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Home Daycare License Requirements in Texas (2026)

Opening a home daycare in Texas means getting a family child care home license from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC). 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 Texas

TEXAS SORTS HOME-BASED CHILD CARE INTO THREE PERMIT TIERS PLUS A NARROW BAND OF CARE THAT IS OUTSIDE REGULATION ALTOGETHER, AND THE WORD THAT DECIDES YOUR TIER IS NOT "CHILDREN" BUT "CHILDREN UNRELATED TO YOU". The three permits are the LISTING (a listed family home), the REGISTRATION (a registered child-care home) and the LICENSE (a licensed child-care home). All three are issued by the Health and Human Services Commission's child care regulation programme under Texas Human Resources Code, Chapter 42, and the operative rules sit in Texas Administrative Code TITLE 26, PART 1 — Chapter 742 (Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes), Chapter 745 (Licensing) and Chapter 747 (Minimum Standards for Child-Care Homes). Note the title number before you buy anything: these chapters used to live in 40 TAC and were physically moved, the source note on 26 TAC §747.113 recording that the rule was "transferred effective March 9, 2018, as published in the Texas Register February 16, 2018, 43 TexReg 909", and the Chapter 745 rules "transferred effective July 15, 2019, as published in the June 14, 2019 issue of the Texas Register, 44 TexReg 2963". Any checklist or consultant packet citing "40 TAC Chapter 747" is citing a container the Secretary of State no longer serves for these rules.

START WITH THE STATUTE, BECAUSE THE STATUTE AND THE RULES DO NOT USE THE SAME VOCABULARY. Human Resources Code §42.002(9) defines "Family home" and this is the sentence that sets the outer edge of home-based care in Texas: a family home is "a home that provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence for not more than six children under 14 years of age, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, and that provides care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children, but the total number of children, including children who are related to the caretaker, does not exceed 12 at any given time. The term does not include a home that provides care exclusively for any number of children who are related to the caretaker." Three limits are packed into that one sentence — six unrelated under-14s, six additional after-school elementary children, and an absolute ceiling of 12 bodies including your own — and the third is the one applicants forget. Immediately above it, §42.002(8) defines "Group day-care home" as "a child-care facility that provides care at the residence of the director, owner, or operator of the child-care facility for seven or more children under 14 years of age for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week", and §42.002(7) defines "Day-care center" as "a child-care facility that provides care at a location other than the residence of the director, owner, or operator of the child-care facility for seven or more children under 14 years of age for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week".

The whole centre-versus-home boundary in Texas turns on that single clause — "at the residence of" versus "at a location other than the residence of" the director, owner or operator — and NOT on the size of the building or on whether you call it a school. HERE IS THE FIRST TRAP, AND IT IS A VOCABULARY TRAP THAT COSTS PEOPLE THEIR APPLICATION FEE. The statute still says "group day-care home". No such permit is issued today. The current permit for a home caring for seven to twelve children is the LICENSED CHILD-CARE HOME, and the only surviving trace of the old term is a grandfather clause: 26 TAC §747.115(b) provides that "A child-care home licensed as a group day care home prior to September 1, 2003, may provide care at a location other than the primary caregiver's own residence, until the permit is no longer valid", and 26 TAC §745.373(b) allows a person "licensed to operate more than one group day-care home prior to September 1, 2003" to keep running two or more licensed child-care homes so long as the facilities are at separate locations, the operations are maintained separately, and "You do not move children back and forth between the two licensed child-care homes".

If you did not hold that permit before 1 September 2003, neither concession is available to you. Conversely, the phrase "child-care home" — the umbrella term the rules use constantly — has no definition in Chapter 42 at all; it is defined only in the rules, at 26 TAC §747.121(16): "Child-care home--A registered or licensed child-care home, as specified in §747.113 of this chapter (relating to What is a registered child-care home?) or §747.115 of this chapter (relating to What is a licensed child-care home?). This term includes the program, home, grounds, furnishings, and equipment." A listed family home is deliberately NOT a child-care home; it is governed by Chapter 742, not Chapter 747. TIER ONE, THE LISTED FAMILY HOME: THREE OR FEWER UNRELATED CHILDREN, AND THERE IS NO FREE ZONE BELOW IT. Human Resources Code §42.052(c) is blunt: "A family home that provides care for compensation for three or fewer children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall list with the commission if the home provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence. The home may register with the commission."

SHALL LIST. Texas gives you no one-child or two-child grace band — take money for regular care of a single unrelated child in your own home and you are required to hold a listing. The rule definition at 26 TAC §742.103 spells out every element: "For purposes of this chapter, a listed family home: (1) Provides care and supervision in the primary caregiver's own home: (A) For compensation; (B) For three or fewer children who are 13 years of age or younger and not related to the primary caregiver; and (C) For at least four hours a day: (i) Three or more days a week, for three or more consecutive weeks; or (ii) For 40 or more days in a 12-month period; and (2) May not provide care for more than 12 children, including children related to the primary caregiver." The permit chart adopted at 26 TAC §745.37(1)(A) adds the age floor for the adult and the escape hatch upward, describing a listed family home as "A caregiver at least 18 years old that provides care in the caregiver's own home for compensation, for three or fewer children unrelated to the caregiver, birth through 13 years" for the same four-hour thresholds, with the permit column reading "Listing (A caregiver who is subject to regulation as a listed family home may instead become a registered family home.)" and repeating that "The total number of children in care, including children related to the caregiver, may not exceed 12." TIER TWO, THE REGISTERED CHILD-CARE HOME: FOUR THROUGH SIX UNRELATED CHILDREN, PLUS UP TO SIX MORE AFTER SCHOOL.

Human Resources Code §42.052(d) says "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission." The rule, 26 TAC §747.113, states it operationally: "(a) In a registered child-care home, the registered primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for not more than six children from birth through 13 years, and may provide care after-school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children. The total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12. (b) A registered child-care home includes the program, building, grounds, furnishings, and equipment." The §745.37(1)(B) chart entry is the version that carries the frequency test, describing the registered child-care home as one where "The primary caregiver provides regular care in the primary caregiver's own home for up to six unrelated children from birth through 13 years and may provide care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children, for at least: (i) four hours a day, three or more days a week, for three or more consecutive weeks; or (ii) four hours a day for 40 or more days in a period of 12 months", again closing with the absolute cap of 12 including your own children.

Read "six plus six" as a schedule, not an addition: the after-school six are additional only in the sense that they arrive when the day children have gone, and §747.1605 forecloses any reading that gets you past twelve at one moment. TIER THREE, THE LICENSED CHILD-CARE HOME: SEVEN TO TWELVE CHILDREN, STILL IN YOUR OWN HOUSE. The chart at 26 TAC §745.37(1)(C) is the clearest statement of the trigger anywhere in Texas law: a licensed child-care home is one where "The primary caregiver provides care in the primary caregiver's own home for seven to twelve children from birth through 13 years, for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week", and "The total number of children in care varies with the ages of the children, but the total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." The companion rule 26 TAC §747.115 confirms that "(a) In a licensed child-care home, the licensed primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for children from birth through 13 years, unless the operation was licensed as a group day care home prior to September 1, 2003", that "(c) The total number of children in care varies with the ages of the children, but the total number of children in care in a licensed child-care home at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12", and that "(d) A licensed child-care home includes the program, building, grounds, furnishings, and equipment."

Notice what the licensed tier does NOT buy: it does not lift the twelve-child ceiling, does not let you move out of your residence, and does not let you replicate. 26 TAC §745.373(a) says so in terms: "Except as described in subsection (b) of this section, you may not have more than one licensed child-care home, because a primary caregiver must provide care in the caregiver's own residence." 26 TAC §745.371 adds the corollary for the two lower tiers: "No. We can issue only one registration or listing per single living unit. For a registered child-care home or listed family home, if more than one person cares for children in a single living unit or home, the name on the registration or listing must be the name of the primary caregiver." Two sisters in one living unit do not get two registrations, and a licensed home operator cannot open a second across town by hiring a manager. CROSSING THIRTEEN IS NOT A BIGGER HOME PERMIT — IT IS A CENTRE. Because every home tier is capped at twelve, the thirteenth child pushes you out of Chapter 747 entirely. The §745.37(1)(D) chart defines the licensed child-care centre as "An operation providing care at a location other than the home of the director, owner, or operator, for seven or more children under 14 years of age, for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week", which matches the statutory day-care centre in §42.002(7). Chapter 746 is where centre standards live, and 26 TAC §746.111 confirms its reach: "The minimum standards in this chapter apply to: (1) Licensed child-care centers; and (2) Any unlicensed child-care center that is subject to Licensing's regulation and requires a license per Chapter 42 of the Human Resources Code."

So the practical answer to "can I grow my home daycare to twenty children" is: not in your house and not under a home permit. You would be applying for a centre licence at a non-residential location under a different chapter of standards. Two other permit types sit alongside the homes and are commonly mistaken for them: the §745.37(1)(G) EMPLOYER-BASED CHILD CARE compliance certificate, for "A small employer providing care for up to 12 of the employees' children that are under 14 years of age, for less than 24 hours a day. The care is located on the employer's premises and in the same building where the parents work", and the §745.37(1)(H) SHELTER CARE compliance certificate. Neither is a home permit. WHOSE HOUSE, AND WHETHER YOU HAVE TO LIVE IN IT. Every home tier in Texas is anchored to "the caregiver's own residence" or "the primary caregiver's own home" — §42.052(c) for listings, §42.002(9) for the family home generally, §747.113(a) for registered homes, §747.115(a) for licensed homes, and §745.373(a) as the reason you cannot hold two. There is no Texas home permit for care delivered in a rented shopfront, a church annex, a mother-in-law flat you do not live in, or a second house bought as a business.

The single exception is the pre-1 September 2003 group day-care home grandfathered by §747.115(b), and even that expires when the permit does — 26 TAC §747.121(41) defines "Permit is no longer valid" as running until the home voluntarily closes, must close because of an enforcement action, the permit expires under §745.481, or the permit is automatically revoked under Human Resources Code §§42.048(e), 42.052(i) or 42.054(f). NOW THE COUNTING TRAP, WHICH IS WHERE MOST TEXAS APPLICANTS GET IT WRONG. Your own children and other related children are EXCLUDED when you work out which permit you need, and INCLUDED when you work out how many children you may have in the house. The exclusion is on the face of §42.002(9) ("excluding children who are related to the caretaker"), §42.052(c) and §42.052(d) ("excluding children who are related to the caretaker"), and §742.103(1)(B) ("not related to the primary caregiver"). The inclusion is equally explicit: §42.002(9) itself says the total "including children who are related to the caretaker, does not exceed 12", §747.113(a) and §747.115(c) both say "including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12", and 26 TAC §747.1605 answers the question directly under the heading of whether you may ever care for more than twelve: "No.

The total number of children in care must never exceed 12, and may be fewer than 12 depending on the ages of the children in the child-care home. This number includes all children present in the child-care home and any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported." And the ratio rule is broader still. 26 TAC §747.1603(3) provides that "All children present, including children related to you, assistant and substitute caregiver's children, and drop-in and part-time children must be counted in the child/caregiver ratio, by age of the child, regardless of the length of time they are present", and §747.1603(4) adds "You must also count neighborhood children visiting your child-care home, if you are responsible for their care and supervision in the absence of the parent." Your assistant's toddler counts. The neighbour's child you are watching for free counts. A part-time child who is there for ninety minutes counts. So a caregiver with three of her own children at home may be a registered-home candidate at six unrelated children on paper, but is at nine bodies before a single after-school child arrives, and hits the twelve-child wall long before the six-unrelated wall.

WHICH CHILDREN COUNT AS "RELATED" IS NARROWER THAN "FAMILY". Human Resources Code §42.002(16) defines "Children who are related to the caretaker" as "children who are the children, grandchildren, siblings, great-grandchildren, first cousins, nieces, or nephews of the caretaker, whether by affinity or consanguinity or as the result of a relationship created by court decree", and the rules repeat the same closed list at 26 TAC §745.21(10) and 26 TAC §742.111(2), the latter adding that "This includes any of those relationships that exist due to common ancestry, adoption, or marriage." That list stops where it stops. A second cousin, a great-niece, a godchild, a close friend's child and an unmarried partner's nephew are all UNRELATED children for permit-tier purposes, and each moves you toward the next permit. THE AGE BOUNDARIES DO NOT LINE UP EITHER, AND THE MISMATCH IS DELIBERATE. Chapter 42 speaks of "children under 14 years of age" in §42.002(7), (8) and (9), while the rules speak of children "from birth through 13 years" in §747.113(a), §747.115(a), §742.103(1)(B) and the §745.37 chart — the same population, expressed twice.

Separately, §42.002(1) defines "Child" as "a person under 18 years of age", which is why background-check, abuse-reporting and enforcement provisions of Chapter 42 reach teenagers in your household even though you cannot enrol them as day-care children. Within the rules, 26 TAC §747.121(51) defines a "School-age child" as "A child who is five years of age and older and is enrolled in or has completed kindergarten", and §747.121(45) defines a pre-kindergarten age child as "A child who is three or four years of age before the beginning of the current school year". One arithmetic concession is worth knowing: 26 TAC §747.1603(5) provides that "In a registered child-care home, you may count a child who is at least four years of age and attending a pre-kindergarten program during the customary school day in the same way children five years old and older who are in care after school hours are counted", but only where "The pre-kindergarten program must be operated by or in collaboration with the local school district." WHAT FALLS OUTSIDE REGULATION ENTIRELY. Four doors lead out, and none of them is "I only have a couple of kids".

THE FIRST IS FREQUENCY. §42.002(17) defines "Regular care" as care provided at least "(A) four hours a day, three or more days a week, for three or more consecutive weeks; or (B) four hours a day for 40 or more days in a period of 12 months", and both §42.052(c) and §742.103(1)(C) require that threshold before a listing is owed. Care that never reaches four hours in a day, or that runs two days a week, or that stops before three consecutive weeks and stays under forty days a year, is not regular care. §42.041(b)(17) makes the short-duration exemption explicit at the facility level for "a child-care facility that operates for less than three consecutive weeks and less than 40 days in a period of 12 months", which is the provision a summer programme relies on. THE SECOND IS RELATIONSHIP. §42.002(9) ends with "The term does not include a home that provides care exclusively for any number of children who are related to the caretaker", and §42.052(d) says in terms that "A family home that provides care exclusively for any number of children who are related to the caretaker is not required to be listed or registered with the commission."

Grandmother care, however many grandchildren, is outside. THE THIRD IS LOCATION. 26 TAC §745.33(1) defines child day care as the care of "An unrelated child or children under 14 years old for less than 24 hours per day that occurs in a place other than the child's own home", so a nanny or sitter working in the CHILD'S house is not operating a regulated child-care operation at all — the regulated thing is care in YOUR home, or in a facility. THE FOURTH IS THE STATUTORY EXEMPTION LIST at §42.041(b), which includes at (10) "a family home, whether registered or listed", at (20) a living arrangement in a caretaker's home where the caretaker "had a prior relationship with the child or sibling group", "does not care for more than one unrelated child or sibling group", "does not receive compensation or solicit donations for the care of the child or sibling group" and "has a written agreement with the parent", and at (25) a living arrangement where the caretaker has an authorization agreement under Chapter 34, Family Code, "does not care for more than six children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker" and "does not receive compensation for caring for any child or sibling group".

The parallel rule chart at 26 TAC §745.129 restates those two as the "Caregiver Has Written Agreement with a Parent to Provide Residential Care" exemption and adds the neighbourhood recreation programme and single-skill instruction exemptions, each of which requires informing parents that the programme is not regulated and running Department of Public Safety background checks on employees and volunteers. Two brand-new items joined that list in the 2025 session: Acts 2025, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Chapter 461 (H.B. 4529), effective 1 September 2025, added §42.041(b)(26), "a child-care facility located on a federal military base or other federal property that maintains a certificate to operate issued by the United States Department of Defense", and §42.041(b)(27), "a military family child-care provider that maintains a certificate to operate issued by the United States Department of Defense". If you are a military family child-care provider on post, you were arguably unregulated before and are now expressly exempt by statute. BE CAREFUL WITH "COMPENSATION" — IT IS AN ELEMENT OF THE LISTING TIER ONLY. §42.052(c) and §742.103(1)(A) both build compensation into the listed family home.

The definition of "family home" at §42.002(9) contains no compensation element at all, and §42.002(3) defines a "Child-care facility" as one providing care for an unrelated child "whether or not the facility is operated for profit or charges for the services it offers". Free care for four or more unrelated children in your home is therefore not obviously outside the registration requirement of §42.052(d) merely because no money changes hands; the exemptions in §42.041(b)(20) and (b)(25) that do turn on the absence of compensation are drawn narrowly, and each carries its own cap and written-agreement condition. Do not build a business plan on the theory that unpaid care is unregulated care. A LISTING IS NOT A LICENCE, AND TEXAS MAKES YOU SAY SO OUT LOUD. Human Resources Code §42.052(i) requires the commission to give the listed home a copy of its listing and requires that the listing "contain a provision that states: 'THIS HOME IS A LISTED FAMILY HOME. IT IS NOT LICENSED OR REGISTERED WITH THE HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION. A LISTED FAMILY HOME HAS LIMITED MINIMUM STANDARDS AND IS NOT INSPECTED UNLESS A COMPLAINT IS FILED WITH THE COMMISSION.'" The same subsection adds that "The operator of a listed family home is not required to display the listing in a prominent place at the home but shall make the listing available for examination" — the opposite of §42.052(e), under which "The operator of a registered home must display the registration in a prominent place at the home."

Advertising is policed separately by §42.0522: a family home "may not place a public advertisement that uses the title 'registered family home' or any variation of that phrase unless the home is registered under this chapter", and any such advertisement "must contain a provision in bold type stating: 'THIS HOME IS REGISTERED WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY AND PROTECTIVE SERVICES BUT IS NOT LICENSED OR REGULARLY INSPECTED.'" Read those two disclaimers side by side and you see a live inconsistency in the codified statute: §42.0522(a) still orders you to print "DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY AND PROTECTIVE SERVICES" while §42.0522(b) and §42.052(i), amended later, order you to print "HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION". Chapter 42 is inconsistent on its face about which agency it means — §42.041(a) says "No person may operate a child-care facility or child-placing agency without a license issued by the department", §42.052(c) and (d) say the family home lists or registers with "the commission", and §42.042(a) assigns rulemaking to "the executive commissioner" — while the rules that govern you are HHSC rules in 26 TAC Part 1, naming the regulator "Licensing" in older rules and "Child Care Regulation (CCR)" in the newest, such as §745.31, amended effective 15 October 2024, 49 TexReg 8158. Print whichever disclaimer the statute assigns to your permit type, verbatim.

THE CODIFIED RULE FOR LISTED HOMES IS CURRENTLY OUT OF DATE ON MONEY, AND THIS IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE STALE FACT IN THE TEXAS FILE. Acts 2025, 89th Legislature, Regular Session, Chapter 423 (H.B. 2789), an act "relating to the regulation of child welfare, including licensure, community-based care contractors, family homes, and child-care facilities", amended Human Resources Code §42.0495 at its SECTION 4 and §42.049 at its SECTION 3, and its SECTION 11(a) provides that "Sections 3 and 4 of this Act take effect January 1, 2026." The enrolled text shows a straight substitution — a listed family home "shall maintain liability insurance coverage in the amount of $100,000 [$300,000] for each occurrence of negligence", the same reduction applying to licence and registration holders under §42.049(a) — and SECTION 4 also struck the old §42.0495(b) duty to "annually file with the commission a certificate or other evidence of coverage". The statute in effect today therefore requires $100,000 of coverage for each occurrence of negligence for listed family homes and for licence and registration holders alike.

The RULE has not caught up: 26 TAC §742.403, as the Secretary of State serves it on 26 August 2026, still says you must "Have liability insurance coverage: (A) Of at least $300,000 for each occurrence of negligence" and must "Provide proof of coverage to Licensing each year by the anniversary date of the issuance of your permit to operate a listed family home", with a source note showing no amendment since 10 March 2021, 46 TexReg 1247. Buy the policy your insurer and your caseworker will accept, but understand that the $300,000 figure on rule reprints and agency handouts is a rule figure the Legislature overrode effective 1 January 2026, and that the annual-filing duty the rule imposes no longer has a statutory parent for listed homes. The session law moved first; the administrative rule is trailing. FINALLY, THE PERMIT DOES NOT CREATE THE DUTY — THE ACTIVITY DOES. 26 TAC §747.111 provides that the minimum standards in Chapter 747 apply to "(1) Child-care homes registered or licensed by us to care for 12 or fewer children in the caregiver's own home for less than 24 hours per day; and (2) Any unlicensed child-care home that requires a registration or license per the Human Resources Code, Chapter 42, because the home is providing child-care services." 26 TAC §747.117(c) closes the loop on who is on the hook: "For a child-care home that is subject to Licensing's regulation under this chapter but does not have the appropriate registration or license, the owner, other person overseeing the child-care services, or controlling person who has the ability to influence or direct the home's management, expenditures, or policies must ensure compliance with all minimum standards in this chapter."

Operating without the permit does not put you outside the standards; it puts you inside them without the paperwork, and §42.002(18) defines a "Controlling person" as "a person who, either alone or in connection with others, has the ability to directly or indirectly influence or direct the management, expenditures, or policies of a facility or family home" — broad enough to reach the spouse who signs the lease. One structural note follows: 26 TAC §745.21(7) provides that "A child-care facility does not include child-placing agencies, listed family homes, employer-based child care operations, or shelter care operations", while §745.21(30) defines "Operation" to include "a child-care facility, child-placing agency, listed family home, employer-based child care operation, shelter care operation, or any operation that requires a permit under Chapter 42, Texas Human Resources Code". A listed family home is an OPERATION but is not a CHILD-CARE FACILITY, which is exactly why §42.041(b)(10) can exempt "a family home, whether registered or listed" from the licence requirement of §42.041(a) without exempting it from regulation.

Do not read that exemption as freedom; read it as a statement that your permit is a listing or a registration rather than a licence — and remember that it only applies if you actually are a family home, which means six or fewer unrelated children under 14. The moment the seventh unrelated child walks in, §42.041(b)(10) stops protecting you and §42.041(a) starts applying. ONE LAST DOOR THAT LOOKS LIKE A TIER BUT IS NOT: THE RELATIVE-ONLY LISTED FAMILY HOME. Human Resources Code §42.0523(a) provides that "A child-care provider who only provides child care under Chapter 313, Labor Code, to children related to the provider may list the provider's home as a family home", §42.0523(c) that "The address of a family home listed under this section is the address of the child-care provider's home, regardless of whether the child care is provided in the provider's home or in the child's home", and §42.0523(e) that neither the §42.042 minimum standards nor the §42.0495 liability insurance requirement apply to such a home. The rules implement it at 26 TAC §745.43, which requires the relative-only permit holder only to "Operate within the limits of its permit", ensure no immediate risk to a child's health or safety, administer medication in accordance with Human Resources Code §42.065, request background checks, keep each child free from abuse, neglect and exploitation, pay the required fees, and "Comply with all other applicable laws and rules"; 26 TAC §742.107 confirms that a listed family home need not comply with Chapter 742's standards if "(1) The permit holder is receiving federal subsidies from the Texas Workforce Commission; and (2) The home only provides care and supervision to children related to the primary caregiver."

This is a subsidy-billing device for relatives, not a business licence. It exists so that a grandmother can be paid by the Texas Workforce Commission for care she is already giving. It does not authorise you to enrol a single unrelated child, and the instant you do, you are back in §42.052(c) needing a full listing, or in §42.052(d) needing a registration.

How many children you can care for in Texas

Texas caps every home-based permit at twelve children, and the single most expensive misunderstanding in this state is believing that a license buys you a thirteenth. It does not. 26 TAC §747.1605, which answers the question "May I ever care for more than 12 children in my registered or licensed child-care home?", reads in full: "No. The total number of children in care must never exceed 12, and may be fewer than 12 depending on the ages of the children in the child-care home. This number includes all children present in the child-care home and any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported." That twelve is a ceiling on the home, not on a caregiver, and it is the same twelve for a Listed Family Home, a Registered Child-Care Home, and a Licensed Child-Care Home. What changes across the three permits is not the ceiling but who may be counted toward it, how the ages must be mixed underneath it, and how many adults you must pay for to reach it. If you are moving up the permit ladder to serve more children, you are buying age flexibility and a legal right to advertise, not headcount.

The chart that governs all three permit types at the front door is the figure attached to 26 TAC §745.37(1), "Types of Child Day-Care Operations", which HHSC re-adopted effective October 15, 2024 (49 TexReg 8158) — it is the newest authoritative statement of Texas home capacity and it is the one to read before any agency brochure. For the Listed Family Home it says the caregiver "provides care in the caregiver's own home for compensation, for three or fewer children unrelated to the caregiver, birth through 13 years" and then adds the line applicants skip: "The total number of children in care, including children related to the caregiver, may not exceed 12." For the Registered Child-Care Home it says the primary caregiver "provides regular care in the primary caregiver's own home for up to six unrelated children from birth through 13 years and may provide care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children" and then: "The total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." For the Licensed Child-Care Home it says the primary caregiver "provides care in the primary caregiver's own home for seven to twelve children from birth through 13 years, for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week", and again: "The total number of children in care varies with the ages of the children, but the total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." Read that licensed-home entry twice.

The license is defined by a floor as well as a ceiling — seven to twelve. A Texas Licensed Child-Care Home is the permit for a home that intends to run at seven children or more; if your business plan tops out at six, the license is the wrong instrument and Child Care Regulation will steer you to a registration. The Listed Family Home is the smallest permit and the one whose arithmetic is most often misread, because two different numbers govern it at once. 26 TAC §742.103 defines the permit: a listed family home "(1) Provides care and supervision in the primary caregiver's own home: (A) For compensation; (B) For three or fewer children who are 13 years of age or younger and not related to the primary caregiver; and (C) For at least four hours a day: (i) Three or more days a week, for three or more consecutive weeks; or (ii) For 40 or more days in a 12-month period; and (2) May not provide care for more than 12 children, including children related to the primary caregiver." The operative duty sits in 26 TAC §742.307(3), which makes the primary caregiver responsible for "Ensuring the following regarding the number of children in care at the home or away from the home: (A) The number of children not related to the primary caregiver never exceeds three; and (B) The total number of children, both related and not related to the primary caregiver, never exceeds 12". So a listing is not a three-child permit and it is not a twelve-child permit; it is a three-unrelated-and-twelve-total permit, and either number breached is a violation.

