSON"; § 3280.192(2) and (5) age/education verification and two nonfamily references; § 3280.26 emergency plan lettering. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/ (s20.21, s20.22, s20.36, s20.41, s20.42, s20.51—s20.58) — application form; 60-day renewal deadline; civil rights; fees ("no fee is required for a facility or agency not listed"); provisional certificates; certificate contents; void-without-notice triggers; 30-day change notification. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/028/chapter27/s27.77.html — Department of Health immunization rule: certificate of immunization for each child, annual summary report on the Department's form, 60-day post-withdrawal retention, 30-day rolling verification for temporary medical conditions. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/s3490.127.html — provisional employee 30/90 days.

Read and reported as SUPERSEDED by 23 Pa.C.S. § 6344(m) and OCDEL C-25-01 (45 days). https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/for-providers/child-welfare-providers/child-care-forms — the DHS Child Care Forms index as served 2026-08-26; the complete published list is 21 items and it is the authority for every CD-/CY-/PW-/SP- number used here. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/documents/early-learning/certification/child-care-forms/what-is-a-complete-certificate-of-compliance-application.pdf — "What Is a Complete Application?", 13 numbered items, Philadelphia annex, regional telephone numbers. Downloaded and text-extracted. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/docs/for-providers/documents/child-care-forms/cd-0633-application-for-certificate-of-compliance.pdf — CD 633; footer stamp "CD 633 10/17" on every page; 13 blocks; declaration under 18 Pa.C.S. § 4904; block 12 skipped by family child care homes. CD 51 09/08 (Child Health Report), CD 208 9/17 (Child Service Report), CD 322 2/12 (Child Care Staff Health Assessment), CD 355 11/20 (Documentation of Emergency Plan Delivery), CD 356 12/20 (Emergency Drill Log), CD 357 12/20 (Request for Waiver), CY 113 12/15, CY 142 6/18, CY 321 12/99, CY 862 10/04, CY 863 1/00, CY 864 "Updated 4/8/2021", CY 866 1/93, CY 867 10/22, CY 999 3/16, PW 0029A 2/08, SP 4-164 (10-2025) — every one downloaded from the URLs on the DHS index and text-extracted; revision stamps read off the documents themselves.

CY 321 and CY 866 are image-only scans and were read by rendering page 1 to an image. https://epatch.pa.gov/assets/documents/SP4-164.pdf — SP 4-164 (10-2025); $22.00, $27.00 notarized, nonrefundable; Central Repository address. https://www.pakeys.org/c-25-01/ and the PDF at https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/C-25-01-CPSL-Requirements-FINAL-1.13.2025.pdf — OCDEL Announcement C-25-01, issued 15 Jan 2025, effective 1 Feb 2025, Deputy Secretary Shante' A. Brown; supersedes C-19-02; 45-day provisional rule, mandated reporter training 3 hours / 90 days / 60 months, IdentoGO service codes 1KG74S, 1KG78K, 1KG738, PSP online result must be printed, clearances kept in the personnel file. https://www.pakeys.org/c-26-01/ and https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FINAL-OCDEL_C-26-01-Applicability-of-Regulations-Accessible.pdf — Announcement C-26-01, issued 10 June 2026, subtitled "pursuant to 55 Pa Code Chapters 3270; 3280; 3290; 20" — independent confirmation that Chapter 3290 is current law.