The statutory trigger for moving off a listing is in Texas Human Resources Code §42.052(c) and (d): "A family home that provides care for compensation for three or fewer children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall list with the commission if the home provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence. The home may register with the commission," and "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission." The fourth unrelated child is a permit change, not a paperwork afterthought — accept that child before the registration is issued and you are operating an unregistered family home. Note also §42.052(d)'s carve-out, "A family home that provides care exclusively for any number of children who are related to the caretaker is not required to be listed or registered with the commission," and its subsidy-side counterpart in 26 TAC §742.107, under which a listed family home is excused from the Chapter 742 minimum standards only if "(1) The permit holder is receiving federal subsidies from the Texas Workforce Commission; and (2) The home only provides care and supervision to children related to the primary caregiver" — a relative-only listing whose duties are the short list in 26 TAC §745.43, the first of which is to "Operate within the limits of its permit."

The Registered Child-Care Home is where the six-plus-six structure lives, and it comes down from the statute. Human Resources Code §42.002(9) defines "Family home" as "a home that provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence for not more than six children under 14 years of age, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, and that provides care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children, but the total number of children, including children who are related to the caretaker, does not exceed 12 at any given time. The term does not include a home that provides care exclusively for any number of children who are related to the caretaker." Two words in that sentence do the damage. "Excluding" governs the six; "including" governs the twelve. Your own children are invisible to the six-child unrelated count and fully visible to the twelve-child total.

The rule that turns this into daily arithmetic is 26 TAC §747.1603, "How do I determine child/caregiver ratio?", which provides: "(1) The total number of children you may supervise is determined by the ages of the children in the child-care home. (2) You may use the developmental or emotional age, rather than the chronological age, of a child with special care needs, if this is recommended by a health-care professional or a qualified professional and is documented in the child's record. (3) All children present, including children related to you, assistant and substitute caregiver's children, and drop-in and part-time children must be counted in the child/caregiver ratio, by age of the child, regardless of the length of time they are present. (4) You must also count neighborhood children visiting your child-care home, if you are responsible for their care and supervision in the absence of the parent. (5) In a registered child-care home, you may count a child who is at least four years of age and attending a pre-kindergarten program during the customary school day in the same way children five years old and older who are in care after school hours are counted.

The pre-kindergarten program must be operated by or in collaboration with the local school district." Paragraph (3) is the paragraph that ends arguments with inspectors: your own toddler, your assistant's baby, the drop-in whose mother pays cash, and the neighbor's child you are watching all occupy slots by age, "regardless of the length of time they are present." Paragraph (5) is a genuine and underused concession, but it is narrow twice over: it applies only in a registered child-care home, and only to a four-year-old in a pre-kindergarten program "operated by or in collaboration with the local school district." A private preschool down the street does not qualify, and a licensed child-care home gets nothing from this paragraph at all. The registered home's actual grid is the figure attached to 26 TAC §747.1701, "How many children may I care for in my registered child-care home?", whose text is one sentence — "There must not be more children in your registered child-care home at the same time than is shown in the following chart:" — followed by an attached graphic still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701" from before the 2018 transfer into Title 26. Its four columns are "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months and older", "Number of children five years old and older after school hours", and "Maximum number of children allowed in the child-care home at any one time, including children related to the caregiver".

The rows, in full, are 0/6/6/12, 0/5/7/12, 0/4/8/12, 0/3/9/12, 0/2/10/12, 0/1/11/12, 0/0/12/12, 1/5/4/10, 1/4/5/10, 1/3/6/10, 1/2/7/10, 1/1/8/10, 1/0/9/10, 2/4/2/8, 2/3/3/8, 2/2/4/8, 2/1/5/8, 2/0/6/8, 3/3/1/7, 3/2/2/7, 3/1/3/7, 3/0/4/7, 4/2/0/6, 4/1/1/6 and 4/0/2/6. Read down the first column and the economics of the registered permit appear. Zero children under eighteen months buys you a full twelve. One infant costs you two slots and the home drops to ten. Two infants drop it to eight, three infants to seven, and four infants to six — and the chart simply stops there, so a fifth child birth through 17 months has no lawful row in a registered child-care home. The under-two limit in Texas is not stated as a separate rule; it is the shape of the first column, and it caps a registered home at four infants and, at four infants, at six children in total. The school-age column is where the twelve is actually reached in most registered homes, and it is only reachable "after school hours." Note the terminological drift you must not rely on: the statute says the extra six must be "elementary school children", §745.37(1) repeats "six additional elementary school children", the §747.1701 chart column says "children five years old and older after school hours", and 26 TAC §747.123(51) defines "School-age child" as "A child who is five years of age and older and is enrolled in or has completed kindergarten." A five-year-old who has not started kindergarten is not a school-age child under the definition and does not belong in that third column.

Finally, 26 TAC §747.1703 closes the obvious escape route: "If your child-care home is registered, you may not increase the number of children in care if two or more caregivers are caring for the children." Hiring help in a registered home buys supervision quality and lets you take breaks; it buys exactly zero additional children. The Licensed Child-Care Home changes the age mix and the staffing math, not the ceiling. The figure attached to 26 TAC §747.1801 is captioned "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home" with columns "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months through three years old", "Number of children four years old and older", and "Maximum number of children one caregiver may supervise". Its rows are 0/8/4/12, 0/7/5/12, 0/6/6/12, 0/5/7/12, 0/4/8/12, 0/3/9/12, 0/2/10/12, 0/1/11/12, 0/0/12/12, 1/6/4/11, 1/5/5/11, 1/4/6/11, 1/3/7/11, 1/2/8/11, 1/1/9/11, 1/0/10/11, 2/5/3/10, 2/4/4/10, 2/3/5/10, 2/2/6/10, 2/1/7/10, 2/0/8/10, 3/3/1/7, 3/2/2/7, 3/1/3/7, 3/0/4/7, 4/2/0/6, 4/1/1/6 and 4/0/2/6. Compare it row for row against the registered chart and the licensed permit's real value emerges: with one infant a licensed home holds eleven where a registered home holds ten, with two infants ten against eight, and the licensed chart's older-child column is "four years old and older" with no requirement that those children be in care only after school hours — so a licensed home may run twelve four-year-olds all day, which no registered home may do.

But the infant cliff is identical: four is the last row, and at four infants both permits collapse to six children. A second caregiver is governed by 26 TAC §747.1803: "If your child-care home is licensed, then the following child/caregiver ratio and maximum group size applies when two caregivers are caring for the children," followed by a figure captioned "Number of Children Two Caregivers May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home" with columns "Number of children 0 - 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months old and older", and "Maximum group size and number of children two caregivers may supervise". Its rows are 0/12/12, 1/11/12, 2/10/12, 3/9/12, 4/8/12, 5/7/12, 6/6/12, 7/5/12, 8/4/12, 9/3/12 and 10/0/10. That final row is a cliff worth planning around: nine infants plus three older children is twelve, but the tenth infant does not merely cost a slot — the older-child column goes to zero and the home drops to ten. There is no row for eleven or twelve infants, so ten is the absolute infant maximum in any Texas home, and only in a licensed home with two caregivers. Above two caregivers, 26 TAC §747.1805 says the whole grid disappears: "If your child-care home is licensed and more than two caregivers are present caring for the children, then you may care for 12 children of any age from birth through 13 years."

Twelve of any age — including twelve infants — but still twelve. That is the entire ladder. Every rung ends at twelve. Total capacity and children-present-at-one-time are two different numbers in Texas, and the second one is what gets cited. Your permit carries a capacity, and 26 TAC §747.207(10) makes the primary caregiver responsible for "Ensuring the total number of children in care at the home or away from the home, such as during a field trip, never exceeds the capacity of the home as specified on the license or registration." The chart is the outer envelope; the permit is the actual limit, and the permit number can be lower than the chart for a reason many applicants never see coming: floor space. 26 TAC §747.4001 requires that "Your registered or licensed child-care home must have at least 30 square feet of indoor useable activity space for each child in care," and 26 TAC §747.4003, asking "May I care for 12 children if I do not have 30 square feet of indoor useable activity space?", answers: "No. We will limit the number of children you may care for based on the indoor useable activity space in the child-care home."

Twelve children therefore require 360 square feet of indoor useable activity space, and if your measured space yields eight, your permit says eight and the §747.1701 chart is irrelevant to you. 26 TAC §747.4013 forbids the workaround — "No. You must not share the indoor useable activity space with other programs at the same time you have children in care" — and 26 TAC §747.4009 grandfathers only homes "registered or licensed before September 1, 2003", and only "until your permit to operate is no longer valid." You also cannot stack permits to get past twelve: 26 TAC §745.371 provides that "We can issue only one registration or listing per single living unit," and 26 TAC §745.373(a) that "you may not have more than one licensed child-care home, because a primary caregiver must provide care in the caregiver's own residence," with a narrow legacy exception at §745.373(b) for operators licensed for more than one group day-care home before September 1, 2003. Nighttime care does not add capacity either; 26 TAC §747.3003 permits day-and-night care only with approval and only where a child is in care "No more than 16 hours within a 24-hour period on a daily basis" or "No more than three consecutive 24-hour periods with a maximum of six 24-hour periods per month," and closes with "You cannot exceed these limits."

Overlap at drop-off and pick-up is where compliant-on-paper homes are written up, and Texas has closed every door on it. The count is instantaneous, not average: §747.1603(3) counts every child present "regardless of the length of time they are present", and §747.1605 says the number "must never exceed 12." There is no fifteen-minute grace, no transition allowance, and no rule permitting the thirteenth child to stand in the entryway while the first is buckled into a car. 26 TAC §747.1609, "May I adjust the child/caregiver ratio when I am opening and closing my child-care home?", answers flatly: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers supervising the children during opening and closing times." Its sibling 26 TAC §747.1607 does the same for the other soft moment of the day: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers while children are napping." And the count follows the children out the door — §747.1605 includes "any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported", §747.207(10) repeats it, and 26 TAC §747.1903(a) adds that "You must have one caregiver in addition to the driver if you transport more than four children who are younger than 24 months." A registered home at twelve that sends six school-agers on an outing with a helper has not created six slots at home; it still has twelve children in care.

Under 26 TAC §747.1901(c) the regular ratio applies on enclosed-area field trips, and only where children mix with the public may adult volunteers or household members who are not qualified caregivers be counted, and even then "as long as you maintain at least the regular ratio for your registered or licensed child-care home, as applicable, with qualified caregivers." Name the trap plainly, because it costs Texas applicants money every year in two directions. The first and larger one is your own children. Every consumer-facing summary you will read repeats the statutory phrase "not more than six children under 14 years of age, excluding children who are related to the caretaker" from Human Resources Code §42.002(9), and applicants build a business plan on six paying children plus their own kids for free. The rules count the opposite way. §745.37(1) says the total "including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12"; §747.1701's fourth column says "Maximum number of children allowed in the child-care home at any one time, including children related to the caregiver"; §747.1603(3) counts related children "by age of the child"; and §742.307(3)(B) says the same for a listing. "Children related to the caretaker" is defined broadly at Human Resources Code §42.002(16) and mirrored in 26 TAC §742.111(2) as "Children who are children, grandchildren, siblings, great-grandchildren, first cousins, nieces, or nephews of the primary caregiver.

This includes any of those relationships that exist due to common ancestry, adoption, or marriage" — so a niece and a grandchild are as countable as your own baby. A registered provider with a nine-month-old and a two-year-old of her own is not a twelve-slot business; she starts the day at 2/x/x and her home is capped at eight children total, six of whom may be paying, and only two of those six may be under eighteen months. The second trap is the one that turns into a wasted licensing fee, a wasted pre-licensing course, and months of a fire-marshal and health inspection: paying to convert a registration into a license in order to serve "more" children. Under §747.1605 there are no more children. What the license actually purchases is the §747.1801 age mix (four-year-olds counted all day rather than only after school), the §747.1803 two-caregiver grid that permits up to ten infants, the §747.1805 rule that with three or more caregivers you may take twelve children of any age, and an annual unannounced inspection instead of one every one to two years. If your constraint is your square footage under §747.4001, or your own four children under §747.1603(3), a license changes nothing at all and you have bought a more expensive permit for the same twelve.

The third, quieter trap is the reverse: a listed family home that quietly accepts a fourth unrelated child. §42.052(d) makes registration mandatory at four, §742.307(3)(A) makes three the hard ceiling on unrelated children, and HHSC's own materials confirm that a listed home is inspected on a complaint that "the caregiver is caring for more children than the permit allows" — which is precisely the complaint a competitor or a disgruntled parent files. One last caution about sources, because Texas's are in motion. As of today the Secretary of State's long-standing Texas Administrative Code viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us no longer serves rules at all; it answers with a "This Site Has Moved" page redirecting to the Secretary of State's Rules and Meetings portal, and the rule text and its attached figures must be read there against the rules-in-effect date. The capacity charts are not in the rule text; they are separate attached figures, and they are still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701", "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1801" and "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1803" even though these standards were transferred out of Title 40 into Title 26 effective March 9, 2018 (43 TexReg 909) — an old caption on a current figure, which is exactly the kind of artifact that makes a reader think they have found a superseded document.

They have not. Nor should you assume the legislature moved the twelve recently: the Human Resources Code as published is current through the 89th Legislature's Second Called Session of 2025, and §42.002 was last amended by Acts 2021, 87th Leg., R.S., Ch. 807 (H.B. 1540) while §42.052 was last amended by Acts 2021, 87th Leg., R.S., Ch. 547 (S.B. 225). The 2025 session did legislate on family homes — H.B. 2789, "relating to the regulation of child welfare, including licensure, community-based care contractors, family homes, and child-care facilities," amended §§42.043, 42.049, 42.0495, 42.051 and 42.068 and added §42.0413 — but it did not touch a capacity number. The freshest capacity text in Texas is administrative, not legislative: the §745.37 chart adopted effective October 15, 2024. Verify against that chart, against your own permit document, and against the tape measure on your activity room floor, in that order.

Adult-to-child ratios

TEXAS DOES NOT HAVE ONE HOME RATIO. IT HAS THREE PERMITS, AND ONLY TWO OF THEM HAVE NUMBERS AT ALL. The Secretary of State's index of rules in effect on 26 August 2026 puts child day care under Title 26 of the Texas Administrative Code, Part 1, Health and Human Services Commission — not Title 40, where the old Department of Family and Protective Services rules used to sit, and not under DFPS as an agency. Listed Family Homes are governed by 26 TAC Chapter 742 (Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes); Registered Child-Care Homes and Licensed Child-Care Homes share 26 TAC Chapter 747 (Minimum Standards for Child-Care Homes), whose Subchapter E is titled CHILD/CAREGIVER RATIOS AND GROUP SIZES. Chapter 742 has no subchapter on ratios and no ratio chart anywhere in it. That absence is the single most important fact about Texas home ratios and the first thing an applicant gets wrong. THE PERMIT CHART DECIDES WHICH REGIME YOU ARE IN, AND IT WAS REWRITTEN RECENTLY.

The figure at 26 TAC §745.37(1) — the chart amended to be effective October 15, 2024, 49 TexReg 8158, and now printed as "Figure: 26 TAC §745.37(1)" rather than the old 40 TAC figure — sorts child day-care operations by permit. A "Listed Family Home" is "A caregiver at least 18 years old that provides care in the caregiver's own home for compensation, for three or fewer children unrelated to the caregiver, birth through 13 years", for at least "four hours a day, three or more days a week, for three or more consecutive weeks" or "four hours a day for 40 or more days in a period of 12 months", and "The total number of children in care, including children related to the caregiver, may not exceed 12"; the permit column adds that "A caregiver who is subject to regulation as a listed family home may instead become a registered family home." A "Registered Child-Care Home" is where "The primary caregiver provides regular care in the primary caregiver's own home for up to six unrelated children from birth through 13 years and may provide care after school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children", total never exceeding 12 including your own. A "Licensed Child-Care Home" is where "The primary caregiver provides care in the primary caregiver's own home for seven to twelve children from birth through 13 years, for less than 24 hours a day, but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week."

Seven to twelve. The licence is not an upgrade you buy for prestige; it is the only permit that legally reaches the seventh child. The statute behind it, Texas Human Resources Code §42.052(c) and (d), is blunter still: "A family home that provides care for compensation for three or fewer children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall list with the commission if the home provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence. The home may register with the commission." And: "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission." THE LISTED FAMILY HOME HAS NO RATIO BECAUSE IT HAS NO ROOM FOR ONE. 26 TAC §742.103 defines it as a home that "Provides care and supervision in the primary caregiver's own home: (A) For compensation; (B) For three or fewer children who are 13 years of age or younger and not related to the primary caregiver" and that "May not provide care for more than 12 children, including children related to the primary caregiver." With a statutory ceiling of three unrelated children, the Commission never wrote an age-band table; instead Chapter 742 regulates presence and supervision.

Under §742.201 the primary caregiver "must: (1) Live in the home where care is provided; and (2) Be the permit holder". Under §742.203(a) "you must routinely be present in your listed family home during the hours of operation", and §742.203(b) allows you to "be temporarily absent for limited periods of time only if you designate a substitute caregiver to be in charge of the home during your absence". Under §742.301 primary and substitute caregivers must "(1) Be at least 18 years of age; and (2) Meet the requirements in Chapter 745, Subchapter F of this title (relating to Background Checks)". Under §742.305, "Supervising children at all times means the primary caregiver and substitute caregiver are accountable for each child's care. This includes responsibility for the ongoing activity of each child, appropriate visual and auditory awareness, physical proximity, and knowledge of each child's needs." The one place Chapter 742 does state a number is water: §742.807(b) provides that "When an infant or toddler is taking part in a water activity, there must always be one caregiver for each infant or toddler who is wading, bathing, or swimming" — a one-to-one ratio, the strictest number in the entire Texas home scheme, and it lives in the chapter people assume has no rules.

Section 742.807(e) then adds that you may allow wading in less than two feet of water only "if you are present and have completed an online water safety course. Otherwise, you may allow children to swim or wade in a swimming pool or wading pool only if a lifeguard is on duty", and §742.807(d) forbids swimming "in a lake, pond, river, or similar body of water" outright. HRC §42.052(i) requires the listing itself to carry the sentence "THIS HOME IS A LISTED FAMILY HOME. IT IS NOT LICENSED OR REGISTERED WITH THE HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION. A LISTED FAMILY HOME HAS LIMITED MINIMUM STANDARDS AND IS NOT INSPECTED UNLESS A COMPLAINT IS FILED WITH THE COMMISSION." WHAT "RATIO" MEANS IN CHAPTER 747, AND WHO GETS COUNTED. Section 747.1601 is one sentence: "The child/caregiver ratio is the maximum number of children one caregiver may be responsible for."

Section 747.1603 then supplies the counting rules verbatim: "(1) The total number of children you may supervise is determined by the ages of the children in the child-care home. (2) You may use the developmental or emotional age, rather than the chronological age, of a child with special care needs, if this is recommended by a health-care professional or a qualified professional and is documented in the child's record. (3) All children present, including children related to you, assistant and substitute caregiver's children, and drop-in and part-time children must be counted in the child/caregiver ratio, by age of the child, regardless of the length of time they are present. (4) You must also count neighborhood children visiting your child-care home, if you are responsible for their care and supervision in the absence of the parent. (5) In a registered child-care home, you may count a child who is at least four years of age and attending a pre-kindergarten program during the customary school day in the same way children five years old and older who are in care after school hours are counted.

The pre-kindergarten program must be operated by or in collaboration with the local school district." Read paragraph (3) twice. Your own toddler, your assistant's baby, and the neighbour's child you watch for an hour all consume ratio. Applicants routinely price a business on twelve paying enrolments and then discover that their own two preschoolers have already eaten two of the twelve seats. The hard ceiling is §747.1605, which answers "May I ever care for more than 12 children in my registered or licensed child-care home?" with: "No. The total number of children in care must never exceed 12, and may be fewer than 12 depending on the ages of the children in the child-care home. This number includes all children present in the child-care home and any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported." A child on the van counts against the house. THE REGISTERED HOME CHART, ROW BY ROW. Section 747.1701 says only "There must not be more children in your registered child-care home at the same time than is shown in the following chart", and the chart is an attached figure headed "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Registered Child-Care Home".

Its four columns are "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months and older", "Number of children five years old and older after school hours", and "Maximum number of children allowed in the child-care home at any one time, including children related to the caregiver". The rows, in the order the figure prints them: zero infants with 6 children 18 months and older and 6 school-age after school, total 12; zero infants with 5 and 7, total 12; zero with 4 and 8, total 12; zero with 3 and 9, total 12; zero with 2 and 10, total 12; zero with 1 and 11, total 12; zero with 0 and 12, total 12. Then one infant with 5 and 4, total 10; one with 4 and 5, total 10; one with 3 and 6, total 10; one with 2 and 7, total 10; one with 1 and 8, total 10; one with 0 and 9, total 10. Then two infants with 4 and 2, total 8; two with 3 and 3, total 8; two with 2 and 4, total 8; two with 1 and 5, total 8; two with 0 and 6, total 8. Then three infants with 3 and 1, total 7; three with 2 and 2, total 7; three with 1 and 3, total 7; three with 0 and 4, total 7. Finally four infants with 2 and 0, total 6; four with 1 and 1, total 6; four with 0 and 2, total 6. There is no row for five infants.

Four children under eighteen months is the absolute infant ceiling of a registered home, and it costs you half your capacity: you go from twelve children to six. THE SECOND CAREGIVER BUYS A REGISTERED HOME NOTHING. This is the rule that separates Texas from most states and the rule that costs applicants the most money. Section 747.1703, headed "If I have an additional caregiver present to supervise children in my registered child-care home, may I care for more children?", answers: "If your child-care home is registered, you may not increase the number of children in care if two or more caregivers are caring for the children." The registered chart is not a per-caregiver ratio you can multiply; it is a whole-home ceiling. Hiring an assistant caregiver in a registered home adds zero children, zero revenue and one payroll line. If you want the eighth, tenth or twelfth daytime child, the only lawful route is a Licensed Child-Care Home permit — a different application, a different permit type under §745.37(1)(C), and the licensed-home standards in Chapter 747 that a registered home does not otherwise carry.

THAT IS THE TRAP, AND IT IS PAID FOR TWICE: once in wages for a staff member who legally cannot enlarge your enrolment, and once in re-doing the permit. The fees themselves are small and are not where the money goes — under §745.507 a registration costs an "Application/ request processing fee: $35" plus an "Annual fee: $35", and under §745.509 a licence costs an "Application processing fee: $35", an "Initial license fee for an operation (other than a child-placing agency): $35", then "$35 + $1 per licensed capacity" as the non-expiring or annual fee, plus an "Amendment fee for an operation or child-placing agency: $1 for each child that the current licensed capacity is increased." Listing is cheaper still: §745.505(a) sets an "Application/request processing fee: $20" and an "Annual listing fee: $20". The loss is the months of trading at six children while you thought a second adult had bought you twelve. THE LICENSED HOME IS WHERE THE SECOND AND THIRD CAREGIVER ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. Section 747.1801 provides that "There must not be more children in your licensed child-care home at the same time than is shown in the following chart", and its figure is headed "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home" with columns "Number of children birth through 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months through three years old", "Number of children four years old and older", and "Maximum number of children one caregiver may supervise".

Note the age bands differ from the registered chart: the licensed home splits eighteen months to three years from four years and older, and it has no "after school hours" qualifier at all. Its rows: zero infants with 8 and 4, total 12; zero with 7 and 5; zero with 6 and 6; zero with 5 and 7; zero with 4 and 8; zero with 3 and 9; zero with 2 and 10; zero with 1 and 11; zero with 0 and 12 — every one of those totalling 12. Then one infant with 6 and 4, total 11, and the rest of the one-infant rows also totalling 11 down to one with 0 and 10. Then two infants, total 10, from two with 5 and 3 down to two with 0 and 8. Then three infants, total 7: three with 3 and 1, three with 2 and 2, three with 1 and 3, three with 0 and 4. Then four infants, total 6: four with 2 and 0, four with 1 and 1, four with 0 and 2. The practical consequence that registered applicants miss is at the top of the chart: one caregiver in a licensed home may supervise twelve four-year-olds during the customary school day, while one caregiver in a registered home may supervise six children aged eighteen months and older during that same day, with the second block of six reserved for children "five years old and older after school hours".

Registration does not merely cap your headcount; it caps your daytime headcount at six and pushes the rest of your business into the after-school window. TWO CAREGIVERS, AND THEN THREE. Section 747.1803 provides that "If your child-care home is licensed, then the following child/caregiver ratio and maximum group size applies when two caregivers are caring for the children", and its figure, "Number of Children Two Caregivers May Care for in a Licensed Child-Care Home", collapses to two columns plus a total: "Number of children 0 - 17 months old", "Number of children 18 months old and older", and "Maximum group size and number of children two caregivers may supervise". Its rows run zero infants with 12, total 12; one with 11, total 12; two with 10, total 12; three with 9, total 12; four with 8, total 12; five with 7, total 12; six with 6, total 12; seven with 5, total 12; eight with 4, total 12; nine with 3, total 12; and then, abruptly, ten infants with 0 older children, total 10. Ten under-eighteen-month-olds is the ceiling for two caregivers, and at that point the home may hold nobody else.

Section 747.1805 finishes the ladder: "If your child-care home is licensed and more than two caregivers are present caring for the children, then you may care for 12 children of any age from birth through 13 years." Three adults, twelve infants, lawful. In a home operation, "maximum group size" and total capacity are the same number, because §747.1605 caps the house at twelve regardless — Texas homes do not run separate classroom groups the way §746 centres do. HOW MIXED AGES ARE ACTUALLY COMPUTED, AND WHERE THE YOUNGEST CHILD SUDDENLY RULES. Inside the home, mixed ages are not computed with a formula and never by averaging or by a fractional-slot arithmetic. Section 747.1603(1) says "The total number of children you may supervise is determined by the ages of the children in the child-care home", and the mechanism is a lookup: you count how many children are in each age column at that moment, find the row that matches, and read the total. If your census does not appear as a row, you are over ratio; there is no interpolation. Away from the home, the logic inverts and the youngest child governs the whole group.

Section 747.1901(a) requires that "When children are on a field trip and are mixing with children and adults who are not from your child-care home, including but not limited to, trips to the skating rink, shopping, public park, or amusement park, you must meet the following child/caregiver ratio", and the figure "Ratios for Field Trips Mixing with Other Children or Adults Away from the Child-Care Home" is keyed on "If the age of the youngest child in the group is...": 0 through 23 months, one adult every 3 children; 2 years, one adult every 6; 3 years, one adult every 6; 4 years, one adult every 9; 5 years, one adult every 11; 6 years and older, one adult every 12. Section 747.1901(c) confines that table to genuinely public settings: "You must maintain the regular child/caregiver ratio specified in this subchapter for registered and licensed child-care homes, as applicable, when children are on a field trip in an enclosed controlled area, including but not limited to, events planned only for your group such as library story time, tours of the fire department, or on a walk in the neighborhood."

Section 747.1901(b) is the one relaxation in the chapter: "The child/caregiver ratio for field trips may include adult volunteers or household members who are not qualified as caregivers only for trips when children are mixing with children and adults who are not from your child-care home, as long as you maintain at least the regular ratio for your registered or licensed child-care home, as applicable, with qualified caregivers." OUTDOORS ON YOUR OWN PROPERTY THERE IS NO SEPARATE NUMBER — WHICH IS ITS OWN HAZARD. Chapter 747's Subchapter U (Indoor and Outdoor Active Play Space and Equipment) sets equipment, use-zone, surfacing and maintenance rules and states no outdoor ratio; the field-trip table in §747.1901 applies only away from the home, and §747.1901(c) expressly sends a neighbourhood walk back to the regular ratio. So the yard is governed by the same chart as the living room plus the supervision duty in §747.1503, which was readopted with new text effective March 1, 2023, 48 TexReg 950, and reads: "(a) The caregiver is responsible for: (1) Knowing which children the caregiver is responsible for; (2) Knowing how many children the caregiver is responsible for; (3) Knowing each child's name and having information showing each child's age; (4) Providing the level of supervision necessary to ensure each child's safety and well-being, including physical proximity and auditory or visual awareness of each child's on going activity as appropriate; and (5) Being able to intervene when necessary to ensure each child's safety."

Subsection (b) requires the caregiver to weigh "The child's chronological age", "The child's current stage of development", "The child's individual differences and abilities", "The indoor and outdoor layout of the operation", "The circumstances, hazards, and risks surrounding the child" and "The child's physical, mental, emotional, and social needs". Inspectors cite the yard under §747.1503, not under a ratio rule, and a deficiency there is a supervision finding rather than a ratio finding. NAPTIME AND THE EDGES OF THE DAY: THE ANSWER IS NO, TWICE. Section 747.1607 asks "May I reduce the number of caregivers supervising children during naptime?" and answers, in full: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers while children are napping." Section 747.1609 asks "May I adjust the child/caregiver ratio when I am opening and closing my child-care home?" and answers: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers supervising the children during opening and closing times." There is no Texas nap ratio, no early-morning ratio and no late-afternoon ratio — the same chart holds at 6:30 a.m., at 1 p.m. with every child asleep, and at 6 p.m. with two children left.

The related rule is §747.2811, which permits lowered lighting during naps "provided there is adequate lighting to allow visual supervision of all children in the group at all times. Lighting in a room is adequate if a person's eyes do not need to adjust for the person to be able to see upon entering the room." TRANSPORT HAS ITS OWN TRIGGER, AND IT USES A DIFFERENT AGE LINE. Section 747.1903 provides: "(a) You must have one caregiver in addition to the driver if you transport more than four children who are younger than 24 months. (b) When you transport children two years and older, you must comply with the regular child/caregiver ratio. The driver may be counted in this ratio if the driver meets the caregiver qualifications." Note the seam this creates. The regular charts break at seventeen and eighteen months; §747.1903 breaks at twenty-four months. A twenty-month-old sits in the "18 months and older" column of your ratio chart and simultaneously counts as a child "younger than 24 months" in the van. A licensed home carrying five twenty-month-olds is inside its indoor ratio with one caregiver but requires a second adult besides the driver the moment the vehicle moves.

The same twenty-four-month seam reappears in the water rules and in the field-trip table's "0 through 23 months" band, and it is the most common arithmetic mistake in Texas home operations. WATER IS WHERE THE SECOND ADULT BECOMES MANDATORY EVEN IN A REGISTERED HOME — AND THESE RULES CHANGED IN 2024. Division 5 of Subchapter E was amended to be effective September 26, 2024, 49 TexReg 7358, and its figures now print as 26 TAC figures rather than the old 40 TAC ones. Section 747.2001 provides: "(a) Whenever children use a wading pool, you must use the child/caregiver ratio for wading activities for all children in care. (b) If there is more than one child under 24 months in care, a second adult must be present. (c) The maximum number of children one caregiver can supervise while children use a wading pool is based on the age of the youngest child in the group".

Its figure, "Ratio for Wading Pools", gives, for a youngest child aged 0 through 23 months, one adult for a maximum of 1 child or two adults for a maximum of 6; for a youngest child aged 2 years, one adult for a maximum of 5 or two adults for a maximum of 11; for 3 years, one adult for 6; for 4 years, one adult for 12; for 5 years, one adult for 12; for 6 years and older, one adult for 12. Section 747.2005 provides: "(a) When your child-care home uses a swimming pool and four or more children are swimming, there must be at least two caregivers present supervising the children who are swimming. (b) The maximum number of children one caregiver can supervise while children are swimming is based on the age of the youngest child in the group", and the figure "Ratio for Swimming Pools" reads: youngest 0 through 23 months, one adult every 1 child; 2 years, one adult every 2; 3 years, one adult every 6; 4 years, one adult every 8; 5 years, one adult every 10; 6 years and older, one adult every 12. Section 747.2009 requires that "A certified lifeguard must be on duty at all times when children are swimming in more than 18 inches of water."

Section 747.2011 controls whether that lifeguard helps you: "(a) You must not count the certified lifeguard in the child/caregiver ratio when people other than the children from your child-care home are swimming. (b) If only children from your child-care home are swimming, you may count the certified lifeguard in the child/caregiver ratio, although the lifeguard must never be left alone with any of the children unless the lifeguard is also a qualified caregiver for your child care home." Section 747.2013 adds that "Each caregiver included in the child/caregiver ratio for swimming in 18 inches or more of water must be able to swim and must be prepared to do so in an emergency." Section 747.2015 lets you fill water ratios with unqualified adults only on conditions: you may include adult volunteers and adult household members who do not meet caregiver qualifications "provided that: (1) You maintain at least the child/caregiver ratios required in Division 2 of this subchapter (relating to Regular Ratios and Group Sizes in the Registered Child-Care Home), or Division 3 of this subchapter (relating to Regular Ratios and Group Sizes in the Licensed Child-Care Home), as applicable, with caregivers who do meet the minimum qualifications for caregivers; (2) All persons included in the ratios for water activities must be able to swim and must be prepared to do so in an emergency; and (3) You ensure compliance with all other minimum standards, including, but not limited to, standards relating to supervision, discipline, and guidance."

Sprinklers are the exception: §747.2017 provides that "We do not require additional caregivers for sprinkler play; however, you must not leave a child alone with the sprinkler equipment." WHAT THE SECOND PERSON HAS TO BE, EXACTLY. Section 747.1201 states that "There are two kinds of caregivers: assistant caregivers and substitute caregivers", and §747.1203 distinguishes them: "(a) An assistant caregiver is counted in the child/caregiver ratio and assists in the care and supervision of children. An assistant caregiver may not be left to supervise and care for children without the primary caregiver or a substitute caregiver being present in the child-care home at the same time. (b) A substitute caregiver is the caregiver you leave in charge of your child-care home in your absence."

Section 747.1207, amended to be effective August 14, 2024, 49 TexReg 4918, sets what an assistant must have to be counted: "(1) Be 18 years old, except as provided by §747.1211", "(2) Except as provided by §747.1211, have a: (A) High school diploma; (B) High school equivalent; or (C) High school certificate of coursework completion, as defined in Texas Education Code §28.025(d)", "(3) Have completed orientation to your child-care home", "(4) Meet the requirements in Chapter 745, Subchapter F of this title (relating to Background Checks)", "(5) Have a current record of a tuberculosis (TB) examination showing the caregiver is free of contagious TB, if required by the Texas Department of State Health Services or local health authority", "(6) Complete a notarized Licensing Affidavit for Applicants for Employment with a Licensed Operation or Registered Child-Care Home (Form 2985) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver, as specified in Human Resources Code §42.059;

and (7) Complete a Pre-Employment Affidavit for Applicants for Employment at Certain Child Care Operations (Form 2912) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver, as specified in Texas Human Resources Code §42.0563." A substitute caregiver must, under §747.1209, "(1) Comply with all of the minimum qualifications for an assistant caregiver, as specified in §747.1207" and "(2) Have training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR as required by §747.1313". Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds may be counted only under §747.1211, and only where "The person is never in charge of an individual child, never has sole responsibility for a group of children, and does not act as the substitute caregiver in your absence" and "works close by and is supervised by you or a qualified caregiver", with a completed or in-progress child-care-related career program approved by the Texas Education Agency or an equivalent body.

The practical reading: a teenager can hold a ratio slot but cannot hold the home. WHEN YOU ARE MOMENTARILY ALONE, OR MOMENTARILY GONE. Section 747.205 requires that "As the primary caregiver, you must routinely be present in your child-care home during its hours of operation; however, you may be temporarily absent for limited periods of time for vacations, short-term family emergencies or family business, illness, hospitalization or doctor appointments, jury duty, to attend training, or to attend to child-care business." That list is exhaustive on its face — running an errand for convenience is not on it. Section 747.203 then requires that "When you are absent from the child-care home, you must designate a substitute caregiver to be in charge of the child-care home. Substitutes must: (1) Know they are in charge and for how long; (2) Know their responsibilities while in charge; (3) Have access to all essential information to communicate with parents and state and local authorities as needed; and (4) Have the authority to run the child-care home in compliance with minimum standards."

Nothing in Subchapter E suspends the ratio while you step out; §747.1607 and §747.1609 already establish that Texas does not allow ratio relief for any part of the day, and §747.1605 keeps counting the children you took with you. If you are the only qualified adult and you leave, your assistant cannot lawfully hold the house under §747.1203(a), your teenage assistant cannot under §747.1211(a)(1), and your lifeguard cannot under §747.2011(b) unless he is separately a qualified caregiver for your home. The only person who can be alone with your children is a substitute caregiver who meets §747.1209 in full, pediatric CPR included, and who has been told in advance that she is in charge and for how long. THE THREE MISTAKES THAT COST REAL MONEY, RESTATED PLAINLY. The first is registering because it is cheap and then hiring help to grow: §747.1703 makes that second wage buy nothing, and only a Licensed Child-Care Home permit under §745.37(1)(C) reaches children seven through twelve. The second is treating the age bands as one system: the ratio charts break at seventeen and eighteen months, transport breaks at twenty-four months under §747.1903(a), and water and field trips break at twenty-three months under the figures to §747.2001(c), §747.2005(b) and §747.1901(a) — one child aged twenty months can put you in ratio indoors and out of ratio in the van and at the wading pool on the same afternoon.

The third is forgetting §747.1603(3) and (4): your own children, your assistant's children, drop-in children, part-time children and neighbourhood children you supervise all occupy paid seats, "regardless of the length of time they are present". Build your enrolment plan from the chart row, not from the number twelve.

Training you must complete before licensure

Texas has no single number you can put on a wall for pre-service training in a home, and the first thing to unlearn is the figure most people arrive with. The "eight hours before you are given responsibility for a group of children, twenty-four hours of initial training" rule that circulates in Texas child-care forums is real statute, but it is not yours: Texas Human Resources Code §42.0421(a)(1) prescribes "24 hours of initial training that must be completed not later than the 90th day after the employee's first day of employment for an employee of a day-care center... eight hours of which must be completed before the employee is given responsibility for a group of children." The subject of that sentence is an employee of a day-care center. Neither the operator of a registered family home nor the primary caregiver of a licensed child-care home nor any caregiver in a home appears in it, and §42.0421(h) then forbids the executive commissioner from going above the statutory hour counts anyway: "In adopting the minimum training standards under Section 42.042(p), the executive commissioner may not require more training hours than the number of hours prescribed by Subsection (a) for a day-care center, group day-care home, or registered family home."

What Texas requires of a home before the permit issues is not an hour count at all. It is a topic list, a course certificate, a card, and — for one permit — a degree-and-experience grid. The permits are administered by Child Care Regulation (CCR) within HHSC; the rules live in 26 TAC Chapter 742 for listed family homes and 26 TAC Chapter 747 for registered and licensed child-care homes, with Chapter 745 running procedure on top. Which of the three permits you hold changes the pre-service floor more than any other fact about your home, and the gap between bottom and top is enormous. Start at the bottom, where the Texas answer is genuinely startling. The whole of the qualification floor is 26 TAC §742.301, "What types of minimum qualifications must caregivers have?", and it reads in full: "Primary caregivers and substitute caregivers must: (1) Be at least 18 years of age[Medium]; and (2) Meet the requirements in Chapter 745, Subchapter F of this title (relating to Background Checks)." That is the entire text. There is no orientation requirement, no pre-service topic list, no CPR requirement, no first-aid requirement, no education requirement beyond age, and no annual training requirement anywhere in Chapter 742. What Chapter 742 does carry, immediately below §742.301, is a Technical Assistance box — and a Technical Assistance box in a Texas minimum-standards publication is guidance, not rule.

That box says "Some recommended topics of training for caregivers include:" and then lists pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking, CPR, reporting child abuse and neglect, poison prevention and safety, administering medication, and transportation safety. The operative word is "recommended." A listed family home caregiver who has never taken a CPR class is not out of compliance with Chapter 742. This is not a drafting oversight; it tracks the statute. HRC §42.042(d-1) sets a separate, much thinner standards mandate for listed homes — the standards must promote children's health, safety and welfare, promote safe and healthy homes, "ensure adequate supervision of children by capable, qualified, and healthy personnel," and ensure medication is administered under §42.065 — and nothing in it mentions training. The operative training statute, §42.0421, names only "a day-care center, group day-care home, or registered family home"; the listed family home is absent from every subsection of it. Two practical consequences follow. First, if you are listed and someone says your lapsed CPR card puts you out of compliance, ask them to cite the rule; there is none in Chapter 742. Second, the moment you take a fourth unrelated child, HRC §42.052(d) makes registration mandatory — "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission" — and you land in Chapter 747, where every one of those recommendations becomes a pre-permit condition. A listing is not a lighter training regime for a growing business; it is a permit with a hard ceiling of three unrelated children, and the training bill arrives in full on the day you outgrow it.

The registered child-care home is where a real pre-service floor first appears, and the timing rule is unforgiving. 26 TAC §747.1003 is one sentence: "You must meet the qualifications before we register your child-care home. [Medium-High]" Not within ninety days of registration, not by the first annual anniversary — before. The qualifications themselves are at 26 TAC §747.1007, whose current version in the HHSC publication carries the rule date October 2018, and the opening is "Except as otherwise provided in this division, you must: (1) Be at least 21 years old [Medium]; (2) Have a: (A) High school diploma [Medium-High]; or (B) High school equivalent [Medium-High]; (3) Have a certificate of completion of the Licensing pre-application course within one year prior to your application date; (4) Meet the requirements in Subchapter F of Chapter 745 of this title (relating to Background Checks); (5) Have a current certificate of training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR as specified in §747.1313 of this subchapter... [Medium-High]; (6) Have a current record of a tuberculosis (TB) examination showing you are free of contagious TB, if required by the Texas Department of State Health Services or local health authority [Medium-High]; and (7) Have proof of training in the following".

Paragraph (7) is the topic list, and it is the closest thing Texas has to a pre-service curriculum for a home: "(A) Prevention, recognition, and reporting of child maltreatment," broken into factors indicating a child is at risk, warning signs that a child may be a victim, "Procedures for reporting child abuse or neglect," and "Community organizations that have training programs available to employees, children, and parents"; "(B) Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma"; "(C) Understanding and using safe sleep practices and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)"; "(D) Understanding early childhood brain development"; "(E) Understanding the developmental stages of children"; "(F) Emergency preparedness"; (G) preventing and controlling the spread of communicable diseases, including immunizations; (H) administering medication, if applicable; (I) preventing and responding to emergencies due to food or an allergic reaction; (J) "Understanding building and physical premises safety, including identification and protection from hazards that can cause bodily injury such as electrical hazards, bodies of water, and vehicular traffic"; (K) handling, storing and disposing of hazardous materials; and (L) precautions in transporting a child whose chronological or developmental age is younger than nine years old.

Every one of those twelve subparagraphs is weighted Medium-High. Read the list closely for what it does not say: no clock hours are attached to any topic, and none is attached to the list as a whole. Texas measures pre-permit training by whether you can produce proof on each named topic, not by whether the certificates add up to a number. A cheap one-day package that touches all twelve topics satisfies §747.1007(7) on its face; a forty-hour early-childhood course that never mentions hazardous materials or transportation precautions does not. Note also that §747.1005 permits exactly one primary caregiver, so this floor cannot be met jointly by a couple; one named person carries it. If you are under 21, §747.1013 opens a narrow door: at 18 through 20 with a diploma or equivalent you may be a registered caregiver if you also hold a CDA or Certified Child-Care Professional credential, an associate's of applied science in child care, a community college certificate in child care, a Licensing-approved day-care administrator's credential, or "Six college credit hours in child development and nine months' experience in a licensed child-care center or in a licensed or registered child-care home."

The licensed child-care home takes everything above and adds an education-and-experience gate that is, in substance, a director qualification. 26 TAC §747.1103 repeats the timing — "You must meet the qualifications before we license your child-care home" — and §747.1107, rule-dated March 2023, repeats paragraphs (1) through (7) of §747.1007 word for word, then adds paragraph (8): "Have one of the following combinations of education and experience in a licensed child-care center, or in a licensed or registered child-care home, as defined in §747.1113 of this division... [Medium-High]", followed by a seven-row table. Rows (A) through (D) each pair a qualification — a bachelor degree with 12 child-development credit hours and three management credit hours; an associate of applied science in child development or a closely related field with six and three; sixty college credit hours with six and three; or a Child Development Associate or Certified Child-Care Professional credential plus three management credit hours — with one year of experience. Rows (E) and (F), a community-college child-care administrator's certificate with 15 child-development and three management credit hours, or a Licensing-approved day-care administrator's credential, each require two years.

Row (G) requires "Seventy-two clock hours of training in child development and 30 clock hours in management" with "at least three years of experience in a licensed child-care center or licensed or registered child-care home." Row (G) is the no-college route and the one most home providers can reach, but it is the most expensive in time, and §747.1113(c) defines what counts: "Full-time is defined as at least 30 hours per week. The work experience may be paid or unpaid." Only certain experience counts: §747.1113(a) limits centre experience to work "as a director, assistant director, or as a caregiver working directly with children" in a licensed or certified centre in Texas or another state or country, and §747.1113(b) limits home experience to work "in a DFPS licensed or registered child-care home... as an assistant caregiver, substitute caregiver, or primary caregiver." Unregulated babysitting, nannying and church-exempt care do not count. §747.1115 allows one year to be met instead by a year of full-time classroom teaching in pre-kindergarten through third grade in an accredited school, by equivalent part-time or substitute teaching, or by "One-year of postgraduate study in child development, early childhood education, or a related field." §747.1129 lets you buy back the college credit hours with training: "50 clock hours or five CEUs may be substituted for every three college credit hours required in child development and management."

Then comes the paperwork that makes or breaks the application: §747.1131 requires you to submit to Licensing staff a completed Licensing Personal History Statement specifying your education and experience, "An original and current Licensing Child-Care Director's Certificate form, an original college transcript, or original training certificates which verify the educational requirements," and "Complete dates, names, addresses, and telephone numbers which support the required experience," with subsection (b) fixing the moment: "You must submit the information to us as a part of a new application for a permit." If you fall short, §747.1141 says CCR "will give you a deadline to submit additional paperwork, or ask you to withdraw your application and re-apply after you have obtained the necessary training and experience." When you clear it, §747.1143 issues a Licensing Child-Care Director's Certificate, free of charge under §747.1151, which never expires unless you qualified by row (D) or row (F) — the credential routes — in which case §747.1147 requires the credential to be kept current and §747.1149 warns that letting it lapse means "your home will no longer meet the minimum standards related to primary caregiver qualifications."

The "Licensing pre-application course" in §747.1007(3) and §747.1107(3) is the piece applicants most often discover too late, partly because CCR calls it three different things: the rules call it a course, HHSC's applicant page calls step 2 "Attend a Child Care Home Orientation" and later refers to "your pre-application class," and the Child Care Regulation Handbook calls it a pre-application interview. Handbook item 3210, carrying the stamp "Revision 25-2; Effective July 1, 2025" and citing 26 TAC §745.213, says "The pre-application interview (also known as orientation or an inquiry meeting) teaches a potential applicant or governing body designee about the application process, CCR requirements, and administrative procedures." Item 3211, same revision, citing §745.211 and §745.243, sets the scope: "A pre-application interview is required for an applicant or applicant's governing body designee seeking a license, certificate, or registration. For a registration, a pre-application interview must have been completed within one year before the application date. An applicant for a listing may attend a pre-application interview for registered and licensed child care homes, but is not required to do so."

That last sentence is the listed-home rule in one line: optional. Item 3213 makes clear the content is administrative rather than pedagogical — application completeness, the twenty-one-day review clock, the two-month decision, governing body, controlling person, liability insurance and background check responsibilities, and the warning that an application returned three times in one year for incompleteness costs the applicant a one-year wait. Item 3214 supplies the artefact the rule demands: "After completion of the pre-application interview, the inspector provides the applicant with a certificate of completion." Keep that certificate. Both §747.1007(3) and §747.1107(3) require it dated "within one year prior to your application date," so a course taken thirteen months before you file does not qualify and the application is short a qualification on the day it is reviewed. One wrinkle: the handbook attaches the one-year window explicitly to registrations, while §747.1107(3) applies the same window to licensed homes. Where handbook and rule differ, the rule governs — the agency's manual is not the law.

Pediatric CPR and first aid are pre-service for two of the three roles in a Chapter 747 home and not for the third, and the rule is unusually specific about what a valid card looks like. 26 TAC §747.1313 provides: "(a) The primary caregiver, each substitute caregiver, and each assistant caregiver must have a current certificate of training with an expiration or renewal date in: (1) Pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking; and (2) Pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)." Both are weighted Medium-High. Subsection (b) governs the course: the pediatric CPR "(1) Must adhere to the guidelines for CPR for a layperson established by the American Heart Association, and consist of a curriculum that incudes use of a CPR manikin and both written and hands-on skill-based instruction, practice, and testing [Medium-High]; and (2) May be provided through blended learning that utilizes online technology, including self-instructional training, as long as the criteria in paragraph (1) of this subsection is met." Read that before you buy a course. A purely online CPR certificate is not compliant, because the curriculum must include a manikin and hands-on skill-based instruction, practice and testing; a blended course that teaches online and then puts you in front of a manikin for a skills check is.

CCR reprints the American Heart Association's own warning next to the rule: the AHA "does not approve training courses created by other organizations," "does not allow its course completion cards to be given to students who do not complete the skills check portion," and "there are no 'AHA-compliant' training courses or 'AHA-certified' professionals conducting training" — look instead for the "Authorized Training Center" logo. The timing by role is set out in the chart at 26 TAC §747.1303, rule-dated September 2024: for the primary caregiver the pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR must be complete "before we register or license the child-care home"; for a substitute caregiver, "before being counted in the child/caregiver ratio"; for an assistant caregiver, "within 90 days of employment"; and for everyone, "Each caregiver must stay current in this training." That ninety-day allowance for assistants is the most useful flexibility in the chapter and the one most often misremembered as applying to substitutes. It does not. §747.1209 makes the point twice: a substitute must "Comply with all of the minimum qualifications for an assistant caregiver, as specified in §747.1207" and must "Have training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR as required by §747.1313." The person you leave in charge in your absence must be card-carrying before their first shift in ratio; the helper who works alongside you has three months.

Orientation is the other genuinely pre-service item, and it binds every caregiver in a registered or licensed home, including the ones you think of as casual help. Under the §747.1303 chart, orientation to your child-care home as specified in §747.1301 must be completed by "Each caregiver" "Within seven days of employment and before having unsupervised access to a child in care." Both halves are conditions; the seven-day outer limit does not license you to leave a new assistant alone with a child on day two. The statutory anchor is HRC §42.0426(c): "Not later than the seventh day after the date an employee begins employment at a day-care center, group day-care home, or registered family home, the employee must complete an orientation to the facility." §747.1301, rule-dated October 2018, then prescribes fifteen contents: an overview of the minimum standards in the chapter; an overview of your operational policies "including discipline and guidance practices and procedures for the release of children, and the provision of copies of these practices and procedures"; the prevention, recognition and reporting of child maltreatment, broken into the same four sub-items as §747.1007(7)(A); "An overview of your home's Emergency Preparedness Plan"; "Locating and using fire extinguishers and first-aid equipment"; and then the same health-and-safety topics that appear at §747.1007(7)(B) through (E) and (G) through (L), emergency preparedness appearing here as the plan overview rather than a separate topic.

Orientation is delivered by you, in your home, about your home; it is not a course you buy. The proof is prescribed at §747.1327(d): "For orientation, you must obtain a signed and dated statement from the caregiver and the person providing the orientation stating the caregiver has received the orientation, or you may obtain an original statement or letter as specified in subsection (b) of this section." Two signatures, not one. There is one additional record that applies only in a licensed home: §747.901(10) requires the personnel file to hold "A statement signed and dated by the caregiver in a licensed child-care home verifying the date the caregiver attended training during orientation that includes an overview regarding the prevention, recognition, and reporting of child maltreatment." That asymmetry follows HRC §42.0426(a-1), which imposes the signed-attendance duty on "A licensed facility," and §42.0426(a), which requires a licensed facility to train staff in recognising and reporting child abuse, neglect and sexual molestation, "the application of first aid," and "the prevention and spread of communicable diseases."

Assistants and substitutes have their own pre-service floor, including two sworn documents that must exist before the person starts, not after. 26 TAC §747.1207, rule-dated August 2024, requires an assistant caregiver counted in ratio to be 18 (except under §747.1211); to have a high school diploma, high school equivalent, or "High school certificate of coursework completion, as defined in Texas Education Code, §28.025(d)"; to "Have completed orientation to your child-care home"; to meet Chapter 745 Subchapter F background checks; to have a current TB record if required; to "Complete a notarized Licensing Affidavit for Applicants for Employment with a Licensed Operation or Registered Child-Care Home (Form 2985) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver, as specified in Human Resources Code §42.059"; and to complete "a Pre-Employment Affidavit for Applicants for Employment at Certain Child Care Operations (Form 2912) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver, as specified in Texas Human Resources Code §42.0563." Both affidavits are statutory. HRC §42.059 prints the sworn text in full, across seventeen categories of conduct, and §42.059(b) states the consequence: "The failure or refusal of the applicant to sign or provide the affidavit constitutes good cause for refusal to hire the applicant."