No effective-date line on this one. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/resources/keep-kids-safe/child-abuse-clearances/fbi-fingerprinting and .../pa-child-abuse-history-clearance — fees as published 2026-08-26: child abuse certification $13.00 (volunteers free once per 57 months); FBI via IdentoGO $24.95, rising to $27.95 effective 1 October 2026. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/clearances-and-licensing/documents/app-hsl/hs-2126-civil-rights-compliance-requirements.pdf and .../hs-2125-civil-rights-compliance-renewal.pdf and .../CRC-Form-FAQs.pdf — HS 2126 (10 pages; cover stamped 8/22, signed pages 9/24, appendices HS 2125 9/24); "both policy statements are required to be posted in your facility"; signature by an official of the legal entity; annual HS 2125 renewal; BEO 2-3 business day review and 30-day denial rule. 23 Pa.C.S. Ch. 63 (Child Protective Services Law) — §§ 6344(a), (b), (b.1), (b.2), (b.3), (e), (f), (f.1), (m); 6344.1; 6344.2(b.1); 6344.4; 6383. Read from a verbatim capture of the official Legislative Reference Bureau HTML (legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/HTM/23/00.063..HTM) hosted at http://www.pacwrc.pitt.edu/Curriculum/FoundationsRemoteModule3/Table%20Resource%20CPSL.pdf, cross-checked against the current text at https://codes.findlaw.com/pa/title-23-pacsa-domestic-relations/pa-csa-sect-23-6344/ and .../pa-csa-sect-23-6344-4/.

Pennsylvania Bulletin, all issue tables of contents for Volume 55 (2025, issues 1—52) and Volume 56 (2026, issues 1—34, latest 22 August 2026), via https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Home/volume — no rulemaking, notice or IRRC filing touching Chapters 3270, 3280 or 3290; no occurrence of "recodification". https://www.irrc.state.pa.us/regulations/RegSrchRslts.cfm?ID=3227 — IRRC #3216 / DHS Reg. #14-542 "Child Care Facilities" (55 Pa. Code Chs. 20, 3041, 3270, 3280, 3290), published as final 19 December 2020. Closed. No successor package open on the DHS docket. https://www.pakeys.org/certification-rewrite-project/ and https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-Child-Care-Cert-Review.pdf — OCDEL Certification Regulation Rewrite / Impact Project: proposed Chapters 3310 (Family Child Care Homes) and 3320 (Child Care Centers), formal public comment "anticipated Spring 2027", final publication "anticipated mid-year 2028". Inside Title 55. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief's premise of an announced recodification of Title 55 into Title 6 is FALSE as of 2026-08-26, verified from the index of rules in effect and from an exhaustive sweep of 86 Pennsylvania Bulletin issues and the IRRC docket.

The real pending action is a chapter renumbering (3270/3280/3290 into 3310/3320) that remains within Title 55 and has not reached the Bulletin or IRRC. Recorded in element 18. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief asks for "attendance and daily records" as required forms. Chapter 3290 imposes NO attendance-record duty; a full-text sweep of all 114 sections returns no attendance, sign-in or sign-out requirement. PW 0029A 2/08 "Day Care Services Enrollment/Attendance Record" is a Public Welfare-era subsidy instrument published on the DHS index, not a Chapter 3290 requirement. The only daily-record duties are the medication log (§ 3290.133(7)), the fire drill record (§ 3290.94(a)(9)) and the verbal-release log (§ 3290.116(c)). UNVERIFIED: whether Provider Self-Service (PSS) has formally retired the paper CD 633. DHS still publishes CD 633 and still lists it as item 1 of a complete application, and OCDEL steers providers to PSS to "apply for or renew child care licensing"; no announcement retiring CD 633 was found. Stated in element 01 as the published paper form, not as the only channel. UNVERIFIED: the completed medication log's retention period. § 3290.133 sets none and Chapter 3290 sets no general retention period; only 28 Pa.

Code § 27.77(a)(3) (60 days after withdrawal, immunization verifications) was found. Stated as such. UNVERIFIED: the exact revision stamp of CY 864 beyond the printed "Updated 4/8/2021" and the identifier "CY0864"; the form carries no month/year stamp in the CY-series format. UNVERIFIED: whether the fire-detection testing cadence printed on CY 864 (manual every 30 days, or annually by a fire safety professional) derives from 34 Pa. Code or from a separate OCDEL instruction. § 3290.95 itself states no interval. Reported as a form-imposed cadence. [required_postings] https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/055toc.html — index of Title 55 rules in effect, opened 2026-08-26. Chapter 3290 (Family Child Care Homes) and Chapter 3280 (Group Child Care Homes) live under Subpart D. Start point, not a pinned URL. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/006/006toc.html — Title 6 is AGING. No child care. Disproves the "55 → 6" recodification premise. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/chap3290toc.html — used to enumerate all 114 section files of Chapter 3290; every section was downloaded and the full chapter text searched for "post", "posted", "conspicuous", "display", "traffic area", "on file", "retained", "available".