HRC §42.0563, added by Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 58 (S.B. 1469), eff. September 1, 2023, requires disclosure of "whether the applicant has ever been charged with, adjudicated for, or convicted of having an inappropriate relationship with a minor," and CCR's note under §747.1207 is explicit that "the affidavit is not a substitute for complying with CCR's background check requirements." §747.1211 opens a supervised route for minors: a 16 or 17 year old with a diploma, or a 16, 17 or 18 year old still in high school, may be an assistant caregiver only if the person "is never in charge of an individual child, never has sole responsibility for a group of children, and does not act as the substitute caregiver in your absence," works close by under supervision, and has completed or is enrolled in an approved child-care-related career program.

Household members are pulled in by §747.1401: every household member 14 or older needs a TB record if required and must complete orientation under §747.1403; any household member counted in ratio on more than ten separate occasions in one training year, "whether paid or unpaid," must meet the assistant-caregiver qualifications and the caregiver training requirements; any household member left in charge in your absence must meet the substitute-caregiver qualifications; and one who is not regularly present "must never be left alone with a child in care" unless qualified. §747.1403 gives household orientation four contents: home policies with copies provided; "An overview of symptoms of child maltreatment and the responsibility for reporting these"; emergency procedures, expressly including "fire, explosion, tornado, toxic fumes, volatile individuals, and severe injury or illness of a child or adult"; and fire extinguishers and first-aid equipment. §747.1405 applies the same floor to volunteers and contractors. Who delivers the training matters as much as its content, and Texas runs no approval scheme — the rule says so itself. 26 TAC §747.1317 asks "Does Licensing approve training resources or trainers for training hours?" and answers "No.

We do not approve or endorse training resources or trainers for training hours. But you must ensure you and your caregivers receive training that: (1) Meets the criteria specified in §747.1315...; (2) Is relevant to the topics specified in this division; and (3) The participants receive original documentation of completion." §747.1315(a) then lists who qualifies: "A training provider registered with the Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System Training Registry, maintained by the Texas Head Start State Collaboration Office"; an instructor teaching early childhood development or another relevant course at an accredited secondary school or institution of higher education; a state-agency employee with relevant expertise; a physician, psychologist, licensed professional counselor, social worker or registered nurse; a person holding "a generally recognized credential or possesses documented knowledge relevant to the training"; the primary caregiver herself, but only where she trains only her own caregivers and "Your home has not been on probation, suspension, emergency suspension, or revocation in the two years preceding the training or been assessed an administrative penalty in the two years preceding the training"; or a person with two years of experience in the field holding a current CDA credential or at least an associate's degree.

The Trainer Registry is where most home providers should shop, and CCR's own advice is that it "will indicate the competency area that a trainer has been verified to provide training" and that "The trainer number is only to be used for the specific competency verified by the Trainer Registry." A registry number is not a blanket credential; a trainer registered for one competency who signs a certificate in another has handed you a defective document. What the inspector asks to see is a short, specific list, worth assembling before the application inspection rather than during it. For yourself, §747.909 requires you to have available during hours of operation a TB record if required, "A record of your training hours [Medium]," and a current driver's licence or other photo identification. §747.903 extends the same file to household members used as assistants or substitutes "whether they are paid or unpaid," and §747.905 requires, for household members not counted in ratio, a TB record if required, "Documentation verifying orientation to the child-care home was completed," and "Proof of request for a DFPS Background Check. [High]".

For each assistant and substitute, §747.901 requires the first and last day on the job; documentation of how the caregiver meets the age and education qualifications; the TB record; Form 2985; Form 2912; "A record of training hours, including documentation required by §747.1327"; proof of request for all Subchapter F background checks; a photo identification; a driver's licence if the person transports children; and, in a licensed home only, the signed maltreatment-orientation statement. The form of the certificates is prescribed by §747.1327(b): an original certificate or letter showing the participant's name, the date, the title or subject, the trainer's name or the source, "The trainer's qualifications, in compliance with §747.1315," and the length in clock hours, CEUs or college credit hours. For CPR and first aid, §747.1327(c) adds the expiration or renewal date and permits a photocopy in the personnel file "so long as the caregiver is able to provide an original certificate or letter upon Licensing's request." Retention is short: §747.803(b) requires training records to be kept "for at least the current and last full training year."

Two boundaries close this out. The first is annual training, a separate regime not satisfied by anything above: §747.1305(h) states that "Annual training is exclusive of any requirements for orientation, pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR training, transportation safety training, water safety training," and high school work-study training, and §747.1311 starts the primary caregiver's first annual clock "within 12 months from the date you are registered or licensed with us." Curiously, the only two places Chapter 747 uses the phrase "pre-service training" at all are §747.1314(b) and §747.1323(c), which say that transportation safety training and water safety training "are exclusive of any requirements for orientation, pre-service training, and annual training" — a term the chapter never defines and never separately imposes on a home. The second boundary is the calendar. A sweep of every Texas Register issue from September 2025 through August 14, 2026 turned up no adopted or proposed change to 26 TAC Chapter 747 Subchapter D or to §742.301, so the rule dates printed in HHSC's current publications — October 2018 for §747.1007 and §747.1313, March 2023 for §747.1107, August 2024 for §747.1207, September 2024 for §747.1303 — are the live ones.

What is moving is adjacent and worth watching: HHSC filed on July 15, 2026 (TRD-202602924) a proposal for new 26 TAC §747.311 and new §742.402, "Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements," implementing HRC §42.0562 as added by S.B. 225 of 2021, which would require "Each listed family home permit holder, controlling person, employee, and prospective employee" — and the same categories at a child care home under Chapter 747 — to complete a form disclosing any revocation of a state-issued occupational authorization, with written notice to the parents of every enrolled child and the form and signed notices kept on file for CCR review. The earliest possible date of adoption printed in the Texas Register is August 30, 2026. That would be the first pre-hire paperwork duty ever imposed on a listed family home. Proposed is not adopted; check the Texas Register before you build it into a hiring packet. Finally, do not use HHSC's own "Become a Child Care Home Provider" page as your checklist. Its Registered Child Care Home entry says only "Must be at least 21 years old and have a high school diploma or high school equivalent to apply" and never mentions the pre-application course certificate, the pediatric first aid and CPR card, the TB record, or the twelve-topic training list of §747.1007(7). Every one of those is a pre-registration condition in the rule, and an application built from the web page will be short four qualifications on the day the inspector opens it.

Ongoing (annual) training

WHAT TEXAS MAKES YOU DO EVERY YEAR AFTER THE PERMIT ISSUES, AND WHY THE NUMBER DEPENDS ENTIRELY ON WHICH OF THE THREE PERMITS YOU HOLD (verified 26 August 2026 against the rules the Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer serves as in effect on that date, against Chapter 42 of the Human Resources Code as the Legislature publishes it today, and against the Texas Register issue in which the current professional-development rules were adopted; not against a pinned PDF). START WITH THE SOURCE PROBLEM, BECAUSE IT IS WHERE TEXAS APPLICANTS ARE MISLED FIRST. Consultant pages, training vendors and printed handouts still send you to texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC, which now answers "This Site Has Moved" and serves no rule text at all. The Texas Administrative Code moved to a portal at texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings, and the section pages there carry a queryAsDate parameter which defaults to today's date, so the portal answers "what is in effect right now" rather than "what did a file say when somebody saved it".

When you open Title 26, Part 1, Chapter 747, Subchapter D, Personnel, Division 4, Professional Development on that portal as of 26 August 2026, the division contains thirteen rules and the portal stamps the whole chapter with a Chapter Review Date of 05/17/2024. The compilation HHSC publishes as a PDF, "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", carries a running footer reading "Revised: December 2025". That is a publication stamp on HHSC's booklet, not an effective date, and the two are routinely confused: the annual-training rules have not changed since 2024. The portal's Historical tab for §747.1309 shows the previous version was "Effective Through 09/25/2024", and the portal's Texas Register tab shows the operative adoption was published in the Texas Register issue of 09/13/2024, with the proposal that preceded it published 04/26/2024. A page telling you the Texas annual-training rules "changed in December 2025" is reading a footer. THE SECOND VERSION TRAP IS THE CHAPTER NUMBER. A listed family home is no longer governed by any part of Chapter 747. Listed family homes have their own chapter, 26 TAC Chapter 742, "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR LISTED FAMILY HOMES", which the Secretary of State's portal lists between Chapter 741 and Chapter 743 in Title 26, Part 1. Chapter 742 has eight subchapters, A through H, with no Professional Development division anywhere in it.

Its entire treatment of caregiver qualifications is §742.301, which says in full that "Primary caregivers and substitute caregivers must: (1) Be at least 18 years of age; and (2) Meet the requirements in Chapter 745, Subchapter F of this title (relating to Background Checks)." Everything a listed home is told about training appears in the non-binding Technical Assistance box under that rule, which begins "Some recommended topics of training for caregivers include" and then lists pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking, CPR, reporting child abuse and neglect, poison prevention and safety, administering medication, and transportation safety. Recommended, not required. If you hold a listing, your annual training obligation in Texas is zero clock hours, you are not required to hold a current CPR or pediatric first-aid card, and nothing in Chapter 742 obliges you to keep a training record. That is the design the Legislature wrote, and the listing itself must carry the warning text prescribed by Human Resources Code §42.052(i): "A LISTED FAMILY HOME HAS LIMITED MINIMUM STANDARDS AND IS NOT INSPECTED UNLESS A COMPLAINT IS FILED WITH THE COMMISSION."

THE ONE TRAINING A LISTED HOME OWES IS ONE-TIME AND IT IS OWED BEFORE THE LISTING, NOT AFTER IT. Human Resources Code §42.046(f) provides that "An applicant for a listing to operate a family home shall submit with the application proof of the applicant's successful completion of safe sleep training in accordance with commission rules." HHSC satisfies that with a self-instructional booklet, "Safe-Sleep Self-Instructional Training for Listed Family Homes", stamped March 2026, whose opening paragraph says the test "must be passed with 80% to receive credit (answering 10 of the 13 questions correctly)" and that "The completed test needs to be submitted with the Listed Family Home application." There is no annual repetition of it, because there is nothing to repeat it against: §42.052(e-1) says "A listing remains valid until the listing is revoked or surrendered." A listing has no expiry and no renewal cycle, so no recurring training can attach to one. An "annual safe sleep renewal" for a Texas listed family home is a product the state does not require. FOR A REGISTERED CHILD-CARE HOME AND A LICENSED CHILD-CARE HOME, THE PRIMARY CAREGIVER'S NUMBER IS THE SAME AND IT IS THIRTY.

Section 747.1309(a) states, without distinguishing between the two permit types, "You must obtain at least 30 clock hours of training each year relevant to the age of the children for whom you provide care." The chart at §747.1303 confirms it from the other direction: item (5) of that figure requires "30 clock hours of annual training, as specified in §747.1309 of this division" of "The primary caregiver", completed "(C)(i) Within 12 months of employment; and (C)(ii) During each subsequent 12-month period." Thirty is also the statutory ceiling, not merely the floor: Human Resources Code §42.0421(a)(3) requires the minimum training standards to include "30 hours of annual training for each director of a day-care center or group day-care home, or operator of a registered family home", and §42.0421(h) then forbids HHSC to go further: "In adopting the minimum training standards under Section 42.042(p), the executive commissioner may not require more training hours than the number of hours prescribed by Subsection (a) for a day-care center, group day-care home, or registered family home."

Thirty is where the rule stops for you personally; no inspector can lawfully demand a thirty-first hour of general annual training. WHERE THE TWO HOME PERMITS ACTUALLY DIVERGE IS YOUR STAFF, AND THE GAP IS NINE HOURS. Item (3) of the §747.1303 chart requires "15 clock hours of annual training, as specified in §747.1305 of this division" of "Each substitute and assistant caregiver in a registered child-care home that is counted in the child/caregiver ratio on more than ten separate occasions in one training year." Item (4) requires "24 clock hours of annual training, as specified in §747.1305 of this division" of "Each substitute and assistant caregiver in a licensed child-care home that is counted in the child/caregiver ratio on more than ten separate occasions in one training year." Same job, same rule, same topics: fifteen hours in a registered home, twenty-four in a licensed one. The delivery-mode floor differs with it. Section 747.1305(f) provides that for the registered-home assistant or substitute "at least three of the required 15 annual training hours must come from instructor-led training.

The remaining 12 required annual training hours may come from self-instructional training, of which no more than three hours may come from self-study training", while §747.1305(g) sets the licensed-home figures at "at least five of the required 24 annual training hours" instructor-led with "The remaining 19 required annual training hours" self-instructional and the same three-hour self-study cap. For you as primary caregiver the parallel provision is §747.1309(i): "At least six of the required 30 annual training hours must come from instructor-led training. The remaining 24 required annual training hours may come from self-instructional training, of which no more than three hours may come from self-study training." Those three delivery modes are defined terms, not adjectives. Instructor-led training is defined in §747.123 as "Training characterized by the communication and interaction that takes place between the student and the instructor", requiring "an opportunity for the student to interact with the instructor to obtain clarifications and information beyond the scope of the training materials".

Self-instructional training is "Training designed to be used by one individual working alone and at the individual's own pace to complete lessons or modules", and the definition adds that "Self-study training is also a type of self-instructional training." Self-study training is "Non-standardized training where an individual reads written materials, watches a training video, or listens to a recording", and its definition carries its own hard cap: "Self-study training is limited to three hours of annual training per year." A caregiver with thirty hours of video-watching has, in the state's arithmetic, three countable hours. THE "MORE THAN TEN SEPARATE OCCASIONS" TRIGGER IS THE MOST EXPENSIVE SENTENCE IN THE DIVISION, AND YOU HAVE NO RECORD THAT PROVES IT EITHER WAY. Section 747.1305(a) repeats the trigger: "Each caregiver counted in the child/caregiver ratio on more than ten separate occasions in one training year, as specified in §747.1311 of this division (relating to When must the annual training be obtained?) must obtain annual training relevant to the age of the children for whom the caregiver provides care."

Two things about that. First, the term "training year" is used in §747.1303, §747.1305, §747.803 and §747.1401 but it is not one of the sixty-two defined terms in §747.123; it takes its meaning only from the twelve-month periods that §747.1311 sets running. Second, §747.911 says outright that "We do not require you to maintain attendance records or time sheets for yourself or any other person you count in the child/caregiver ratio." So the eleventh occasion is the moment a neighbour who covers for you turns into a caregiver owing fifteen or twenty-four hours, and the state declines to require the very document that would establish which occasion was the eleventh. Count them yourself, in writing, or train everyone you ever put in ratio. WHEN THE CLOCK STARTS IS DIFFERENT FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR STAFF, AND NOTHING ROLLS OVER. Section 747.1311 is three short subsections and all three matter. Subsection (a): "The annual training for a primary caregiver must be obtained within 12 months from the date you are registered or licensed with us and during each subsequent 12-month period." Your year runs from the date on your permit, not from 1 January, not from your fiscal year, not from the date you finished the pre-application course.

Subsection (b): "The annual training for each assistant caregiver and substitute caregiver must be obtained within 12 months from the date of the caregiver's employment and during each subsequent 12-month period." Every caregiver carries a personal twelve-month window keyed to their own start date, so a home with four staff runs five different training years at once. Subsection (c) closes the escape hatch: "If a caregiver obtains more than the minimum number of annual training clock hours required, the caregiver may not carry the additional hours over to the next year." Front-loading forty hours in year one buys nothing in year two. INSIDE THE THIRTY HOURS, FOUR SEPARATE TOPIC OBLIGATIONS COMPETE FOR THE SAME CLOCK. First, §747.1309(b): "At least six clock hours of the annual training hours must be in one or more of the following topics: (1) Child growth and development; (2) Guidance and discipline; (3) Age-appropriate curriculum; and (4) Teacher-child interaction." That block is statutory, appearing verbatim as the four listed areas in HRC §42.0421(a)(3)(A)-(D), and the identical six hours bind your assistants and substitutes under §747.1305(b).

Second, the infant hour, §747.1309(c): "If your home provides care for children younger than 24 months, one hour of the annual training hours must cover all the following topics: (1) Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome; (2) Understanding and using safe sleep practices and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); and (3) Understanding early childhood brain development." Read the word "all": one hour covering three subjects, not three hours. The same one-hour, three-subject requirement falls on assistants and substitutes through §747.1305(c), where the first item is phrased wider as "Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma". The statutory hook is §42.0421(c), which directs the executive commissioner to "require an operator of a registered family home who provides care for a child younger than 24 months of age to complete one hour of annual training" on exactly those three subjects, and §42.0421(b), which makes the same subject matter "a one-hour component of the annual training" for day-care-centre and group-day-care-home staff.

Third, and only for the primary caregiver, the management block at §747.1309(e): "If you have: (1) Five or fewer years of experience as a primary caregiver in a licensed or registered child-care home, you must complete at least six of the annual training hours in management techniques, leadership, or staff supervision; or (2) More than five years of experience as a primary caregiver in a licensed or registered child-care home, you must complete at least three of the annual training hours in management techniques, leadership, or staff supervision." A new registered-home operator caring for infants therefore has six hours locked to child development, one to the infant triad and six to management before choosing a single elective. Fourth, the zero-hour topics. Section 747.1309(d) opens "While there are no clock hour requirements for the topics in this subsection, the annual training hours must also include training on the following topics", then lists "(1) Emergency preparedness; (2) Preventing and controlling the spread of communicable diseases, including immunizations; (3) Administering medication, if applicable...; (4) Preventing and responding to emergencies due to food or an allergic reaction; (5) Understanding building and physical premises safety, including identification and protection from hazards that can cause bodily injury such as electrical hazards, bodies of water, and vehicular traffic; and (6) Handling, storing, and disposing of hazardous materials".

Section 747.1305(d) imposes the identical six on assistants and substitutes. These are citable deficiencies with no minimum duration: HHSC's Technical Assistance note under §747.1305 says "a caregiver is required to have annual training in topic areas (d)(1)-(d)(6), but the child-care home can determine how many hours a caregiver must have in each of those topics". Emergency preparedness is mandatory every year, and a fifteen-minute module discharges it. Whatever is left over must come from the elective menu; §747.1309(f) sends the primary caregiver to "the training topics specified in §747.1305(e)", which is the twelve-item list running from "Care of children with special needs" through "Minimum standards and how they apply to the caregiver." NOTICE WHAT IS NOT ON THE ANNUAL LIST FOR A HOME, BECAUSE THIS IS WHERE ADVICE WRITTEN FOR TEXAS CENTRES GETS COPIED ONTO HOMES AND IS WRONG. There is no annual child-abuse-and-neglect hour for a child-care home. Prevention, recognition and reporting of child maltreatment appears in Chapter 747 as an orientation item, §747.1301(3), and as a pre-permit qualification item for the primary caregiver, §747.1007(7)(A) for a registered home and §747.1107(7)(A) for a licensed home, with its four sub-elements about risk factors, warning signs, reporting procedures and community organisations.

It does not appear in §747.1305 or §747.1309. The statute confirms the asymmetry: Human Resources Code §42.04261 imposes the recurring abuse-prevention training, and by its own terms it applies to "a child-placing agency or day-care center", requiring that it "must be provided for at least an hour annually". A registered or licensed child-care home is neither. A vendor selling a mandatory annual one-hour child abuse module citing §42.04261 is quoting a section that does not reach your permit. Emergency preparedness, by contrast, genuinely is annual for you, by §747.1309(d)(1), just without an hour count. CPR AND PEDIATRIC FIRST AID DO NOT COUNT TOWARD THE THIRTY, AND NEITHER DO FOUR OTHER THINGS. Section 747.1309(j) is explicit: "The 30 clock hours of annual training are exclusive of any requirements for the Licensing pre-application course, pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR training, transportation safety training, and water safety training." The parallel for staff, §747.1305(h), is wider still: "Annual training is exclusive of any requirements for orientation, pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR training, transportation safety training, water safety training, and any training received through a high school child-care work-study program."

Section 747.1309(h) adds one more subtraction that catches experienced operators: "You may not earn training hours by presenting training to other caregivers." The CPR and first-aid obligation itself is continuous rather than annual. Section 747.1313(a) requires that "The primary caregiver, each substitute caregiver, and each assistant caregiver must have a current certificate of training with an expiration or renewal date in: (1) Pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking; and (2) Pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)", and §747.1303 item (2) requires each caregiver to "stay current in this training". The CPR course must "adhere to the guidelines for CPR for a layperson established by the American Heart Association, and consist of a curriculum that incudes use of a CPR manikin and both written and hands-on skill-based instruction, practice, and testing" under §747.1313(b)(1), and may be delivered "through blended learning that utilizes online technology, including self-instructional training, as long as the criteria in paragraph (1) of this subsection is met" under (b)(2). A fully online card with no manikin skills check does not satisfy the rule, whatever the certificate says.

TWO GENUINELY ANNUAL TRAININGS SIT OUTSIDE THE THIRTY AND ARE MISSED EVERY YEAR. If you drive children, §747.1314(a) requires that "If the home transports children whose chronological or developmental age is younger than nine years old, two clock hours of annual transportation safety training is required for: (1) Each employee prior to transporting a child; and (2) The primary caregiver", and (b) confirms "The two clock hours of transportation safety training are exclusive of any requirements for orientation, pre-service training, and annual training." That two-hour figure is statutory, from Human Resources Code §42.0421(e). If children reach a pool, §747.1323(a) requires "annual water safety training" for the primary caregiver and for "Each substitute or assistant caregiver prior to accompanying a child to a swimming pool", which "must be specific to water safety in and around swimming pools" under (b), and which (c) again places outside orientation, pre-service and annual training. The §747.1303 chart times both: transportation safety "(C)(i) Prior to transporting children and; (C)(ii) Annually, thereafter"; water safety "(C)(i) Prior to accompanying a child to a swimming pool; and (C)(ii) Annually thereafter". A registered-home operator who transports and swims therefore carries thirty hours plus two plus a water-safety course plus current CPR and pediatric first aid, every twelve months.

THE OBLIGATION REACHES PAST YOUR PAYROLL INTO YOUR HOUSEHOLD. Section 747.1401(b): "Any household member who is counted in the child/caregiver ratio on more than ten separate occasions in one training year, whether paid or unpaid, must meet the minimum qualifications for assistant caregivers and training requirements for caregivers as specified in this subchapter." Section 747.1401(c): "Any household member who is left in charge of the child-care home in the absence of the primary caregiver, whether paid or unpaid, must meet the minimum qualifications for a substitute caregiver and training requirements for caregivers specified in this subchapter." "Whether paid or unpaid" is the operative phrase: an adult son who covers the afternoon run for free owes the full fifteen or twenty-four annual hours plus a current pediatric CPR card. Section 747.1405 extends the identical rule to outsiders: "The minimum qualifications and training requirements for volunteers or any other person under contract with the home are the same as those specified in §747.1401." Household members who are fourteen or older but stay out of ratio owe only the shorter household orientation at §747.1403 and, under §747.1401(d), "must never be left alone with a child in care, unless the household member meets the qualification requirements for caregivers specified in this chapter."

WHO IS ALLOWED TO TRAIN YOU IS A CLOSED LIST, AND HHSC APPROVES NOBODY. Section 747.1317 answers its own title flatly: "No. We do not approve or endorse training resources or trainers for training hours." It requires instead that the training "Meets the criteria specified in §747.1315", "Is relevant to the topics specified in this division", and that "The participants receive original documentation of completion". Section 747.1315(a) then lists the only seven acceptable sources, the first being "A training provider registered with the Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System Training Registry, maintained by the Texas Head Start State Collaboration Office", followed by an instructor teaching early childhood development or another relevant course at an accredited secondary school or institution of higher education, an employee of a state agency with relevant expertise, "A physician, psychologist, licensed professional counselor, social worker, or registered nurse", a person holding "a generally recognized credential or possesses documented knowledge relevant to the training the person will provide", the primary caregiver personally but only where "The primary caregiver only provides training to the caregivers at your home" and "Your home has not been on probation, suspension, emergency suspension, or revocation in the two years preceding the training or been assessed an administrative penalty in the two years preceding the training", and finally a person with at least two years of relevant experience who "Has a current Child Development Associate (CDA) credential" or "Holds at least an associate's degree in child development, early childhood education, or a related field."

That is the rule-level mirror of Human Resources Code §42.0421(f). Registry membership is one route among seven, not compulsory; the widespread claim that Texas requires a Trainer Registry number is false. What is true, and what HHSC warns about in the Technical Assistance under §747.1317, is that "The Trainer Registry will indicate the competency area that a trainer has been verified to provide training. The trainer number is only to be used for the specific competency verified by the Trainer Registry" — a registry trainer verified for one competency who signs a certificate in another has not produced a countable hour. Self-instructional material counts only where, under §747.1315(b), "the materials were developed by a person who meets one of the qualifications in subsection (a)", and §747.1315(c) requires that instructor-led and self-instructional training, "but not self-study training", include "Specifically stated learning objectives", "A curriculum, which includes experiential or applied activities", "An evaluation/assessment tool" and "A certificate of successful completion from the training source."

TWO PROVISIONS GIVE YOU HOURS BACK, AND BOTH ARE UNDERUSED. Section 747.1319 confirms that college and credential coursework counts: "Yes. If the training is in a topic specified in this division and you can provide documentation of completion as specified in this division, then you may count this training toward the annual training requirement", and §747.123 fixes the exchange rate for continuing education units at "One CEU equals 10 clock hours". Section 747.1321 lets a new hire bring hours with them, but only on three conditions: "(1) The caregiver provides documentation of training, as specified in §747.1327...; (2) The caregiver obtained the training from a child-care center, school-age or before or after-school program, or child-care home that we license or register; and (3) The training was obtained within two months before coming to work for your child-care home." Two months, not two years. HHSC's worked example under that rule spells out the arithmetic: a caregiver arriving with six documented hours "would only need 18 additional hours of annual training for a licensed child-care home or 9 hours for a registered child-care home".

WHAT THE INSPECTOR ACTUALLY ASKS FOR IS PAPER, AND THE PAPER HAS SIX MANDATORY FIELDS. Section 747.1327(a) requires that "You must maintain the original certificate or letter documenting the completion of annual training in each caregiver's personnel record at the child-care home." Subsection (b) then states that "For annual training to be counted toward compliance with the minimum standards, the trainer or training source must provide the participant with an original certificate or letter showing: (1) The participant's name; (2) Date of the training; (3) Title/subject of the training; (4) The trainer's name, or the source of the training for self-instructional training; (5) The trainer's qualifications, in compliance with §747.1315...; and (6) Length of the training specified in clock hours, CEUs, or college credit hours, as appropriate." Item (5) is the one that fails inspections: a certificate naming the trainer but not stating the qualification under which that trainer is eligible is not a countable hour, and hours you actually sat through are struck. For CPR and pediatric first aid, §747.1327(c) additionally demands "The expiration or renewal date of the training, as determined by the organization providing the training", and uniquely allows a photocopy in the personnel file "so long as the caregiver is able to provide an original certificate or letter upon Licensing's request".

Orientation is documented differently again, under §747.1327(d), by "a signed and dated statement from the caregiver and the person providing the orientation". Your own hours live in a different place: §747.909 requires that you "have the following records available for review during hours of operation", including "(2) A record of your training hours", while staff hours belong in the personnel record under §747.901(6), "A record of training hours, including documentation required by §747.1327". Household members counted in ratio get the identical personnel file by §747.903, "whether they are paid or unpaid". Retention is short and specific: §747.803(b), "You must keep training records for at least the current and last full training year." Access is immediate: §747.915, "All records required to be maintained under this division are subject to our immediate review and reproduction, upon our request, during all hours of operation", and §747.917 permits electronic or hybrid records provided they are "available during business hours for review by Licensing upon request". HOW OFTEN SOMEONE COMES LOOKING IS THE LAST DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE THREE PERMITS.

HHSC's provider-type sheet, revision stamped 03/2026, states that a licensed child care home must "receive at least one unannounced monitoring inspection by CCR per year", that a registered child care home must "receive at least one unannounced monitoring inspection by CCR every one to two years", and that a listed family home "is not routinely inspected unless CCR receives a report" alleging abuse, neglect or exploitation, immediate risk of danger, a minimum-standards violation, or over-capacity care. So the licensed home's twenty-four-hour staff files are examined annually, the registered home's fifteen-hour files may go two years and then be examined against two training years at once, which is precisely why §747.803(b) requires the current and the last full training year, and the listed home may never be examined at all. ONE MORE THING TO KNOW BEFORE YOU QUOTE THE STANDARDS BACK AT ANYONE. The bracketed weights that appear at the end of nearly every provision in the HHSC booklet, the "[Medium]" and "[Medium-High]" and "[Low]" tags, are HHSC's own risk annotations, explained in that booklet's introduction as weights "based on a common understanding of the risk to children presented if the standard or rule is violated" and shown "at the end of each standard or subsection in green".

They are not part of the codified text the Secretary of State publishes. Quoting them as rule language marks a document as copied from the booklet rather than read from the code. Finally, a rulemaking is live as you read this and it does not touch your training hours: HHSC published proposed amendments to Chapters 742 and 747 in the Texas Register of 31 July 2026, with the comment period running "July 31 through Aug. 31, 2026", implementing Senate Bill 225 of the 87th Legislature, Regular Session, 2021 — the act cited in its own Section 1 as "Ellie's Law". The proposal consists of new §742.402 and new §747.311, both titled "Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements", plus an amendment to §747.207 on the primary caregiver's responsibilities. Not one word of Division 4 is proposed for change. If you are planning your training year, plan it against the rules described above; if you want to be heard on the disclosure rules, comments went to the HHS Rules Coordination Office (26R072) by 31 August 2026.

Background checks

THE TEXAS BACKGROUND-CHECK REGIME FOR A HOME CHILD-CARE OPERATION, READ OUT OF THE RULES AND STATUTES IN EFFECT ON 26 AUGUST 2026 — AND IT CHANGES UNDER YOU IN FIVE DAYS. 1. THE HEADLINE IS A DATE. Everything written about Texas background checks before July 2026 is one check short. On 2 July 2026 the Health and Human Services Commission filed an adoption package with the Secretary of State (TRD-202602708 to TRD-202602715, Karen Ray, Chief Counsel, published 17 July 2026) adopting "amendments to Sections 745.21, 745.609, 745.615, 745.631, 745.643, 745.683, 745.695, 745.751, 745.775, and 745.8483; new Section 745.675; and the repeal of Sections 745.601 and 745.607," each carrying "Effective date: August 31, 2026." The substance is a fifth mandatory check: amended Section 745.609 inserts "a SEMARC check" between the central registry check and the National Sex Offender Registry check. The code you can pull up today still shows the four-item list adopted 26 July 2022 at 47 TexReg 4337, while the Secretary of State's record page for Sections 745.601 and 745.607 already carries the field "Repealed Date: 08/31/2026." First trap: the rule takes effect 31 August 2026, but HHSC's Provider Guidance Letter PGL-26-11003, announced 30 July 2026, says the new check is "required for all people affiliated with regulated child care operations effective Sept. 1, 2026." Two official dates, one day apart, for the same obligation. 2. THE SECOND TRAP IS THAT THE CITATIONS EVERYONE PUBLISHES ARE DEAD.

Texas moved its Administrative Code off the address every guide repeats. Today, texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC and .../readtac$ext.TacPage return HTTP 200 with a page titled "Site Has Moved" and a redirect to texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings. The index that serves rules in effect is that portal's View TAC interface at title 26, part 1, chapter 745, subchapter F, where each rule sits under a record identifier with a "queryAsDate" of the day you ask — which is exactly why a pinned URL cannot tell you what is in force. The statute site is now a single-page application too: a plain fetch of statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm yields stylesheet text and no law. Rendered, it states "The statutes available on this website are current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025," and the Texas Legislature Online session list confirms 89(2) - 2025 is the newest session; there is no 2026 session to sweep. 3. WHAT THE STATUTE SAYS, AND WHAT THE 2025 SESSIONS DID AND DID NOT DO. Human Resources Code Section 42.056, "REQUIRED BACKGROUND AND CRIMINAL HISTORY CHECKS; CRIMINAL PENALTIES," is the parent provision, and its amendment history ends at "Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 954 (S.B. 1849), Sec. 4, eff.

September 1, 2023." Nothing in the 89th Legislature's 2025 regular or called sessions touched it; HHSC's own "89th Legislative Bills Impacting Child Care Operations" (revised 08/2025) sweeps thirteen 2025 acts — SB 1619, HB 163, HB 1403, HB 2789, SB 2306, HB 3153, HB 3597, HB 4529, HB 5129, HB 5629, SB 1818, HB 2809, SB 571 — and not one is a background-check bill. But 2025 did amend the engine now being wired into child care: Health and Safety Code Chapter 810 shows "Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 2 (S.B. 2), Sec. 5, eff. September 1, 2025" at Section 810.002 (adding the comptroller to the participating agencies), and 2025 amendments by S.B. 571 (Ch. 1138) and H.B. 1620 (Ch. 204) at Sections 810.003 and 810.004. So 2025 changed the engine and left Section 42.056 alone; the rulemaking reaching you was filed in 2026 to implement a 2023 bill. 4. WHO MUST BE CHECKED, AND THE AGE IS FOURTEEN. Section 745.605(a) requires a request for the owner — "A sole proprietor," each partner, any board member or officer "involved in the everyday management of the operation"; for "Each person employed or prospectively employed at the operation," directors and administrators included, and for substitutes unless the supplying organisation has run one "through the CBCU within the last five years" and you hold the determination; for "Each person 14 years of age or older, including a contract employee, self-employed person, or volunteer who: (A) Is counted in the child/caregiver ratio... (B) Has unsupervised access to children in care; or (C) Provides direct care or supervision to children in care"; for "Each person 14 years of age or older who...

Resides in the operation"; and for "Each person 14 years of age or older, including a volunteer, who is regularly or frequently present at an operation." Fourteen — not thirteen, not eighteen — and Section 42.056(a)(7) agrees, reaching "each person at least 14 years of age, other than a client in care, who... resides in the facility or family home." In a home the residency limb catches people: your own fourteen-year-old, adult children still at home, a grandparent in the back bedroom, a partner who never touches the daycare, a boarder. "Regularly or frequently present" is a counting rule, not a feeling: Section 745.601(16), moving into Section 745.21 on 31 August, catches anyone "present at an operation on a scheduled basis," anyone who "Visits the operation three or more times in a 30-day period," anyone who "Stays or resides at the operation for more than seven consecutive days," and anyone who stays "three or more times per year" for more than 48 hours. Parents get the only rescue, and lose it the moment they volunteer. Section 745.605(b) excuses only a client in care, a parent or volunteer supplementing ratio "for a field trip or water activity," an outside licensed professional present "only... in an official capacity," and controlling persons filling none of the listed roles — and a biological child is not a "client in care." 5. WHEN THE REQUEST MUST GO IN, AND THE NINETY-DAY BIRTHDAY WINDOW.

Section 745.621(a) requires an initial check "When you submit your application for a permit to us," "When you hire someone," "When you contract with someone who requires a background check," "When a resident 14 years or older moves into your home or operation," "Between 90 days before and 90 days after a resident living in your home or operation becomes 14 years old," and "When you become aware of anyone requiring a background check... on whom you have not previously submitted a request." Subsection (b) sets the recurring cadence: "No later than: (A) Five years from the date you last submitted a request... on the subject of a background check who had a fingerprint-based criminal history check; or (B) Two years from the date you last submitted a request... who only had a name-based Texas criminal history check," plus a fresh request "When you become aware that the subject of a background check has had a change in the subject's state of residence" and when a role change upgrades a name-based person to fingerprints. The two-year cycle is statutory: Section 42.056(b-2)(2) requires the operator to "submit the name of the person each 24 months."

The clock runs from the date you submitted, not from the date the check cleared, and a household teenager who turned fourteen eleven months ago is already outside the window. 6. WHICH CHECKS ATTACH TO WHICH PERSON. Section 745.611(a) splits the population: a person required under "Section 745.605(a)(1) - (6)... must have a fingerprint-based criminal history check," while a person required under "(a)(7)... is only required to have a name-based Texas criminal history check, except the person must have a fingerprint-based criminal history check if" they "resided outside of Texas any time during the five-year period prior to the date you submit a request" or "There is reason to believe the person has criminal history in another state." In a licensed or registered child-care home, you, every employee and every resident aged fourteen or over are fingerprinted; only the merely-frequent visitor gets the name-based search, and even that upgrades on any out-of-state residence in five years. Section 745.21, from 31 August, defines the reach: a fingerprint check covers the DPS Texas arrest database, the FBI database "for alleged crimes committed in the United States and Territories," the Texas sex offender registry and the National Sex Offender Registry; a name-based Texas check covers only the DPS Texas arrest database "and the DPS database for the Texas sex offender registry" — nothing outside Texas. 7. THE OUT-OF-STATE CHECKS ARE YOUR APPLICANT'S OWN ERRAND, AND THEY ARE WHERE THE WEEKS GO.

Section 745.613(a) requires an out-of-state criminal history check, abuse and neglect registry check and sex offender registry check "In each state where the person resided during the preceding five-year period, if the person has lived outside of Texas any time during the five-year period prior to the date you submit a request," or in any state "where there is reason to believe the person has criminal history, has a child abuse or neglect history, or is registered as a sex offender." Subsection (c) allocates the labour, and not to you: "The person must ensure that the person's own out-of-state criminal history check and out-of-state child abuse and neglect registry check are provided to the CBCU." Subsection (d) gives two relief valves: no out-of-state criminal history check where the operation is residential child care, or where the former state "is participating in the FBI's National Fingerprint File (NFF) program." Subsection (e) exempts "listed family homes that only provide care to related children, employer-based child care operations, and shelter care operations" — so a licensed home, a registered home, and a listed home caring for even one unrelated child stay fully exposed.

HHSC's "Out-of-State Resource Guide" (revised 06/24/2026) adds that "The CBCU must be listed as the Requesting Agency on all Out-of-State request forms," and operations "are not allowed to receive the actual background check results, only notifications regarding a person's eligibility status." 8. SEMARC, THE NEW FIFTH CHECK, AND THREE OFFICIAL LISTS OF WHAT IT SEARCHES. The definition adopted for Section 745.21 reads "SEMARC--Search Engine for Multi-Agency Reportable Conduct as established by Texas Health and Safety Code Chapter 810. For CCR background check processes, a DFPS central registry check is separate from a SEMARC check." The statute names it differently — Chapter 810 is captioned "INTERAGENCY REPORTABLE CONDUCT SEARCH ENGINE" — and Section 810.003(a) says it draws on DFPS's central registry, HHSC's "employee misconduct registry established under Chapter 253," TEA's registry under Education Code Section 22A.151, and TJJD's records. New Section 745.675(a) says "SEMARC findings from HHSC EMR, TEA, and TJJD," while HHSC's public page says it searches "the Texas Education Agency, Texas Health and Human Services Long Term Care Regulation, and Texas Juvenile Justice Department."

Three official lists, three memberships. Section 745.675(b) makes an absolute bar of "(1) physical or sexual abuse; (2) inappropriate sexual conduct or communication with a student or child; and (3) unprofessional conduct demonstrating an inappropriate sexual, romantic, or interpersonal relationship with or interest in a child." Subsection (c) softens one line — "A SEMARC finding regarding physical abuse results in an absolute bar except for a kinship caregiver, who is eligible for a risk evaluation if the finding is more than five years old" — and subsection (d) leaves neglect, "emotional, verbal, or psychological abuse," "financial exploitation or misappropriated funds or property," and "any other finding not noted in this section" open to a risk evaluation. The due-process asymmetry is statutory: Section 810.005(b) says the individual "is not entitled to notice or an opportunity for a hearing before the individual's information is included in the search engine results," Section 810.007(b) says an agency "may" — not shall — give a hearing afterwards, and Section 810.007(c) says the agency "is not required to prove that an individual engaged in reportable conduct." 9. HOW YOU SUBMIT, AND THE ONE KEYSTROKE THAT COSTS THE MOST.

Section 745.617(a) says the route "depends on the type of operation"; a permit-holding home submits through the online Child Care Regulation Provider Portal. Section 745.619 lists what you must "verify and send... for every person": full name "including any maiden or married names or aliases," social security number, identification number, date of birth, sex, ethnicity and race, Texas addresses, "The city and state of each residence where the person has lived outside of the state of Texas any time during the five-year period," an e-mail address "if available," and the person's role, duties, supervision status and "The ages of children the person will be caring for." Two fields are load-bearing. Leave the e-mail blank and, per the provider guide, "the notification is mailed to the applicant's mailing address" — days lost to the post. Leave the out-of-state residences blank and the guide is blunt: "The out-of-state background check requirement doesn't generate unless the child care provider manually selects the applicable U.S. states and territories." That is the most expensive keystroke in the Texas process. 10. FINGERPRINTS: IDENTOGO, AND THE WAIVER WORTH CHECKING FIRST.

Section 745.623 says the CBCU will send the subject "information on how to schedule an appointment to submit fingerprints with the DPS approved fingerprinting vendor." HHSC names it: fingerprints "must be completed through the Texas Department of Public Safety's (DPS) fingerprinting vendor IdentoGO," scheduled "using the Service Code and UEID sent by email after your background check has been submitted." Section 745.625 is the money-saver: a previous fingerprint check "remains valid, and Licensing will waive the requirement to submit new fingerprints, if Licensing has an active subscription or can reactivate a subscription to the FBI's national rap back service for the subject," which Section 42.056(a-5)(3) authorises where the person also has a record on file or a clearinghouse record under Government Code Section 411.0845. 11. WHAT IT COSTS AND WHO PAYS WHICH PART. Section 42.056(c) lets HHSC charge "a fee in an amount not to exceed the administrative costs the department incurs."

HHSC's Background Check Fees page states that operations "pay $2 to CCR for every background check submitted," and that the fingerprint fee is paid separately by the subject at the appointment: "The cost for a Fingerprint-Based check for a paid employee of an organization is $37.00," while "Foster and adoptive parent applicants, household members, and any other individuals who are not receiving financial compensation for the role in which the background check is requested pay a reduced fee of $35.00." The breakdown is published: DPS charges $15, the FBI "$12.00... or $10.00 for foster and adoptive parent applicants and volunteers," and the vendor "a processing fee of $10.00." For a home the $35.00 rate applies to your spouse, adult child and live-in parent: they are "not receiving financial compensation for the role." Budget $2 per submission per person, and remember a renewal submission is a new submission. 12. THE TIMELINE, AND THE ONLY DEADLINE THE RULE GUARANTEES. Section 745.627 sets the outer bound: "The CBCU will notify the subject of a background check and the operation with a written determination... as soon as possible, but no later than 45 days from the date the background check was submitted."

Forty-five days, not business days — Section 745.601(5) defines "Days" as "Calendar days." HHSC's "Background Check Process Timeline" gives the components: a check "could be resolved in 2 to 5 business days" where the applicant "has valid fingerprints on file"; the fingerprint check "is resolved in 2 to 10 business days" once fingerprints are received; the Texas Central Registry and Multi-Agency Reportable Conduct searches are each "generated after the fingerprint results are received" and each takes "1 to 15 business days," depending "on whether the name-based search returns possible match history that must be manually reviewed"; the sex offender searches take "2 to 5 business days from background check submittal"; and the out-of-state abuse-and-neglect and criminal history checks are ones the "Applicant initiates," with no stated ceiling. The sequencing is the trap: neither the central registry nor the SEMARC search begins until fingerprints return. Against that the applicant has a hard deadline: "Applicants have 30 days to complete the required actions," and if they miss it "their background check status is updated to ineligible, and the applicant can't be present at the child care operation." 13. WHAT YOU MAY AND MAY NOT DO WHILE A CHECK IS PENDING.

Section 745.641 is categorical: "You must receive notification from the CBCU that the subject of a background check is eligible, eligible with conditions, or provisionally eligible with conditions before allowing the subject to be present at your operation. However, pending the eligibility determination, the subject may be present... for the sole purpose of attending orientation or pre-service training, as long as the subject does not have contact with children in care." The staffing-shortage escape at Section 42.056(g) — work permitted before the FBI check completes where "the facility or family home is experiencing a staff shortage" and "the person does not have unsupervised access to any child in care" — does nothing for a household member you cannot ask to move out. The permit gate is Section 745.647(a), and it is what stalls home applicants for weeks: "If you are applying to operate a licensed child-care home, a registered child-care home, or a listed family home, the CBCU must determine that all household members who must have a background check... are eligible or eligible with conditions before Licensing may issue you a permit."

Every other operation type gets subsection (b), where the owner alone must be cleared; a home cannot open until the slowest person under its roof clears. Section 745.635 requires that on an "Ineligible" result "you must immediately remove the subject from being present at your operation," and on a conditional result that "you must restrict the subject's duties in a manner that follows the conditions"; ignore them and Section 745.637 lets the CBCU "rescind the approved risk evaluation decision" and Licensing "take an enforcement action against you." 14. THE CRIMINAL-HISTORY MATRIX FOR A HOME IS HARSHER THAN THE CENTRE MATRIX, AND THAT IS STATUTORY. Section 745.661(a) says a felony or misdemeanour "under Texas law, the laws of another state, or federal law may affect a subject's ability to be present at an operation" and routes you to one of three charts; yours is "Registered Child Care Homes and Listed Family Homes," currently "Revised January 2026." Its bands are "Absolute Bar" — "permanently prohibited... and the person does not qualify for a risk evaluation"; "Risk Evaluation if conviction was in the last 10 years," after which "the crime no longer requires an action by HHSC unless the person is on parole for a felony offense"; "5-Year Bar; Risk Evaluation between 5 & 10 Years"; "5-Year Bar; Risk Evaluation Thereafter."

The catch-all rows decide most real cases: "Any offense not otherwise listed on this chart" is a ten-year risk evaluation as a felony and "No Action Required" as a misdemeanour, while "Any offense under Title 5 or 6, Penal code, or Chapter 43, Penal Code" is "Absolute Bar" at both felony and misdemeanour level. That is not discretion: the footnote marks it "* These offenses result in a bar based on state requirements set forth in Human Resources Code 42.072(f)," and Section 42.072(f) reads "The commission shall deny an application or renewal for listing or registering a family home or shall revoke a family home's listing or registration if the results of a background or criminal history check... show that a person has been convicted of an offense under Title 5 or 6, Penal Code, or Chapter 43, Penal Code." Title 5 is offences against the person, Title 6 offences against the family, Chapter 43 public indecency — and it reaches misdemeanours: class A assault, harbouring a runaway, interference with child custody, criminal nonsupport. Section 745.661(c) adds that "A subject currently on parole for a felony offense must have an approved risk evaluation prior to being present at an operation," and (d) that any unenumerated felony conviction "within the past 10 years" requires one too.

Section 745.661(b) has HHSC publish chart changes each January in the Texas Register, so an earlier copy is presumptively wrong. 15. DEFERRED ADJUDICATION IS A CONVICTION; AN ARREST CAN STOP YOU; REGISTRATION ENDS THE CONVERSATION. The chart states the rule of Section 745.663 in terms: "a deferred adjudication community supervision for an offense is always a criminal conviction with respect to HHSC's decision to issue or deny the subject a permit or to revoke the subject's permit, regardless of whether the court has dismissed the proceedings and discharged the subject after the subject successfully completed the terms of community supervision." Pending charges bite before conviction: Section 745.667(a) bars presence where a conviction "would... Bar the subject from being present at an operation permanently or on a time-limited basis," or would "Prohibit the subject from being present... pending the outcome of a risk evaluation," or where "The CBCU determines that the subject poses an immediate threat"; subsection (c) makes any such call "temporary pending the final outcome of the alleged crime."

You must volunteer the news: Section 745.665 requires that if you know a subject "has been arrested or charged with a crime, you must report this information to Licensing immediately," and Section 745.673 imposes the same duty for an open child abuse or neglect investigation. Registration is absolute: Section 745.669 reads "No, a subject who is registered or required to register as a sex offender with the Texas Sex Offender Registry, an out-of-state sex offender registry, or the National Sex Offender Registry may not be present at an operation" — note "or required to register." Section 745.671 works from a chart and separates a "designated finding," against someone who "has not exhausted the person's due process rights," from a "sustained finding," where those rights were waived or lost. Under Section 745.639(8), for an unsustained finding with no immediate threat the subject "is provisionally eligible with conditions" and "may request a hearing before the State Office of Administrative Hearings (SOAH)"; with an immediate threat the subject "Is ineligible to be present at the operation" and "May request a hearing before SOAH." 16. THE RISK EVALUATION IS THE ONLY WAIVER TEXAS OFFERS, AND IT RUNS ON A THIRTY-DAY FUSE.

Section 745.681 puts the burden on the individual: "The subject of a background check must request the risk evaluation." Section 745.685 sets the fuse: a request must come "within 30 calendar days from when the operation requested the background check" — measured from your submission date, not from the date the letter arrived, so a slow letter eats the window. The packet is heavy: Section 745.689 demands "A completed Form 2974, Request for Risk Evaluation Based on Past Criminal History or Child Abuse or Neglect Findings," the police report, "An official copy of the final record of judicial finding or conviction (signed by a judge and file stamped)," release orders and parole terms, proof of payment of "all court costs, supervision fees, and court-ordered restitution and fines," a "detailed, signed statement," evidence of rehabilitation, ten years of work history, and "At least three reference letters from persons who are not related to the subject." Section 745.693 gives the decision to "A CBCU manager or designee," who must issue it "within 45 days from the date the background check was submitted" — the same forty-five days, not a fresh forty-five — and Section 745.695 weighs elapsed time, severity, the person's role and age, any "pattern of criminal activity or abusive, neglectful, or exploitative conduct," ten years of work history, and "any federal requirements."

An approval is narrow and perishable: Section 745.697 says it "does not expire, unless" the person picks up a new arrest, charge, conviction or finding, or "The subject's role at the operation... becomes different," or "The subject becomes employed at a different operation." It is approval for this person, in this role, at this operation: promote your cleared assistant to lead caregiver and you have voided it. 17. THE REVIEW ROUTES ARE SHORT AND THEY END INSIDE THE AGENCY. Section 745.643 sends accuracy complaints first to the deciding CBCU representative and then to "the agency that gave the results to the CBCU" — DPS, the FBI or another state, not HHSC. Section 745.645 gives thirty days from the date on the notice letter to ask the CBCU to review its determination, or any time later on "new information that was not available at the time of the determination"; the CBCU "has 30 days to provide the subject with a written response" and may extend "for good cause"; and subsection (e) warns that it "will have a limited ability to look at issues of accuracy and completeness, because the CBCU does not have control over the background check results from other agencies."

The last escalation is to "the Director of the CBCU," whose determination "is final," and Section 745.699 ends risk-evaluation reviews the same way. Note what is absent: SOAH appears in this subchapter only for unsustained Central Registry findings. There is no due-process hearing over a criminal-history determination or a refused risk evaluation. 18. HOUSEKEEPING DUTIES AND THE CRIMINAL EXPOSURE BEHIND THEM. Section 745.651 requires you to inactivate a subject "within seven days of when the subject is no longer associated with your operation," and to validate the roster "Once a year" for licensed and registered child-care homes and listed family homes — annually for homes, quarterly for centres. Section 42.056(i) makes it an offence to knowingly fail to submit a person's information and then employ them or "otherwise allow[] the person to regularly or frequently stay or work at the facility or family home while children are being provided care," Section 42.056(j) an offence to knowingly keep someone on after HHSC has notified you they are precluded, and Section 42.056(k) provides that "An offense under Subsection (i) or (j) is a Class B misdemeanor."

Separately, Section 42.072(c) bars any new permit "before the fifth anniversary" of a revocation, substantive denial or closure in lieu of disciplinary action, and Section 42.072(c-1) forbids that person from being a controlling person anywhere in those five years. 19. WHAT WILL BE TRUE ON 31 AUGUST 2026, INCLUDING A DIVISION THAT VANISHES. HHSC's compiled "Background Check Rules" booklet for Subchapter F is already dated August 2026 and already prints the post-amendment text — the manual is running ahead of the code, the mirror image of the usual trap and just as dangerous, because the codified text you can look up today is the one in force until the thirty-first. Get the renumbering right too. The proposal renumbered the divisions, but the adoption preamble states "HHSC is not adopting the proposed changes to division numbers for Subchapter F, Division 7, 'Immediate Threat or Danger to the Health or Safety of Children'," while the adoption's own headers still print "DIVISION 6. IMMEDIATE THREAT" and "DIVISION 7. ADMINISTRATOR'S LICENSING." The August 2026 booklet resolves it in favour of the preamble: its contents run Division 1 Requesting Background Checks, Division 2 Determinations, Division 3 "Criminal History, Sex Offender Registry, Child Abuse or Neglect, and SEMARC Findings," Division 4 "Evaluation of Risk Because of a Finding," then jump straight to Divisions 6, 7 and 8 — no Division 5 at all.