That sweep is the basis for the claim that the chapter contains exactly eight display obligations. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.22.html — § 3290.22(a) certificate "posted in a conspicuous location used by parents, with instructions for contacting the appropriate regional child care office posted at the same location"; (b) electronic access to the regulations PROVIDED to parents; (c) each inspection summary posted NEXT TO the certificate until an agent verifies correction. Amended 18 Dec 2020, eff. 19 Dec 2020, 50 Pa.B. 7133. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.24.html — § 3290.24(e) emergency plan posted; (b), (c), (d) documentation kept on file; (f) letter to parents; (g) copy to the local municipality and county emergency management agency. Source of the CD 355 citation error. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.72.html — the five posted emergency numbers, "by each telephone in the facility".

ChildLine is not among them. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.94.html — § 3290.94(a)(5) evacuation routes posted on each floor; (a)(6) single-trip removal; (a)(9) written drill record kept on file, not posted. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.111.html — § 3290.111(b) written plan of daily activities "posted in a traffic area used by parents"; (a) must include a time for free play. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.124.html — § 3290.124(d) written emergency-transport and staffing plan "conspicuously posted" and carried on excursions; (a) and (c) emergency contact information present and accompanying, never displayed. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.20.html and s3290.21.html — parent free access without prior notice; court order on file; Departmental immediate access, scope "all areas of the facility premises that are accessible to children", and § 3290.21(f) valid photo identification of the operator produced to the inspector. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3290/s3290.113.html, s3290.116.html, s3290.118.html, s3290.121.html, s3290.165.html, s3290.183.html — sources for the "not required" findings: no discipline policy; court order on file; safe sleep documented in the child's record; enrolment information delivered in writing; menus DISCUSSED only; records confidential. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3270/s3270.165.html — the contrast that matters: "An operator shall CONSPICUOUSLY POST THE MENU at least 1 week in advance or provide a menu to each family."

Child care centers only. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/s3280.24.html — group home certificate posting; regional office contact PROVIDED, not posted; inspection summary posted but not "next to" the certificate. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3280/s3280.26.html, s3280.94.html, s3280.111.html, s3280.124.html, s3280.165.html, s3280.171.html — group home comparisons actually read: emergency plan posted at (d), municipality copy at (f); identical fire drill and daily-activity postings; § 3280.124(e) emergency-transport plan "displayed conspicuously in EVERY CHILD CARE SPACE"; menus discussed only; § 3280.171(c) "Written notification of safe routes shall be posted in the facility in a conspicuous location" — a group-home posting with no Chapter 3290 counterpart. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/s20.55.html and s20.56.html — § 20.55(b) certificate contents including "maximum capacity" and "restrictions, if applicable"; § 20.55(c) provisional wording; § 20.56 "shall post the current certificate of compliance in a public place in the facility or agency".

Basis for the finding that Pennsylvania requires no separate capacity or age-range posting. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter20/s20.52.html and s20.54.html — plan of correction (a filing, not a posting); provisional certificate six months, maximum four consecutive. 23 Pa.C.S. § 6332(c) and (d) — the ChildLine posting mandates. (c) reaches "all public and nonpublic schools that enroll students in grades kindergarten through 12", (d) reaches "all hospitals". A full-text search of Chapter 63 for posting language returns nothing else. Read from a verbatim capture of the official Legislative Reference Bureau HTML at http://www.pacwrc.pitt.edu/Curriculum/FoundationsRemoteModule3/Table%20Resource%20CPSL.pdf. https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/secure/pacode/data/055/chapter3490/055_3490.pdf — full Chapter 3490 (Protective Services). The ChildLine number appears only at § 3490.31, describing the Department's own duty to operate the line. No provider posting duty anywhere in the chapter. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/clearances-and-licensing/documents/app-hsl/hs-2126-civil-rights-compliance-requirements.pdf — HS 2126, DHS Civil Rights Compliance Form; the note under Question 1 reads "Both policy statements are required to be posted in your facility."