Section numbers do not move, so cite sections and never divisions. Section 745.615, the rule for a listed family home caring only for related children, tightens too: it will require a name-based Texas check "unless the person must have a fingerprint-based criminal history check and National Sex Offender Registry check because" the person "has lived in another state or territory any time during the five years before" the request or "there is reason to believe the person has criminal history in another state," plus a central registry check "and a SEMARC check." Section 42.056(a-3) keeps relative-only listed homes outside the blanket fingerprint mandate — "Subsection (a-2)(1) does not apply to a family home that is subject to regulation by the department under Section 42.0523" — but nothing keeps them outside SEMARC. 20. THE SHORT LIST OF WHAT ACTUALLY COSTS TEXAS APPLICANTS WEEKS. Not ticking every state lived in during the last five years, because the portal will not generate the out-of-state checks otherwise. Not giving an e-mail address for every subject, so notices go by post. Booking the IdentoGO appointment late, because the Central Registry and SEMARC searches wait on the fingerprint results.

Forgetting that a home permit cannot issue until every household member aged fourteen or over is cleared. Missing the thirty-day risk-evaluation window that runs from your submission date, not from the letter. Assuming a dismissed deferred adjudication is not a conviction, or that a misdemeanour under Penal Code Title 5 or 6 is survivable when Section 42.072(f) makes it an absolute bar. Letting a cleared employee change roles and voiding their risk evaluation under Section 745.697(a)(2). And, from 31 August 2026, submitting a packet built for a four-check regime into a five-check one.

The application, step by step

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

1. CHOOSE THE PERMIT BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE, because in Texas the permit type is not a preference, it is a headcount. Texas Human Resources Code §42.052(c) provides that "A family home that provides care for compensation for three or fewer children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall list with the commission if the home provides regular care in the caretaker's own residence. The home may register with the commission," and §42.052(d) provides that "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission." The fourth unrelated child converts a voluntary listing into a mandatory registration by operation of statute; no one has to notify you. The three home permits are defined in the rules HHSC Child Care Regulation serves today. 26 TAC §747.113 provides that in a registered child-care home "the registered primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for not more than six children from birth through 13 years, and may provide care after-school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children. The total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." 26 TAC §747.115 provides that in a licensed child-care home "the licensed primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for children from birth through 13 years," with the same absolute ceiling of 12 including your own children. HHSC's own Become a Child Care Home Provider page states the practical split: a licensed child care home "Provides care and supervision to seven to 12 children," a registered home up to six plus six school-age after school, and a listed family home "up to three unrelated children." The inspection consequence follows the permit and is written into the rule, not into policy: the figure to 26 TAC §745.8405(a) states that for a listed family home "We do not inspect prior to the issuance of a listing, nor do we conduct routine inspections," while for a registered child-care home "We inspect prior to the issuance of the registration" and for a licensed operation "We inspect prior to the issuance of the license." The delay trap is choosing the listing because it is cheapest and fastest and then filling to four children: you are then operating a home that "requires a registration or license per the Human Resources Code, Chapter 42" under 26 TAC §747.111(2), and 26 TAC §747.117(c) makes the owner of an unpermitted home answerable for every Chapter 747 minimum standard anyway. Decide for the capacity you will have in month six, not the capacity you will have in week one, because upgrading a permit means a fresh application, a fresh fee and a fresh inspection cycle.
2. ATTEND THE PRE-APPLICATION INTERVIEW, AND KNOW IT EXPIRES. Texas calls the orientation a "pre-application interview," and it is the first numbered part of the process. 26 TAC §745.211 provides that "The application process includes: (1) The applicant completing the pre-application interview, except for an application for a: (A) Listed family home; or (B) Compliance Certificate." That parenthesis is the whole answer on whether orientation is mandatory: it is mandatory for a registered child-care home and for a licensed child-care home, and it is not required at all for a listed family home. 26 TAC §745.213 states the purpose plainly — "The pre-application interview teaches applicants about the application process, the licensing requirements, and the administrative procedures" — and 26 TAC §745.215 tells you the forms it can take: "(1) A group meeting or class, which we may conduct online or through a virtual meeting; (2) A Licensing office interview; (3) An interview at the applicant's office; (4) An interview at the potential operation; or (5) A telephone interview, if we cannot handle the interview any other way." The 2021 amendment that added the online and virtual option (46 TexReg 2437, effective April 25, 2021) is why a Texas applicant in a rural county no longer has to drive to a regional office, but the telephone interview remains the last resort, not the default. The trap is the shelf life. The figure to 26 TAC §745.243 requires, for a registration, "Verification that the applicant completed the required pre-application interview within one year prior to the date of application," and the same one-year clause appears for a licensed child day-care operation. 26 TAC §747.1007(3) says the same thing in the qualification rule: you must "Have a certificate of completion of the Licensing pre-application course within one year prior to your application date," and 26 TAC §747.1107(3) repeats it for the licensed home. An applicant who sits the class, then spends fourteen months saving for the remodel, then applies, has an incomplete application on the day it is filed and must sit the class again. HHSC's own applicant page calls this Step 2, "Attend a Child Care Home Orientation," and tells you that "You will receive an information packet during your orientation class," which is where the local office's contact details and the supplemental forms come from. Book the class early, but not so early that the certificate ages out before your fingerprints, your CPR card and your insurance are all in hand.
3. QUALIFY YOURSELF BEFORE YOU QUALIFY THE HOUSE, because Texas gates the permit on the person. For a registered child-care home, 26 TAC §747.1007 provides that you must "(1) Be at least 21 years old; (2) Have a: (A) High school diploma; or (B) High school equivalent; (3) Have a certificate of completion of the Licensing pre-application course within one year prior to your application date; (4) Meet the requirements in Subchapter F of Chapter 745 of this title (relating to Background Checks); (5) Have a current certificate of training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR...; (6) Have a current record of a tuberculosis (TB) examination showing you are free of contagious TB, if required by the Texas Department of State Health Services or local health authority," plus documented training in twelve named topics. 26 TAC §747.1003 fixes the deadline with three words: "You must meet the qualifications before we register your child-care home." The under-21 door is narrow but real — 26 TAC §747.1013 allows a registered caregiver aged "18 through 20 years" who holds a high school diploma or equivalent plus one of a Child Development Associate or Certified Child-Care Professional credential, an associate's of applied science degree in child care, a community college certificate in child care, an approved day-care administrator's credential, or "Six college credit hours in child development and nine months' experience." For a licensed child-care home the bar is materially higher: 26 TAC §747.1107(8) requires one of seven education-and-experience combinations set out in the figure to that rule, running from "(A) A bachelor degree with 12 college credit hours in child development and three college credit hours in management and at least one year of experience in a licensed child-care center or licensed or registered child-care home" down to "(G) Seventy-two clock hours of training in child development and 30 clock hours in management and at least three years of experience." 26 TAC §747.1113(c) defines that experience narrowly: "You must have obtained all work experience in a full-time capacity or its equivalent in a part-time capacity. Full-time is defined as 30 hours per week. The work experience may be paid or unpaid." The delay trap is discovering in month two that your transcript does not carry the three credit hours in management. 26 TAC §747.1141 tells you what happens: "We will notify you that you do not meet minimum standard qualifications. We will give you a deadline to submit additional paperwork, or ask you to withdraw your application and re-apply after you have obtained the necessary training and experience." Withdrawing and re-applying costs you the fee and the calendar. Pull your transcripts and count the credit hours against the figure before you pay anything.
4. COMPLETE THE PRE-ISSUANCE TRAINING, WHICH IS A LIST OF TWELVE TOPICS AND NOT A COURSE. Texas does not name a vendor and does not set an hour count for the general pre-service package; it names subjects. 26 TAC §747.1007(7), for a registered home, and the identical 26 TAC §747.1107(7), for a licensed home, require proof of training in: "(A) Prevention, recognition, and reporting of child maltreatment, including: (i) Factors indicating a child is at risk for abuse or neglect; (ii) Warning signs indicating a child may be a victim of abuse or neglect; (iii) Procedures for reporting child abuse or neglect; and (iv) Community organizations that have training programs available...; (B) Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma; (C) Understanding and using safe sleep practices and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); (D) Understanding early childhood brain development; (E) Understanding the developmental stages of children; (F) Emergency preparedness; (G) Preventing and controlling the spread of communicable diseases, including immunizations; (H) Administering medication, if applicable...; (I) Preventing and responding to emergencies due to food or an allergic reaction; (J) Understanding building and physical premises safety...; (K) Handling, storing, and disposing of hazardous materials...; and (L) Precautions in transporting children if your child-care home plans to transport a child whose chronological or developmental age is younger than nine years old." Separately and on top of that, both rules require at paragraph (5) "a current certificate of training in pediatric first aid and pediatric CPR as specified in §747.1313," and the figure to 26 TAC §745.243 makes both certificates part of the completed registration application in their own right: "(D) Proof of current certification in pediatric CPR; (E) Proof of current certification in pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking." A listing has a much smaller but non-waivable training duty of its own. 26 TAC §745.255 provides that "An applicant for a listed family home, including a home that will only provide care and supervision for children related to the primary caregiver, must successfully complete one hour of safe sleeping training that covers the following topics: (1) Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma; (2) Understanding and using safe sleeping practices and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS); and (3) Understanding early childhood brain development," and the Legislature put the same duty in statute at Texas Human Resources Code §42.046(f): "An applicant for a listing to operate a family home shall submit with the application proof of the applicant's successful completion of safe sleep training in accordance with commission rules." The delay trap is a first-aid card that is online-only or adult-only. The rule says pediatric, and it says "with rescue breathing and choking"; a generic adult CPR certificate from a workplace course will be rejected at the completeness review and you will lose a full cycle waiting for a class date.
5. CREATE THE ONLINE CHILD CARE REGULATION ACCOUNT, BECAUSE THE PORTAL IS NOW THE FRONT DOOR. HHSC's Become a Child Care Home Provider page makes the account Step 4: "Create your Online Account. Once you have an online account with CCR, you will be able to submit an online application for your child care home operation. On the page where you create your account (the Create a Child Care Regulation Account page), select 'No,' for the question 'Do you have a permit number?', and complete the online account registration form. Once you have successfully submitted your registration request, you will receive an email containing a link that you must click on in order to complete account activation." The page even names the failure mode that costs applicants their first week: "If you do not receive the confirmation email (subject line 'Complete Registration') within 24-hours, please check your spam folders." The account is not cosmetic. 26 TAC §745.617(a), through the figure to that subsection, provides that for "All operation types except listed family homes" you "Must submit a request for a background check online through your Licensing account," and gives listed family homes the only paper alternative: "Online through your Licensing account; or By sending in a signed form provided by your local Licensing office or the CBCU." The renewal rules assume the same account — 26 TAC §745.475(a)(3) requires "Validating on your provider website the list of persons who require a background check because of their association with your operation." Chapter 747's own introduction to waivers and variances routes them "through your online provider account or made in writing to your assigned CCR inspector." A paper route survives: HHSC's page states that "If you prefer to complete a paper application, please complete the application packet forms and send it to your local Child Care Regulation office." That option is real, and for a listed family home it is workable, but for a registered or licensed home it puts every background-check request, every notification and every status check back onto a local office's queue. The delay trap is filing the eApplication from an account created in someone else's name — a spouse, an adult child, a consultant — because the permit, the background-check subscriptions and the renewal validations all attach to that account. Texas Human Resources Code §42.048(a-1) and §42.052(l) both now require the commission to associate the permit "with the applicant's name as stated in the applicant's" application; a mismatch between the portal identity and the application identity is a correction cycle you do not need.
6. ASSEMBLE THE EXACT APPLICATION PACKET FOR YOUR PERMIT, FORM NUMBER BY FORM NUMBER. 26 TAC §745.243 provides that "Application forms vary according to the type of permit. We will provide you with the required forms," and then sets the contents out in a figure captioned "Figure: 26 TAC §745.243." For a listing, item (1) requires "(A) A completed Listing Permit Request (Form 2986); (B) Completed background checks on all applicable persons; (C) A completed Controlling Person – Child Care Regulation (Form 2760); (D) ... documentation of liability insurance or an acceptable reason for not having the insurance; (E) Proof of a high school diploma or high school equivalent; (F) Proof of safe sleeping training, as required by §745.255...; and (G) The application fee, if applicable." For a registration, item (2) requires "(A) A completed Request for a Registration Permit (Form 2919)," background checks, Form 2760, "(D) Proof of current certification in pediatric CPR; (E) Proof of current certification in pediatric first aid with rescue breathing and choking; (F) Verification that the applicant completed the required pre-application interview within one year prior to the date of application; (G) Proof of a high school diploma or high school equivalent; (H) Proof of required training as required by §747.1007(7)...; (I) If the applicant is a for-profit corporation or limited liability company, proof that the corporation or company is not delinquent in paying the franchise tax; (J) Documentation of liability insurance...; and (K) The application fee." A licensed child-care home applies as a child day-care operation under item (3), which adds the heavier documents: "(A) A completed Application for a License to Operate a Child Day Care Facility (Form 2910); (B) A floor plan of the building and surrounding space to be used, including dimensions of the indoor and outdoor space; (C) A completed Child Care Licensing Governing Body/Director Designation (Form 2911); this form is not required if the governing body is a sole proprietorship and the proprietor is also the director; ... (E) A completed Personal History Statement (Form 2982)...; (I) A completed Plan of Operation for Licensed Center and Home Operations (Form 2948) ...; the plan of operation must show how you intend to comply with the minimum standards." HHSC's Child Care Home Provider Application Forms page lists the same numbers and adds Form 2971, Child Care Regulation Request for Background Check, and Form 2974, Request for Risk Evaluation Based on Past Criminal History or Central Registry Findings. The delay trap is the floor plan and the Plan of Operation, the only two items you cannot buy or download. HHSC warns that the plan of operation "requires your time and attention. It is your written plan showing how you plan to comply with minimum standards," covering "who is responsible for ensuring minimum standards are met at all times, the physical facility, activities, child to caregiver ratios, safety, and sanitation." Start Form 2948 the week you book orientation, not the week you file.
7. SUBMIT EVERY BACKGROUND CHECK, FOR EVERYONE, AND SUBMIT THEM WITH THE APPLICATION. 26 TAC §745.621(a)(1) fixes the timing: you must submit a request for an initial background check "When you submit your application for a permit to us." The population is wider than an applicant expects. 26 TAC §745.605(a) requires a request for the owner including "A sole proprietor," each employee or prospective employee, "Each person 14 years of age or older, including a contract employee, self-employed person, or volunteer who ... Has unsupervised access to children in care," "Each person 14 years of age or older who: (A) Resides in the operation," and "Each person 14 years of age or older, including a volunteer, who is regularly or frequently present at an operation." In a home, that sweeps in your own teenagers, your live-in parent and the boyfriend who is there most evenings. 26 TAC §745.621(a)(6) even requires a request "Between 90 days before and 90 days after a resident living in your home or operation becomes 14 years old." The type of check depends on the role. 26 TAC §745.609(a) requires, for a child day-care operation, either a fingerprint-based or a name-based Texas criminal history check, "A Central Registry check," and "a National Sex Offender Registry check for persons who require a fingerprint-based criminal history check under §745.611(a)(1)." 26 TAC §745.611(a) provides that persons in the §745.605(a)(1)–(6) categories — owner, employees, caregivers, household residents — "must have a fingerprint-based criminal history check," while a merely frequent visitor under §745.605(a)(7) "is only required to have a name-based Texas criminal history check, except the person must have a fingerprint-based criminal history check if: (A) The person has resided outside of Texas any time during the five-year period prior to the date you submit a request." Out-of-state history triggers more: 26 TAC §745.613(a) requires an out-of-state criminal history check, an out-of-state child abuse and neglect registry check and an out-of-state sex offender registry check "In each state where the person resided during the preceding five-year period," and §745.613(c) puts the legwork on the person, not on HHSC: "The person must ensure that the person's own out-of-state criminal history check and out-of-state child abuse and neglect registry check are provided to the CBCU." Fingerprints are scheduled by the Centralized Background Check Unit, not by you: under 26 TAC §745.623, "the CBCU will send the subject of the background check a notification with information on how to schedule an appointment to submit fingerprints with the DPS approved fingerprinting vendor." The fee is small and easy to forget — the fee figures to 26 TAC §745.505, §745.507 and §745.509 all set a "Background check fee: $2 per person," due "At the time you request a background check or on a monthly or quarterly basis." The delay trap is the out-of-state household member. A spouse who lived in Louisiana three years ago can add four to eight weeks to an otherwise clean file, because your application cannot be accepted until his checks clear, and nothing in the rules lets HHSC start your two-month decision clock while a required check is outstanding.
8. FILE THE CONTROLLING PERSON FORM AND, IF YOU INCORPORATED, THE FRANCHISE TAX PROOF. Every home permit type in the figure to 26 TAC §745.243 requires "A completed Controlling Person – Child Care Regulation (Form 2760) as set forth in Subchapter G of this chapter (relating to Controlling Persons)" — listing, registration and licensed child day-care operation alike. HHSC's applicant page states the same rule in plain words: "All child day care operations are required to submit information on the operation's controlling persons." The form is deceptively simple and is the piece most often filed blank by a sole proprietor who assumes it applies only to corporations; it does not, and an omitted Form 2760 is a completeness defect like any other. The franchise tax proof is narrower but harder to fix late. 26 TAC §745.245 provides that "If the governing body is a for-profit corporation or a limited liability company, then you must submit: (1) The governing body's most recent Franchise Tax Certificate of Good Standing; or (2) The Articles of Incorporation if the corporation or company has not existed long enough to owe the tax at the time of the application; or (3) Documented proof that Texas Tax Code, Chapter 171, exempts the corporation or company from paying the tax." If you formed an LLC for liability reasons — which many home providers do on a lawyer's advice — you have just added a Comptroller document to your packet, and a Certificate of Good Standing cannot be issued while a report is outstanding. The obligation does not end at issuance: 26 TAC §745.247 provides that "A permit holder must immediately forward us a copy of any written notice from any governmental entity indicating that the holder's corporate privileges are forfeited and/or in danger of forfeiture. We may suspend a permit held by a governing body that forfeits its corporate privileges," and "We may revoke the permit held by a governing body that does not forward to us a copy of forfeiture notice and loses its corporate privileges." The delay trap is forming the entity in the same month you apply. A brand-new LLC has no franchise tax history and must rely on route (2), the Articles of Incorporation, which HHSC accepts only "if the corporation or company has not existed long enough to owe the tax at the time of the application." An entity formed eighteen months ago that has never filed a No Tax Due report sits in the worst position of all: too old for route (2), not in good standing for route (1). Either operate as a sole proprietor for the application and reorganise afterwards — remembering that under Texas Human Resources Code §42.048(e) "A change in ownership automatically revokes a license" and that 26 TAC §745.345(4) then puts you back on an initial license — or clear the Comptroller's file before you file anything with CCR.
9. BUY THE LIABILITY INSURANCE AT THE RULE'S NUMBER, NOT THE STATUTE'S. This is one of the places where the codified rule is stricter than the statute it implements, and the rule is what your inspector applies. 26 TAC §745.249(a) provides that "a licensed operation, registered child-care home, or listed family home must: (1) Have liability insurance coverage in the amount of $300,000 for each occurrence of negligence that covers injury to a child while the child is on your premises or in your care; and (2) Provide proof of coverage to Licensing each year by the anniversary date of the issuance of your permit." Texas Human Resources Code §42.049(a), by contrast, still reads "A license or registration holder under this chapter shall maintain liability insurance coverage in the amount of $100,000 for each occurrence of negligence," and §42.0495(a) sets the same $100,000 figure for listed family homes. A broker who quotes to the statute will sell you a policy that fails 26 TAC §745.249. Read the rule, buy $300,000 per occurrence, and get the certificate before you file, because the figure to 26 TAC §745.243 lists the insurance documentation as an application item for all three home permits and HHSC's applicant page states that CCR "requires applicants for a licensed child care home, registered child care home, and listed family home to obtain proof of coverage before CCR issues a permit." There is a lawful way out, and it is narrow. 26 TAC §745.251(a) allows you to skip the insurance only if you cannot carry it "(1) Of financial reasons; (2) You are unable to locate an underwriter who is willing to issue a policy to the operation or home; or (3) You have already exhausted the limits of a policy that met the requirements," and §745.251(b) requires that "you must submit with your application a statement that you cannot carry the insurance and the reason that you cannot carry the insurance." Taking that route triggers a standing duty to parents: 26 TAC §745.253(a) provides that "you must notify a child's parent in writing that you do not carry the insurance before you admit a child into your care," and §745.253(b) points to "Form 2962, Attachment A, Parental Notification of Lack of Required Liability Insurance," adding that "Regardless of whether you use this form, you must be able to demonstrate that you provided written notice to the parent of each child in your care." Statute backs this up at §42.049(c) and §42.0495(b)-(d), which protect a home that gives the notice from an administrative penalty. The delay trap is homeowner's insurance. A standard residential policy almost always excludes a home business; carriers that write child-care liability in Texas are a short list and quoting can take two to three weeks. Start the quote the same week you book orientation.
10. PAY THE FEE — AND PAY IT WHEN THEY INVOICE YOU, NOT WHEN YOU FILE. The amounts are set by figures attached to the rules and they are low by national standards. For a listing, the figure to 26 TAC §745.505(a) sets an "Application/request processing fee: $20," due "Before we accept your application/request for a listing," and an "Annual listing fee: $20" on the anniversary date. For a registration, the figure to 26 TAC §745.507 sets an "Application/ request processing fee: $35" due "Before we accept your application/request for a registration" and an "Annual fee: $35" on the anniversary. For a licensed child-care home, the figure to 26 TAC §745.509 sets an "Application processing fee: $35" and an "Initial license fee for an operation (other than a child-placing agency): $35," both due "Before we accept your application," then a "Non-expiring license fee for an operation ... $35 + $1 per licensed capacity" before the full licence issues and an "Annual license fee ... $35 + $1 per licensed capacity" on each anniversary. A twelve-child licensed home therefore pays $35 plus $35 to get in the door and $47 a year thereafter, plus "$2 per person" for background checks. The consequence column of every one of those figures says the same thing about the application fee: "We will return your application/request as incomplete." Non-payment of the annual fee is worse and is automatic by statute — Texas Human Resources Code §42.054(f) provides that "If a facility, agency, or home fails to pay the annual fee when due, the license, listing, or registration, as appropriate, is automatically suspended until the fee is paid. The license, listing, or registration shall be revoked if the fee is not paid within six months after the date the automatic suspension begins." The delay trap is paying early. HHSC's Become a Child Care Home Provider page is explicit: "When your eApplication has been successfully submitted, you will receive a confirmation number. You will also receive instructions for submitting your fee payment and other supplemental documents. You can begin gathering supplemental information, but do not submit fee payments until CCR contacts you with your operation number and sends you an invoice." A payment sent without an operation number lands in a general revenue account with no file to credit. The second trap is the payment rule itself, which is a museum piece: 26 TAC §745.517 still provides that "You must send a cashier's check, corporate check, money order, or certified check made payable to the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services ... Mail the fee information to the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, Accounting Division E-672, P.O. Box 149030, Austin, Texas 78714-9030." That agency was renamed in 2004 and lost child-care regulation to HHSC in 2017; the rule has never been corrected. Follow the invoice CCR sends you, not §745.517, and keep the invoice. Refunds are limited: 26 TAC §745.519 refunds the application fee only "if the issuance of the permit was late without good cause and the applicant requests the refund," and the initial license fee "if the application is withdrawn, or the license is not issued."
11. CLEAR ZONING, DEED RESTRICTIONS AND YOUR LANDLORD YOURSELF, BECAUSE CCR WILL NOT DO IT AND WILL NOT WAIT FOR IT. Nothing in Texas Human Resources Code Chapter 42 conditions a home child-care permit on municipal zoning; the words "zoning," "restrictive covenant" and "deed restriction" do not appear in the chapter, and neither 26 TAC Chapter 745 Subchapter D nor the figure to §745.243 lists any local land-use approval among the application materials. That is not permission — it is silence, and the silence cuts against you. HHSC states the position on its own Become a Child Care Home Provider page under the heading "Zoning, Building Codes and other Legal Requirements": "In some areas, you may need to meet zoning, building code, homeowner association, and other requirements concerning the location and construction of a child care operation. These are not CCR requirements, but you may have to meet them before local authorities will perform fire and sanitation inspections." Read the second sentence twice. CCR will issue you a permit that a city can then stop you from using, and a homeowners association can enforce a covenant against a business use in a way no state permit overrides. The Legislature has given municipalities and counties a role, but only a narrow enforcement one: Texas Human Resources Code §42.04431(a) provides that "A municipality or a county may enforce state law and rules adopted under state law concerning fire safety standards at a licensed group day-care home or a registered family home," and §42.04431(b) that "A municipality or county shall report to the department any violation of fire safety standards observed by the municipality or county." That is fire safety, not land use; local zoning power over a home occupation comes from the municipality's own ordinance, not from Chapter 42, and it varies street by street. The delay trap has three faces and each of them has ended a Texas home child-care plan after the fee was paid. The first is a lease: most residential leases in Texas prohibit business use, and a landlord's written consent is not something CCR can compel. The second is a subdivision covenant restricting lots to "residential purposes only," which is enforceable by neighbours in district court whatever your permit says. The third is a city that classifies a licensed child-care home differently from a registered one and requires a specific-use permit for the larger capacity, which is a public-hearing process measured in months, not weeks. Pull the deed restrictions from the county clerk, read the lease, and call the municipal planning department with your exact permit type and capacity before you spend a dollar — because a permit you cannot lawfully use at your address is the single most expensive way to learn what "these are not CCR requirements" means.
12. DO NOT BUDGET FOR A STATE FIRE OR HEALTH INSPECTION OF A CHILD-CARE HOME, BECAUSE THE RULE DOES NOT REQUIRE ONE. This is the assertion most often published wrongly about Texas, and the rule text is unambiguous. 26 TAC §747.4901, the whole of Division 1 of Subchapter W, asks "Must I have a fire inspection of my child-care home?" and answers: "We do not regulate fire inspections and do not require that you have a fire inspection as part of these minimum standards; however your local ordinances may require one. If you want to care for children above or below the ground floor of your child-care home, you must obtain written approval from the state or local fire marshal as specified in §747.4015." There is no companion rule in Chapter 747 requiring a sanitation or health-department inspection before a registration or a licence issues, and no such item appears in the figure to 26 TAC §745.243 for any of the three home permits. Contrast the licensed child-care centre world, where a fire marshal's certificate and a health inspection are ordinary application items; a home is not a centre, and importing the centre checklist is how applicants lose a month chasing a document nobody will ask them for. The single fire-authority document a home can genuinely need is the one §747.4901 names. 26 TAC §747.4015 provides that "To care for children on any level above or below ground level, you must: (1) Obtain written approval from the state or local fire authority; and (2) Follow any restrictions issued by the state or local fire authority, including any age limits placed on the approval." If your play space is a finished basement or an upstairs bonus room, that approval is a hard prerequisite and the fire marshal may cap it by age. Where a local inspection does exist, the Legislature has told HHSC to defer to it rather than duplicate it. Texas Human Resources Code §42.0443(a) provides that "The department may not inspect a licensed day-care center, licensed group day-care home, or registered family home for compliance with the department's fire safety or sanitation standards if the facility, at the time of the department's inspection, provides the department with documentation relating to a current fire safety or sanitation inspection, as applicable, performed by a political subdivision of this state that indicates that the facility is in compliance with the applicable standards of the political subdivision," while §42.0443(d) preserves the reverse flow: "the department shall report to the appropriate political subdivision any violation of fire safety or sanitation standards observed by the department." The delay trap is therefore local, not state. HHSC's own applicant page warns that zoning and building-code compliance may be required "before local authorities will perform fire and sanitation inspections" — so in a city that does require them, the queue for the municipal inspector runs behind your zoning clearance, and neither queue is inside CCR's two-month decision clock. Ask your city, in writing, whether a home child-care operation of your permit type and capacity triggers a fire or sanitation inspection, and start that request in parallel with orientation.
13. SURVIVE THE 21-DAY COMPLETENESS REVIEW, AND UNDERSTAND THAT YOU ONLY GET THREE TRIES. Filing is not acceptance. 26 TAC §745.301(a)(1) provides that "If you are applying for: (1) A permit other than a compliance certificate, we have 21 days after receiving your application to review the paperwork." At the end of that review, under §745.301(b), CCR notifies you in writing that "(1) There is good cause to delay the timeframe ...; (2) You are ineligible to apply for a permit; (3) Your application is complete and accepted for processing; or (4) Your application is incomplete," and an incomplete notice must "(A) Identify any application materials that you submitted that do not show compliance with relevant minimum standards, rules, and statutes; and (B) Explain what you must do to complete the application." That letter is the most useful document you will receive in the whole process; treat it as a punch list and answer it item by item. The limit on second chances is the trap, and it is severe. 26 TAC §745.303(a) provides that "Unless you are applying for a compliance certificate, you have three times to submit all required material. If we return your application as incomplete three times, you may not apply again until one year from the date that we returned your last application as incomplete." A one-year lockout for a paperwork failure is a business-ending event for a home provider who has already given notice at a job or turned down a lease renewal. The practical consequence is that you should never file to "get in the queue" and fix it later. Every missing pediatric CPR card, every unsigned Form 2760, every insurance certificate at $100,000 instead of $300,000, is a strike. Two conservative habits protect you: before you file, read the figure to 26 TAC §745.243 line by line against your own packet and tick each subparagraph; and after you file, answer the incompleteness letter in one complete resubmission rather than in pieces, because a partial answer is a return. Note also who the clock binds. The 21 days is HHSC's obligation, not yours, and 26 TAC §745.327 gives CCR four ways out of it — "(1) We are processing at least 15% more applications than we did in the same quarter of the previous year; (2) The delay is caused by another public or private entity that we must rely on to process all or part of the applications we receive; (3) You are the subject of a pending investigation; or (4) Other conditions exist that give us good cause for exceeding the timeframes." Ground (2) is the one that silently absorbs a slow out-of-state registry check or a slow DPS fingerprint vendor. Plan on three to five weeks between filing and an acceptance letter in a normal quarter, and longer in the late-summer surge.
14. PASS THE PRE-PERMIT INSPECTION, WHICH FOR A HOME HAPPENS BEFORE THE PERMIT AND NOT AFTER. The application process rule puts the inspection at step six: 26 TAC §745.211 lists "(6) Licensing inspecting the applicant's operation and determining whether the operation is in compliance with minimum standards, rules, and statutes, except for listed family homes; and (7) Licensing issuing or denying a permit." The figure to 26 TAC §745.8405(a) says the same thing per permit type: for a registered child-care home, "We inspect prior to the issuance of the registration"; for a licensed or certified operation, "We inspect prior to the issuance of the license or certification"; for a listed family home, "We do not inspect prior to the issuance of a listing, nor do we conduct routine inspections in a listed family home." HHSC's applicant page describes the same visit: "After you submit a completed application, CCR staff will conduct an inspection to ensure you and your home comply with the applicable law and minimum standards." What the inspector may look at is not limited to the play room. 26 TAC §745.8413(a) provides that "We may inspect and investigate any part of your operation that could affect the health, safety, or well-being of children. This includes access to: (1) All records of the operation, including child records, personnel records, and any audio or visual records; (2) Any area of the building, home, or grounds where your operation is located; and (3) Any equipment the operation uses when providing care," and §745.8413(b) allows interviews with anyone present. 26 TAC §745.8403 lists what the representative does during the visit — "(2) Conducting a walkthrough of the operation; (3) Verifying compliance with licensing statutes, rules, and minimum standards; (4) Assessing the risk to children in the operation; ... (6) Offering technical assistance." The statutory backstop is Texas Human Resources Code §42.044(a): "An authorized representative of the commission may visit a facility regulated under this chapter or a registered or listed family home during operating hours to investigate, inspect, and evaluate." Obstruction is not a neutral choice: 26 TAC §745.8411(c) provides that if anyone at the operation "refuses to admit, refuses access, or prevents or delays an authorized representative," CCR "may issue the operation a deficiency," "may recommend an enforcement action," or may "seek a court order granting access." The decision that follows weighs more than the walkthrough. 26 TAC §745.339 provides that in deciding whether to issue, CCR considers "(1) The application ... and any information submitted with the application; (2) The on-site inspection to determine compliance with minimum standards, rule, and statutes; (3) Any information that Licensing gathers through the application ... process." The delay trap is scheduling the inspection before the house is finished. Because the visit is pre-permit and CCR is checking compliance with the whole of Chapter 747 — indoor useable activity space under 26 TAC §747.4001, gates, outlet covers, storage of hazardous materials, crib and sleep arrangements — a home that is "nearly ready" earns a list of deficiencies and a second visit, and the second visit is scheduled around your inspector's caseload, not yours. One well-prepared visit is two to four weeks faster than two rushed ones.
15. HAVE THE WRITTEN POLICIES, THE ENROLLMENT AGREEMENT AND THE POSTINGS IN PLACE ON DAY ONE, BECAUSE THEY ARE CHECKED AT THE FIRST VISIT. 26 TAC §747.501 requires written operational policies and procedures that "at a minimum address each of the following: (1) Procedure for the release of children; (2) Illness and exclusion criteria; (3) Procedures for dispensing medication, or a statement that medication is not dispensed; (4) Procedures for handling medical emergencies; (5) Discipline and guidance policy that is consistent with Subchapter L ...; (6) Safe sleep policy for infants from birth through 12 months old ...; (7) Animals, if applicable; (8) Promotion of indoor and outdoor physical activity ...; (9) Parent rights ...; (10) Instructions on how a parent may access the: (A) Minimum standards online; (B) Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline; and (C) HHSC website. (11) Your emergency preparedness plan; (12) Procedures for conducting health checks, if applicable; (13) Information on vaccine-preventable diseases for employees, if your licensed child-care home is not located in your own residence; and (14) ... policies for maintenance, administration, and disposal of unassigned epinephrine auto-injectors." Paragraph (5) contains a gift most applicants miss: "A copy of Subchapter L may be used for your discipline and guidance policy." The policies must reach parents in a signed document. 26 TAC §747.503 provides that "On or before the date of the child's admission, the parents must sign an enrollment agreement or other similar documents, which must include at least the operational policies listed in this division. You must keep the signed document in the child's record," and 26 TAC §747.505 requires that when you change a policy you notify caregivers, notify "The parents in writing of any changes. Parents must sign and date the updated information," and notify household members of any change to the discipline and guidance policy. The wall is regulated too. 26 TAC §747.401(a) requires that you post, "in a prominent and publicly accessible place where parents and others may easily view them during all hours of operation," the following: "(1) The child-care home's license or registration certificate; (2) The letter or form from the most recent Licensing inspection or investigation; (3) The Licensing notice Keeping Children Safe; (4) Telephone numbers specified in this division; (5) A list of your employees, which must be printed on paper at least 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches in size and must include each employee's first and last name; and (6) Any other Licensing notices requiring posting." 26 TAC §747.403 names the numbers: 911 or local emergency numbers, "Poison control (1-800-222-1222)," "The Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline (1-800-252-5400)," plus the name, address and telephone number of "The local Child Care Regulation office" and of your own home. Texas Human Resources Code §42.0551 backs the employee list, and §42.052(e) requires that "The operator of a registered home must display the registration in a prominent place at the home." The delay trap is writing the policy binder after the inspection is scheduled. Fourteen policies drafted in a weekend read like fourteen policies drafted in a weekend, and an inspector who finds paragraph (6) or paragraph (11) missing writes a deficiency that must be corrected before the permit issues.
16. KNOW WHICH PERMIT YOU ACTUALLY GET AT THE END, BECAUSE A LICENSED HOME DOES NOT GET A LICENCE FIRST. 26 TAC §745.341(a) provides that "We issue a full permit to an applicant seeking to operate a listed family home, registered child-care home, shelter care operation, or employer-based child care operation if we accept the application and the operation meets all of the requirements in this chapter." A listing and a registration therefore arrive whole. A licensed child-care home does not: §745.341(b) routes you through an initial licence, and 26 TAC §745.345 provides that "We issue you an initial license instead of a full license when we accept your application, determine that your operation is in compliance ..., you pay the initial license fee, and one of the following situations exists: (1) We have not been able to evaluate your operation's ability to comply with all minimum standards ... because: (A) Your operation is not currently providing care to children." Every new licensed home is in that position. 26 TAC §745.347 sets the clock: "(a) An initial license is valid for six months from the date we issue it. (b) We may renew an initial license for up to an additional six months. You may only have an initial license for a maximum of one year." The bridge to a full licence is 26 TAC §745.351: "You will be eligible for a full license when: (1) Your initial license has been in effect for at least three months; (2) You have met all minimum standards on a continuing basis; ... (4) The Licensing staff has made three inspections, unless supervisory approval is obtained to make fewer visits; and (5) You have paid your full license fee." Three inspections inside three months is the real gate, and 26 TAC §745.349 explains the failure mode: "We cannot determine compliance with all minimum standards unless you have children in care. If you do not have children in care during the initial license period" CCR may renew the initial licence, "may deny you a full license," or you "may submit a new application form and fees." A licensed home with no enrolled children is a licensed home that cannot graduate. After issuance, the permits diverge again. 26 TAC §745.471 provides that "(a) A full license, certification, or registration will expire if it is not renewed. (b) There are no renewal requirements for a compliance certificate or listing," and 26 TAC §745.473(a) that "you must apply to renew your permit every two years after the date we issue your full permit," with a renewal period that "(1) Begins 60 calendar days before the anniversary of when we issued your full permit to you; and (2) Ends on the date of the anniversary," plus 30 late days. 26 TAC §745.344 adds the automatic killers: failure to pay a fee under Texas Human Resources Code §42.054(f), failure to submit listing background-check information under §42.052(j), and change of location or ownership. The delay trap is treating the initial licence as the finish line, marketing on it, and then discovering in month eleven that you never accumulated three inspections with children present.
17. BUILD THE CALENDAR FROM THE RULE CLOCKS, AND KNOW YOUR ONE REMEDY WHEN THEY SLIP. Only two intervals in the Texas process are legally fixed, and both bind HHSC rather than you. 26 TAC §745.301(a)(1) gives CCR "21 days after receiving your application to review the paperwork," and 26 TAC §745.321(a) provides that "If you are applying for a permit other than a compliance certificate, we will issue or deny you a permit no later than two months after we accept your application, unless there is good cause to exceed this timeframe." Texas Human Resources Code §42.046(d) says the same in statute: "The department shall complete the investigation and decide on an application within two months after the date the department receives a completed application." Everything else is your own critical path, and in weeks it runs as follows. Weeks 0–3: schedule and attend the pre-application interview, which is mandatory for a registration or a licence and not required for a listing under 26 TAC §745.211(1)(A). Weeks 0–4, in parallel: pediatric first aid and CPR, the twelve training topics of 26 TAC §747.1007(7), the TB record, transcripts, and the $300,000 liability quote under 26 TAC §745.249(a). Weeks 1–4: create the CCR online account, gather the forms in the figure to 26 TAC §745.243, and write the fourteen operational policies of 26 TAC §747.501 and the Form 2948 plan of operation. Weeks 2–6: background checks — you must submit the requests "When you submit your application for a permit to us" under 26 TAC §745.621(a)(1), the CBCU then schedules fingerprinting under 26 TAC §745.623, and any out-of-state check under 26 TAC §745.613 adds four to eight weeks nobody can compress. Weeks 4–8: file, then wait out the 21-day completeness review. Weeks 6–14: acceptance, the pre-permit inspection required by 26 TAC §745.211(6) and the figure to §745.8405(a), correction of any deficiencies, and issuance inside the two-month window. A well-prepared registered child-care home realistically holds a permit twelve to eighteen weeks after the orientation class; a licensed child-care home with an out-of-state household member, a city zoning question and a second inspection can take six to nine months, and then serves another three to twelve months on an initial licence under 26 TAC §745.347 before the full licence issues. When CCR misses its own clock you have exactly one remedy and it is procedural. 26 TAC §745.323 provides that "You may file a complaint with the Associate Commissioner for Child Care Regulation. The Associate Commissioner will resolve the dispute in a timely manner. We must reimburse you for your application fee if we do not establish good cause for exceeding the time limit," and 26 TAC §745.325 sets the form and the address: "You must send a written complaint regarding the timeframes for processing your application before we issue or deny you a permit," addressed to "the Associate Commissioner for Child Care Regulation, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Mail Code E-550, P.O. Box 149030, Austin, Texas 78714." The delay trap is the word "before." File that complaint after the permit issues or is denied and the rule gives you nothing; the refund right under 26 TAC §745.519(1) attaches only where "the issuance of the permit was late without good cause and the applicant requests the refund." If the answer is a denial, 26 TAC §745.353 preserves an administrative review or appeal, with the instructions and timeframes stated in the denial letter.