This is the only posting obligation found outside Chapter 3290 and it is the one a purely regulation-derived checklist misses. Renewal instrument HS 2125 9/24, annual. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/documents/early-learning/certification/child-care-forms/what-is-a-complete-certificate-of-compliance-application.pdf — routing of HS 2126 through OCDEL to the Bureau of Equal Opportunity; "an initial Certificate of Compliance cannot be processed until the BEO notifies OCDEL of approval." https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dhs/contact/regional-child-development-offices — the four regional office addresses and telephone numbers quoted in element 02, as served 2026-08-26. https://www.pa.gov/content/dam/copapwp-pagov/en/dhs/documents/providers/child-care/documents/Emergency_Plan_Delivery_Document_CD_0355_FILLABLE.pdf — CD 355 11/20, whose heading cites "3290.24(f)" for a duty that sits at § 3290.24(g) in the family child care home chapter.

Pennsylvania Bulletin, all issue tables of contents for Volume 55 (2025, issues 1—52) and Volume 56 (2026, issues 1—34, latest 22 August 2026), via https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Home/volume — no rulemaking, notice or IRRC filing touching Chapters 3270, 3280 or 3290; no occurrence of "recodification"; the only DHS "Reorganization" notices (55 Pa.B. 484, 18 Jan 2025; 55 Pa.B. 7513, 1 Nov 2025) are Executive Board organisation charts, not Code actions. https://www.irrc.state.pa.us/regulations/RegSrchRslts.cfm?ID=3227 — IRRC #3216 / DHS 14-542 "Child Care Facilities", published as final 19 December 2020, closed; no successor child care package open on the DHS docket (open packages are #3483 residential services, #3466 mental health procedures, #3460 crisis intervention). https://www.pakeys.org/certification-rewrite-project/ and https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-Child-Care-Cert-Review.pdf — the real pending action: proposed Chapters 3310 and 3320, inside Title 55, formal comment "anticipated Spring 2027", final "anticipated mid-year 2028". https://www.pakeys.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FINAL-OCDEL_C-26-01-Applicability-of-Regulations-Accessible.pdf — Announcement C-26-01, 10 June 2026, cites Chapters 3270/3280/3290 as current law.

CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief asks for the posting of "the ChildLine abuse reporting number", "the discipline policy", "safe sleep", "menus and daily schedule", "parents' right of unannounced access", the compliance history, and a capacity/age-range posting. Of those, ONLY the daily schedule is a Pennsylvania posting (§ 3290.111(b)). The rest are not required of a family child care home, and the text showing it is quoted in elements 06 and 11. The menu posting exists at § 3270.165 for CENTERS only. Capacity is on the face of the posted certificate under § 20.55(b); no separate sign. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief's premise of an announced recodification of Title 55 into Title 6 is FALSE as of 2026-08-26. Recorded in element 13. ADDITION BEYOND THE BRIEF: the brief did not mention the two civil rights policy statements, which ARE a genuine posting duty flowing from § 3290.23 and form HS 2126. Recorded in element 14. UNVERIFIED: the physical form and dimensions of the "inspection summary" document DHS issues after an unannounced inspection. § 3290.22(c) names it but no DHS form number for it appears on the published Child Care Forms index, and no specimen was located.

Elements describe the duty, not the artefact. UNVERIFIED: whether OCDEL publishes an inspection instrument or checklist enumerating the posting items a certification representative scores. None was found on the DHS or PA Key sites. Element 12 reasons from the regulation and the inspection sections, not from an inspection form. UNVERIFIED: whether a family child care home certificate of compliance prints an age range as well as a maximum capacity. § 20.55(b) lists "maximum capacity" and "restrictions, if applicable" but not an age range, and no specimen certificate was obtained.

Verified 2026-08-26. General information, not legal advice and not a guarantee of licensure — confirm with your state’s licensing agency before applying.