What you must post on your walls

• ONE RULE CARRIES ALMOST THE WHOLE POSTING BURDEN, AND IT IS 26 TAC §747.401. Texas keeps its home posting law in a single division of six sections' worth of duty: Title 26, Part 1, Chapter 747 (Minimum Standards for Child-Care Homes), Subchapter B (Administration and Communication), Division 3, headed REQUIRED POSTINGS, which contains exactly two rules — §747.401 and §747.403. The operative text of §747.401(a), as the Secretary of State's rules-in-effect index served it on 26 August 2026, reads: "You must post the following in a prominent and publicly accessible place where parents and others may easily view them during all hours of operation: (1) The child-care home's license or registration certificate; (2) The letter or form from the most recent Licensing inspection or investigation; (3) The Licensing notice Keeping Children Safe; (4) Telephone numbers specified in this division; (5) A list of your employees, which must be printed on paper at least 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches in size and must include each employee's first and last name; and (6) Any other Licensing notices requiring posting." That is the entire mandatory display list for a Texas child-care home. Read the three qualifiers, because each one is scored separately by an inspector. "PROMINENT AND PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE" is a two-part test: a notice taped inside a cupboard door in a room parents enter is publicly accessible but not prominent, and a notice hung beautifully in a bedroom parents never enter is prominent but not publicly accessible. "WHERE PARENTS AND OTHERS MAY EASILY VIEW THEM" widens the audience beyond parents to caregivers, substitutes, household members and anyone else lawfully in the home — this is why a locked office is the wrong wall. "DURING ALL HOURS OF OPERATION" makes the duty continuous, not a thing you assemble before an announced visit. 26 TAC §745.8409 guarantees you will be caught out if it lapses: "One inspection every year must be unannounced for a: (1) Licensed operation; (2) Certified operation; and (3) Registered child-care home that is receiving a subsidy for a child in care through the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC)," while "(b) One inspection every two years must be unannounced for a registered child-care home that is not receiving a subsidy for a child in care through TWC," and "(c) All other inspections and investigations may be announced or unannounced." A registered home that takes TWC subsidy children therefore buys itself an annual surprise visit rather than a biennial one. A trap worth naming: Chapter 747 is written in the second person and every one of these duties is yours personally as the permit holder. §747.117(a) and (b) provide that "the permit holder must ensure compliance with all minimum standards in this chapter at all times," and §747.207 makes the primary caregiver responsible for compliance with "all the minimum standards that apply to your licensed or registered child-care home." You cannot delegate the wall to an assistant caregiver and cite her when it is bare. In HHSC's published compilation of these standards, items (1), (2) and (3) carry a weight of Medium and items (4), (5) and (6) carry Medium-Low — the weights are the agency's enforcement scoring, not part of the codified rule text, and they do not appear in the Texas Administrative Code itself.
• THE PERMIT ITSELF, AND THE FACT THAT REGISTERED AND LICENSED HOMES POST DIFFERENT PAPER FOR DIFFERENT REASONS. §747.401(a)(1) requires you to post "the child-care home's license or registration certificate," and the disjunction is doing real work, because Texas issues two different permits to two different kinds of home. 26 TAC §747.113(a): "In a registered child-care home, the registered primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for not more than six children from birth through 13 years, and may provide care after-school hours for not more than six additional elementary school children. The total number of children in care at any given time, including the children related to the caregiver, must not exceed 12." 26 TAC §747.115(a): "In a licensed child-care home, the licensed primary caregiver provides care in the caregiver's own residence for children from birth through 13 years, unless the operation was licensed as a group day care home prior to September 1, 2003," with §747.115(c) capping the licensed home at 12 children in care as well. §747.111 confirms the chapter covers "child-care homes registered or licensed by us to care for 12 or fewer children in the caregiver's own home for less than 24 hours per day." The display duty is doubled by statute, and the two statutory hooks are not the same sentence. Texas Human Resources Code §42.048(d) provides: "A license holder must display a license issued under this chapter in a prominent place at the facility." Texas Human Resources Code §42.052(e) provides: "A registration remains valid until the registration expires, is revoked, or is surrendered. The operator of a registered home must display the registration in a prominent place at the home." So a licensed child-care home is displaying under §42.048(d) and §747.401(a)(1); a registered child-care home is displaying under §42.052(e) and §747.401(a)(1). The practical consequence is that the posting duty survives even if you could somehow argue your way out of the minimum standard, because the statute independently commands it. There is a third permit type Texas people confuse with these two, and it is the one exception in the whole scheme. A LISTED family home — §42.052(c), a home caring for three or fewer unrelated children — is expressly excused from displaying. §42.052(i) reads: "The commission shall provide to a listed family home a copy of the listing. A listing must contain a provision that states: 'THIS HOME IS A LISTED FAMILY HOME. IT IS NOT LICENSED OR REGISTERED WITH THE HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION. A LISTED FAMILY HOME HAS LIMITED MINIMUM STANDARDS AND IS NOT INSPECTED UNLESS A COMPLAINT IS FILED WITH THE COMMISSION.' The operator of a listed family home is not required to display the listing in a prominent place at the home but shall make the listing available for examination." A full-text search of 26 TAC Chapter 742 (Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes) for the word "post" on 26 August 2026 returned zero sections. If you are listed, you post nothing; the moment you cross into registration or licensure, this entire element applies to you.
• THE MOST RECENT INSPECTION OR INVESTIGATION LETTER, WHICH IS THE POSTING TEXAS ENFORCES HARDEST. §747.401(a)(2) requires you to post "the letter or form from the most recent Licensing inspection or investigation." Note what the rule does not say. It does not say "your compliance history," it does not say "the last three years of reports," and it does not require a sign telling parents where to look online. It requires the single most recent document Child Care Regulation handed or sent you after its last visit — and "most recent" means the one on your wall becomes a violation the day a newer one arrives. 26 TAC §745.8445(a) tells you exactly what that document contains: "The notification of the outcome of the inspection or investigation sent to the operation will include: (1) Any licensing statutes, rules, or minimum standards that we investigated and whether the operation was in compliance; (2) The specifics of any deficiency that we found during an investigation or inspection; (3) The date by which you must comply with a particular licensing statute, rule, or minimum standard; and (4) Your right to an administrative review to dispute any deficiency that we found." You post that, deficiencies and all. There is no redacted version, no summary, no "pending correction" variant, and 26 TAC §745.8447(a) is clear that your remedy is to fix the deficiency within the stated timeframe or request an administrative review — not to take the letter down. Where the compliance history does surface is in the parent-rights rule, and it surfaces as a DELIVERY duty rather than a posting. 26 TAC §747.521(5) gives a parent the right to "Receive from your child-care home: (A) HHSC's inspection reports for your child-care home; and (B) Information regarding how to access your child-care home's compliance history online." HHSC's own technical assistance to that rule states that the home "may provide the parent with HHSC's inspection reports by posting the reports in the child-care home and referring the parent to the posting or by giving the parent a copy of the reports directly or electronically," and that for the compliance history the home "should provide the parent with instructions regarding how to access the home's compliance history via Search Texas Child Care." That online history lives at www.txchildcaresearch.org, and 26 TAC §745.8417 governs what lands there after an anonymous complaint: nothing is posted "if we do not find a factual basis for any of the alleged deficiencies in the report," but a record of the report and the findings is posted where "We determine the operation had any deficiencies" and "The operation waives its right to an administrative review for any deficiency, or any deficiency is upheld in the administrative review process." The trap for a Texas applicant is symmetrical: the wall carries one document, the internet carries the history, and the parent-facing duty for the history is to TELL them where it is, not to print it out and pin it up. Budgeting for a laminated "compliance history" placard is money spent on a posting Texas never asked for.
• KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE IS THE ABUSE-HOTLINE SIGN, IT IS FREE, AND FAILING TO HANG IT IS A CRIME. §747.401(a)(3) requires you to post "the Licensing notice Keeping Children Safe." The minimum standard names the artefact but does not describe it; the description is in statute. Texas Human Resources Code §42.055(a) provides: "Each child-care facility shall post in a location that is conspicuous to all employees and customers a sign that includes: (1) a description of the provisions of the Family Code relating to the duty to report child abuse or neglect; (2) a description of the penalties for violating the reporting provisions of the Family Code; and (3) a brief description of sudden infant death syndrome, shaken-baby syndrome, and childhood diabetes and methods for preventing those phenomena." §42.055(a-1) adds a fourth subject and names registered homes explicitly: "A licensed day-care center, licensed group day-care home, or registered family home subject to Section 42.0423 shall include in the sign required under Subsection (a) a description of how to access a listing of unsafe children's products on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission's Internet website or through the department's public Internet website." Two subsections then decide the economics and the stakes. §42.055(c): "The department shall provide the sign to each child-care facility without charge." §42.055(d): "A person who operates a child-care facility commits an offense if the department provides a sign to the facility as provided by this section and the person intentionally fails to display the sign in the facility as prescribed by this section. An offense under this subsection is a Class C misdemeanor." That is the only criminal penalty anywhere in the Texas home-posting scheme. Do not buy this sign. The current artefact is the HHSC Child Care Regulation poster headed KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE, dated December 2023, stock number 21D0606, published in English, Spanish and Vietnamese on the agency's Child Day Care Regulation Forms page and downloadable free. Its panels are Report Abuse and Neglect ("Call 800-252-5400 to make confidential reports. Failure to report suspected abuse or neglect is a crime. Employers are prohibited from retaliating against caregivers who make reports in good faith"), Protect Children (shaken baby), Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, Keep Children Healthy (which is where childhood diabetes appears), Water Safety, Transportation Safety, and Unsafe Children's Products, whose text discharges §42.055(a-1) by directing readers to cpsc.gov. Two practical points. First, the statutory phrase is "conspicuous to all employees and customers," which is a different and in a house sometimes wider test than §747.401(a)'s "prominent and publicly accessible place where parents and others may easily view them" — hang it where the two tests overlap, which in a family child-care home is normally the entry or the room where parents sign children in and out. Second, the poster is dated: a December 2023 revision is what HHSC serves today, and if HHSC reissues it, the copy on your wall becomes the wrong notice under §747.401(a)(3) even though nothing about your home has changed.
• THE TELEPHONE NUMBERS, WHICH ARE THEIR OWN RULE AND WERE REWRITTEN IN AUGUST 2024. §747.401(a)(4) requires you to post "telephone numbers specified in this division," and the division's second rule spells them out. 26 TAC §747.403, as amended effective 19 August 2024 (49 TexReg 6233), reads in full: "(a) You must post in a prominent place the following telephone numbers: (1) 911 or, if 911 is not available in your area, you must post the telephone numbers for: (A) Emergency medical services; (B) Law enforcement; and (C) Fire department; (2) Poison control (1-800-222-1222); and (3) The Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline (1-800-252-5400). (b) You must post in a prominent place the name, address, and telephone number for: (1) The local Child Care Regulation office; and (2) Your child-care home." Five things are worth extracting. First, the two hotline numbers are printed inside the rule itself, so there is no excuse for a wrong digit: poison control is 1-800-222-1222 and the Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline is 1-800-252-5400. Second, subsection (b) is the part providers forget — you must post your OWN home's name, address and telephone number, on your own wall, in your own house. It reads as absurd until you remember why it exists: a substitute caregiver, a visiting grandparent or a panicking teenager dialling 911 has to be able to read the street address aloud. §747.4307(c) makes the same point from the other direction, requiring that where you use cellular service "you must ensure all caregivers and adult household members know the address of the home to direct emergency personnel to the home when dialing 911 from the home." Third, the local Child Care Regulation office must be posted by NAME, ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER — three data points, not just a number — and CCR reorganises its regional offices, so this is a posting with a maintenance cost. Fourth, §747.4307(d) creates a standing update duty attached to the telephone posting: "You must post your phone number as required by §747.403 of this chapter ... and update the posting any time your phone number changes." A home that switches carriers and never touches the wall is deficient. Fifth, the standard here is "in a prominent place," which is a slightly shorter phrase than §747.401(a)'s "prominent and publicly accessible place where parents and others may easily view them"; the numbers exist for whoever has to dial them, so the working answer is beside the telephone you actually use as well as on the parent-facing wall. Note also what is absent. There is no requirement to post the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services address, no requirement to post the HHSC state office, and no requirement to post a 24-hour complaint line separate from the abuse hotline. Chapter 747's telephone posting is exactly these five entries and no more.
• THE EMPLOYEE LIST, WHICH IS THE ONLY POSTING TEXAS SPECIFIES BY PAPER SIZE. §747.401(a)(5) requires you to post "a list of your employees, which must be printed on paper at least 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches in size and must include each employee's first and last name." Nothing else in the Texas home standards prescribes a physical dimension, and the reason is that this posting exists to be read across a room by a parent who has just met a stranger in the hallway. Two consequences follow immediately. A list handwritten on an index card fails even if every name on it is correct, and a list typed at eight points on a half sheet fails for the same reason. The statutory authority is Texas Human Resources Code §42.0551, POSTING OF EMPLOYEE LIST: "(a) Each day-care center, group day-care home, and family home shall post a list of all current employees at the center or home in accordance with rules adopted by the executive commissioner. (b) The executive commissioner shall adopt rules regarding the size, wording, and placement of the list required under this section." Note that the statute reaches "family home" without qualification, which is why the duty lands on a registered child-care home caring for six children as squarely as on a centre with a hundred. §747.401(a)(5) is the "rules regarding the size, wording, and placement" the statute directed, which is why the paper dimension is in the rule at all. Compare the parallel centre rule and you learn what Texas chose NOT to require of homes. 26 TAC §746.401(9) requires a centre to post "a list entitled 'Current Employees.' The list must be at least 8 1/2 inches by 11 inches in size, printed legibly, and must include each employee's first and last name." The home rule omits the mandatory title "Current Employees" and omits the words "printed legibly," while keeping the size and the first-and-last-name requirement. Do not read that omission as licence — an illegible list does not "include each employee's first and last name" in any usable sense — but do not manufacture a title requirement that Chapter 747 does not impose either. The word that decides most citations here is "your employees." A family child-care home frequently has assistant caregivers, substitute caregivers and household members. Household members who are not employed by you are not employees and do not belong on the list; assistant and substitute caregivers you pay do. And because the list must be current, this is the posting most likely to go stale silently: the wall does not update itself when someone quits, and an inspector comparing your posted list against the personnel records you must keep under §747.901 and produce under §747.801(3) will find the gap in under a minute.
• FOOD ALLERGIES: A POSTING YOU MAY LAWFULLY DECLINE, IF YOU TAKE THE OTHER BRANCH. §747.401(b) is the only conditional posting in the Texas home standards, and it is drafted as a genuine either/or: "For food allergies that require an emergency plan, you must either: (1) Post the list of each child's food allergies in a prominent place during all hours of operation, and if a parent requests it, you must maintain privacy for the child (for example, a clipboard hung on the wall with a cover sheet over the list); or (2) Ensure that all caregivers, employees, and household members who prepare and serve food are aware of each child's food allergies." Branch (2) is not a lesser standard; it is a harder one to evidence. If you take it, you are asserting that every caregiver, every employee AND every household member who prepares or serves food knows every allergy, and you will be asked how you know that during an inspection. Branch (1) is auditable at a glance, which is why most homes take it. The privacy carve-out is worth reading closely because it is unusual: the rule anticipates that posting a child's medical condition on a wall is a disclosure, and gives the parent a right to demand shielding, with the rule itself supplying the remedy — "a clipboard hung on the wall with a cover sheet over the list." That parenthetical is regulatory text, not guidance; a cover sheet is expressly blessed and cannot be cited as defeating the "prominent place" requirement. The trigger is narrow. The duty attaches only to "food allergies that require an emergency plan," not to every dietary preference, intolerance or parental instruction. A child whose parent has asked you to avoid strawberries has no place on this posting; a child with a documented anaphylaxis plan does. Compare the centre rule to see how much lighter the home version is. 26 TAC §746.403(b) requires a centre to post the allergy list "during all hours of operation where you prepare food and in each room where the child may spend time" — that is potentially half a dozen simultaneous postings — and gives the centre no either/or escape at all: it must post AND ensure staff awareness. A home posts once, in one prominent place, or takes the awareness branch instead. One further difference matters for planning. Where §747.401(a) demands "a prominent and publicly accessible place where parents and others may easily view them," §747.401(b)(1) demands only "a prominent place." The allergy list therefore does not have to hang beside the permit; a kitchen wall visible to whoever cooks satisfies the words of the rule, and is where the information is actually used.
• THE SEVENTH POSTING HIDES OUTSIDE THE REQUIRED POSTINGS DIVISION, IN THE PRODUCT SAFETY RULES. Anyone who reads only Subchapter B, Division 3 will miss a display duty that sits nine subchapters away. 26 TAC §747.3935 (Subchapter S, Safety Practices, Division 6, Product Safety) provides at subsection (c): "You must post a notice for parents and employees in a prominent and publicly accessible place that includes information on how to access a listing of unsafe children's products through the CPSC Internet website or through the DFPS Internet website." That is a standalone posting, worded in the same "prominent and publicly accessible place" formula as §747.401(a), and it is not listed among the six items of §747.401(a). In practice the Keeping Children Safe poster discharges it, because that poster carries the panel "Unsafe Children's Products — Visit the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission website at cpsc.gov to see recalls of unsafe children's products"; but the two duties are legally distinct, and a home that hangs some other abuse-reporting sign instead of the HHSC poster will satisfy neither. The same section imposes a companion duty that is filing, not display. §747.3935(b): "You must certify annually in writing using a form provided by DFPS that you have reviewed each of the recall notices issued by the CPSC and that there are no unsafe products in the home except products specified in subsection (a) of this section. The form must be kept on file and available for review upon request by Licensing staff, parents, and employees during hours of operation." KEPT ON FILE AND AVAILABLE — not posted. The instrument is HHSC Form 2885, Children's Products Certification, and §747.801(12) requires you to keep "the most recent Licensing form certifying that you have reviewed each of the bulletins and notices issued by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission." Two calibrations for a Texas applicant. First, notice that the codified rule still says "DFPS" in both subsections (b) and (c), naming the Department of Family and Protective Services, while HHSC's own published compilation of Chapter 747 silently prints "HHSC" in the same two places. The agency's manual is not the law; the Secretary of State's text as served on 26 August 2026 says DFPS, a fossil of the 2018 transfer of these chapters. Nothing turns on it for compliance — the HHSC website carries the link — but it tells you which document you are reading. Second, the statutory hook, Texas Human Resources Code §42.0423(a), states that the section "applies only to a licensed day-care center, licensed group day-care home, or registered family home," and §42.0423(g) requires the annual written certification. The rule at §747.3935 is drafted more broadly than that statutory list and reaches every child-care home governed by Chapter 747. Comply with the rule; the narrower statute is not a defence.
• THE PERMIT-RENEWAL NOTICE, A POSTING THAT LIVES IN CHAPTER 745 AND IS INVISIBLE TO ANYONE READING THE MINIMUM STANDARDS. There is an eighth posting duty, and it is not in Chapter 747 at all. 26 TAC §745.479, in Chapter 745 (Licensing), Subchapter D, Division 12 (Permit Renewal), is headed "Will I need to post the written notice of my permit's renewal?" and answers in one sentence: "Yes. Upon receiving the written notice of your permit's renewal, you must post the notice at your operation." That is the whole rule, adopted effective 1 December 2017 (41 TexReg 6082) and transferred into Title 26 effective 15 July 2019 as published in the 14 June 2019 Texas Register, 44 TexReg 2963. It applies to your child-care home because Chapter 745 is the general licensing chapter that governs every operation CCR regulates, and §747.123 expressly imports Chapter 745's definitions into Chapter 747. Three features of §745.479 deserve attention. It has no place-of-display qualifier — no "prominent," no "publicly accessible," no "where parents may easily view" — so the only textual test is "at your operation." It has no duration. And it is a SEPARATE document from the permit you already post under §747.401(a)(1): the renewal notice is the written confirmation CCR sends when it renews, and the rule commands you to put that confirmation up as well as the certificate. Renewal is not optional paperwork for a home. Texas Human Resources Code §42.052(f-1) directs the executive commissioner to adopt rules "governing the certification and registration renewal process for all certifications and registrations issued under this chapter," including renewal periods, staggered renewals, expiration dates and conditions for renewal, and §42.052(f-2) requires HHSC to evaluate each renewal application for "repeated violations" or "a pattern of violations during the preceding five years," with power to attach "restrictions, conditions, or additional requirements" to the renewed permit. §42.052(f-3) bars renewal outright where a cited violation is uncorrected past its compliance date and not under review. So the renewal notice you must post can itself carry restrictions — and posting it puts those restrictions in front of every parent who walks in. That is the design, not an accident. The practical trap: a home that files its renewal, receives the notice by mail or through the provider portal, files it in a drawer with the rest of the correspondence and posts only the new certificate has complied with §747.401(a)(1) and breached §745.479. Because this rule sits in the licensing chapter rather than the minimum standards, it is the single most reliable omission from checklists built by reading Chapter 747 alone.
• THE OPEN-ENDED SIXTH ITEM: ANY OTHER LICENSING NOTICES REQUIRING POSTING. §747.401(a)(6) closes the list with "Any other Licensing notices requiring posting," and it is the clause that makes a Texas posting checklist a live document rather than a laminated card. The rule delegates to the agency: whatever Child Care Regulation issues with instructions to post becomes a minimum standard on your wall the day you receive it, with no rulemaking, no Texas Register notice and no comment period. The centre analogue is drafted slightly more tightly — 26 TAC §746.401(11) says "any other Licensing notices with SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS to post the notice," while the home rule says only "requiring posting" — so if anything the home clause is the broader of the two. Three practical rules follow. First, read the cover letter. CCR notices arrive by the provider portal and by mail, and the posting instruction is normally in the transmittal, not on the notice itself; a provider who prints the attachment and discards the covering message has thrown away the evidence of what was required. Second, keep them. 26 TAC §747.803(a) provides that "Unless otherwise stated in this chapter: (1) You must keep at the child-care home each record that your home is required to post or keep; and (2) These records must be kept for at least three months from the date the record was created." That rule is the reason an expired notice you took down is still a record you must be able to produce for three months, and it is also the reason the retired inspection letter you replaced under §747.401(a)(2) does not go in the bin. Third, do not confuse a posted CCR notice with the notices Texas requires you to DELIVER rather than display. §747.309(b) and (c) require that after a safe sleeping deficiency you notify parents "using Form 2970, Notification of Safe Sleeping Deficiency," and after an abuse, neglect or exploitation deficiency "using Form 7266, Notification of Abuse/Neglect/Exploitation Deficiency," both within five days under §747.309(a) and to "the parents of each child attending your child-care home at the time of the notification, including a child who may not have been in care on the day of the actual incident." Those are individual written notifications, and §747.801(15) requires you to keep "proof that you have notified parents in writing" of them — proof, not a posting. Similarly §747.213 requires written notice to each parent where you do not carry liability insurance, with Form 2962 offered as the vehicle. A home that hangs Form 2970 on the wall and skips the individual notices has substituted a posting for a delivery and satisfied neither rule.
• WHAT YOU DO NOT POST BUT MUST PRODUCE ON DEMAND, AND THE RULE THAT PUNISHES HESITATION. Texas draws a hard line between display and availability, and the availability list is far longer than the wall. 26 TAC §747.801 opens: "You must maintain and make the following records available for our review upon request during hours of operation," and then enumerates fifteen categories, including children's records, infant feeding instructions, personnel and training records, "Menus, as required in §747.3113," medication records, pet vaccination records, "Safety documentation for emergency drills, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, and emergency evacuation and relocation diagram," the most recent DSHS immunization compliance review form if applicable, the most recent Texas Department of Agriculture Child and Adult Care Food Program report if applicable, the most recent local workforce board Child-Care Services Contractor inspection report if applicable, "Written approval from the fire marshal to provide care above or below ground level, if applicable," the CPSC certification form, crib documentation, "Proof of current liability insurance coverage or, if applicable, that you have provided written notice to the parent of each child that you do not carry the insurance," and proof of the safe-sleep and abuse/neglect parental notifications. Note items (8), (9) and (10): the rule states that those three "are optional, but if provided, will allow Licensing to avoid duplicating the evaluation of standards that have been evaluated by another state agency within the past year." Your immunization compliance form and your CACFP report are a shortcut you may volunteer, not a posting and not even a mandatory file. Parents have their own access rights, and they are rights of inspection rather than display. §747.521 grants a parent the right to "(1) Enter and examine your child-care home during its hours of operation without advance notice," "(3) Review your child-care home's publicly accessible records," "(4) Review your child-care home's written records concerning the parent's child," "(9) Obtain a copy of your child-care home's policies and procedures," "(10) Review, upon request of the parent, your: (A) Staff training records; and (B) In-house training curriculum, if any," and "(11) Be free from any retaliatory action by your child-care home for exercising any of the parent's rights." §747.601(a) adds that "All children's records must be immediately accessible to caregivers during hours of operation for use in an emergency" and §747.601(c) that they "are subject to review and/or reproduction by Licensing upon request during hours of operation." The rule that makes hesitation expensive is 26 TAC §745.8411. It requires that the operation "Admits authorized representatives involved in conducting the inspection or investigation," "Provides access to all areas of the operation," "Provides access to all records," and "Does not delay or prevent authorized representatives from conducting an inspection or investigation," and provides that if anyone "refuses to admit, refuses access, or prevents or delays" a representative, CCR may issue a deficiency, recommend an enforcement action under Subchapter L, or seek a court order granting access. In a home, where the records are in your kitchen and the inspector is unannounced, "I need to find it" is the failure mode; keep the §747.801 file assembled in one place.
• TEXAS DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO POST AN EVACUATION DIAGRAM, AND THE RULE SAYS SO IN SO MANY WORDS. This is the posting Texas home providers most often budget for, buy a frame for, and never needed. 26 TAC §747.5009 is headed "Must I post an emergency evacuation and relocation diagram?" and reads in its entirety: "No. You are not required to post an emergency evacuation and relocation diagram, however, if you leave a substitute in charge of your child-care home, a copy of the diagram must be readily accessible to the substitute caregiver." A rule that answers its own question with the word "No" is as clean a negative as an administrative code produces, and it has stood unamended since it took effect on 1 September 2003 (28 TexReg 1462), transferred into Title 26 effective 9 March 2018 (43 TexReg 909). You must still HAVE the diagram. 26 TAC §747.5007 requires: "Your emergency evacuation and relocation diagram must be on file at your child-care home and must show the following: (1) A floor plan of your child-care home; (2) Two exit paths from each room, unless a room opens directly to the outdoors at ground level; (3) The designated location outside the child-care home where all adults and children meet to ensure everyone has exited the home safely; and (4) The designated location inside the home where all adults and children take shelter from threatening weather." ON FILE, not on the wall. §747.801(7) confirms it belongs in the records you make available for review, alongside your drill, extinguisher and smoke-detector documentation. The distinction between "on file" and "readily accessible to the substitute caregiver" is the only place display-like behaviour is demanded, and it is triggered by a fact about staffing, not by the mere existence of children: leave a substitute in charge and the diagram must be somewhere that substitute can reach without hunting. The contrast with Texas child-care CENTRES is what generates the confusion, because centre checklists circulate freely and look authoritative. 26 TAC §746.401(4) requires a centre to post "your emergency evacuation and relocation diagram as specified in §746.5207 of this title." Homes have no counterpart. Anyone selling a Texas "daycare posting kit" that includes a printed evacuation diagram is selling a centre product to a home operator. The same asymmetry means you should be sceptical of any Texas posting list you find that does not distinguish Chapter 746 from Chapter 747; those two chapters are the fault line, and this is the cleanest place to test a source. If a checklist tells a Texas child-care home to post an evacuation diagram, it was written from the centre standards and every other line in it is suspect.
• NO MENU POSTING, NO DAILY SCHEDULE POSTING, NO PARENT NOTIFICATION POSTER: THREE MORE CENTRE DUTIES THAT DO NOT REACH A HOME. 26 TAC §747.3113 is headed "Must I post and maintain daily menus?" and its answer begins with the same word as §747.5009: "No, however you must: (1) Maintain menus showing all meals and snacks prepared and served at your child-care home for the previous three months. (2) Keep a record of any substitutions made. Substitutions must be of comparable food value. (3) Date the menus. If you rotate menus, there must be a record of which menu was used for each date. (4) Make menus available to Licensing and parents for review upon request." Maintain, date, and make available — never post. A Texas child-care centre, by contrast, must post "the daily menu, including all snacks and meals served by the child-care center" under 26 TAC §746.401(6). The daily schedule is the same story with a different name. Chapter 747 calls it the activity plan and defines it at §747.123(1) as "A written plan that outlines the daily routine and activities in which a group of children will engage while in your care." §747.2102(a) requires that "You must develop and follow a written activity plan that complies with §747.2103," and §747.2103(a) requires the plan to list the dates it covers, outline the specific daily activities required by §747.2104, include sufficient time for activities and routines, and avoid long waiting periods. Nowhere in Chapter 747 is there a rule requiring the activity plan to be displayed. A full-text search of Chapter 747 on the Secretary of State's rules-in-effect database on 26 August 2026 returns exactly eight sections containing the word "post" — §§747.401, 747.403, 747.801, 747.803, 747.2607, 747.3935, 747.4307 and 747.5009 — and the activity plan sections are not among them. The centre chapter has the rule the home chapter lacks: 26 TAC §746.2209, headed "Must I post the activity plan?", answers "Yes. You must post the activity plan for each group of children in the child-care center in a prominent place where parents and others can see it." Third, the Parent Notification Poster. HHSC publishes a poster headed ATTENTION PARENTS listing the documents a parent may ask to see, revised 12/2023, catalogued as Non-Form J-800-2957, and its own footer identifies it as the "Parent Notification Poster for Center-Based Care." It is a required posting for a centre under 26 TAC §746.401(7). Chapter 747 contains no equivalent item, and the home posting list at §747.401(a) does not include it. Homes discharge the same informational purpose through §747.501(9) and (10), which require the written operational policies to address "Parent rights that are consistent with the rules in Division 5 of this subchapter" and "Instructions on how a parent may access the: (A) Minimum standards online; (B) Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline; and (C) HHSC website," and through §747.503, which requires the parents to sign an enrollment agreement containing those policies "on or before the date of the child's admission." Delivered and signed, not displayed.
• THE GANG-FREE ZONE NOTICE IS NOT A HOME POSTING, AND IN TEXAS IT IS NOT A POSTING AT ALL. Texas Human Resources Code §42.064 is headed INFORMATION REGARDING GANG-FREE ZONES and reads: "Each day-care center shall, in accordance with rules adopted by the executive commissioner, distribute to parents and guardians of children who attend the center information on gang-free zones and the consequences of engaging in organized criminal activity within those zones." Two limits are on the face of it. The duty falls on a DAY-CARE CENTER, which §42.002(7) defines as "a child-care facility that provides care at a location other than the residence of the director, owner, or operator" — by definition not a home. And the verb is DISTRIBUTE, not post. The implementing rule confirms both. 26 TAC §746.501(b), in the centre chapter, provides: "You must also inform the parents that any area within 1,000 feet of a child-care center is a gang-free zone, where criminal offenses related to organized criminal activity are subject to a harsher penalty under the Texas Penal Code. You may inform the parents by: (1) Providing this information in the operational policies; (2) Distributing the information in writing to the parents; or (3) Informing the parents verbally as part of an individual or group parent orientation." Not one of the three permitted methods is a sign on a wall. A full-text search of Chapter 747 for "gang" on the Secretary of State's rules-in-effect database on 26 August 2026 returns zero sections; the only occurrence anywhere in the Texas child day-care standards is §746.501(b). If you operate a licensed or registered child-care home, the gang-free zone notice is not yours in any form. Three neighbouring negatives are worth recording in the same breath, because they close off the rest of the postings a multi-state checklist will try to sell you. First, "No Trespassing": Texas Human Resources Code §42.068 does require posted "No Trespassing" notices, supplied free by the commission and enforced by a Class C misdemeanor, but only of "each general residential operation operating as a residential treatment center" — a residential child-care category that has nothing to do with day care in a house. Second, immunization: no immunization posting exists anywhere in Chapter 747 — the chapter's immunization rule, §747.613, requires you to maintain current immunization records for each child in care including any exemptions or exceptions, and to have age-appropriate immunizations completed by the date of admission, but requires no display; and the DSHS immunization compliance review form appears in Texas home law only as the optional file item at §747.801(8), one of the three items §747.801 describes as "optional, but if provided, will allow Licensing to avoid duplicating the evaluation of standards that have been evaluated by another state agency within the past year." If a Texas home is told to post an immunization summary, ask which rule; there is not one in Chapter 747. Third, there is no general "conspicuous notice" catch-all: the words "display" and "conspicuous" do not appear anywhere in 26 TAC Chapter 747 or 26 TAC Chapter 745 as served on 26 August 2026. Texas says "post" and "prominent," and it says them in the eight sections listed elsewhere in this guide. Anything beyond those eight, plus §745.479, is a posting some other state requires.
• THE GROUND IS MOVING UNDER THIS CHAPTER RIGHT NOW, AND ALSO UNDER THE WEBSITE THAT PUBLISHES IT. Two things changed in 2026 that will invalidate any Texas posting research done from a bookmark. First, the Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us has been retired. Every legacy address — the ViewTAC and TacPage endpoints that every Texas compliance guide on the internet still links to — now returns a page reading "This Site Has Moved," and the rules in effect are served from the Rules & Meetings portal at texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com, which resolves rule text against an explicit as-of date (it queried 08/26/2026 for this research). If your source cites a texreg.sos.state.tx.us URL, it has not been re-verified since the migration. Second, and far more consequential, HHSC is rewriting Chapter 747 from end to end in plain language, and the rewrite is being published in instalments. The Texas Register issue of 28 August 2026 carries proposals filed with the Office of the Secretary of State on 14 August 2026 under TRD-202603520 and following, with an earliest possible date of adoption of 27 September 2026; earlier instalments appeared on 10 July 2026 and 31 July 2026. The proposals repeal the question-style section headings and replace them with declarative ones — "Liability Insurance Requirements" for "[What are the liability insurance requirements?]", "Children's Records" for "[What records must I have for children in my care and how long must I keep them?]" — and they renumber as they go, so that the content of today's §747.209 and §747.603 does not stay at today's addresses. The chapter's own title is changing: the proposals show "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD CARE [CHILD-CARE] HOMES", dropping the hyphen. Substantively, the 28 August 2026 instalment lowers the liability insurance floor for a child care home from $300,000 to "at least $100,000 for each occurrence of negligence," and the 31 July 2026 instalment proposes a wholly new §747.311, "Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements" (TRD-202602926, filed 15 July 2026, earliest adoption 30 August 2026), which would require that when a permit holder, controlling person, employee or prospective employee discloses a revoked state occupational authorization, "the child care home must provide written notice to parents of all enrolled children," that "A parent for each enrolled child must sign and date the written notice," and that the home "must keep the disclosure form and the signed parental notice on file for review by Child Care Regulation." That is a new parent-notice duty arriving days from now, and it is a delivery-and-file duty, not a posting. What has NOT moved is the posting law itself: neither §747.401 nor §747.403 appears in any of the 2026 instalments. §747.401 still carries its April 2017 amendment (42 TexReg 1906) and the March 2018 transfer (43 TexReg 909); §747.403 was last amended effective 19 August 2024 (49 TexReg 6233). Treat the six-item list as stable and the section numbers around it as provisional, and re-check the Required Postings division against the rules-in-effect index — not against a saved PDF — after 27 September 2026.

Enrollment forms for each child

• FORM 2910, "CCR APPLICATION FOR A LICENSE OR CERTIFICATION TO OPERATE A CHILD DAY CARE FACILITY," EFFECTIVE 6/2026, is the application you file if you want the licensed child-care home permit — the top home tier, seven to twelve children, at least one unannounced inspection a year. HHSC Child Care Regulation lists it first on its own Child Care Home Provider Application Forms page, under the heading "Licensed Child Care Home Application," alongside Form 2948, Form 2911, Form 2760, Form 2971 and Form 2974; the applicant signs it, and it is filed with CCR either through the online eApplication inside your Child Care Regulation Account or, if you refuse the online route, on paper to your local CCR office. Texas Human Resources Code §42.046(a) is the authority: "An applicant for a license to operate a child-care facility, child-placing agency, or continuum-of-care residential operation or for a listing or registration to operate a family home shall submit to the commission the appropriate fee prescribed by Section 42.054 and a completed application on a form provided by the commission," and §42.046(a-1) additionally requires the applicant for "a license, registration, or listing for a group day-care home or a family home" to name the sole proprietor or each partner who owns the operation. HRC §42.046(d) gives HHSC its clock: "The department shall complete the investigation and decide on an application within two months after the date the department receives a completed application" — two months from COMPLETED, which is why a packet missing one attachment does not start any clock at all. Now the trap that costs Texas applicants the most time in 2026: the form itself no longer lives where every guide, every printed handbook and even HHSC's own December 2025 minimum standards say it lives. The HHSC forms site moved. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms today returns only the sentence "The form pages have moved. Please visit fhb.hhs.texas.gov/forms and bookmark the new page," and Form 2910's authoritative page is now https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-2910-ccr-application-a-license-or-certification-operate-a-child-day-care-facility, which prints the official title and the line "Effective Date 6/2026." Verify the effective date on that page before you fill anything in: a Form 2910 downloaded before June 2026 is a superseded document, and CCR's forms database, not any PDF you saved, is what says which revision is current. Note also that Form 2910 is a dynamic Adobe LiveCycle form — the fhb page warns that "Some forms cannot be viewed in a web browser's PDF viewer and must be opened in the Adobe Reader application on your desktop system," and it is literal: opening 2910.pdf in Chrome, Preview or Safari yields a grey page reading "Please wait... If this message is not eventually replaced by the proper contents of the document, your PDF viewer may not be able to display this type of document." Applicants routinely conclude the file is corrupt and telephone CCR about it. It is not corrupt; you need desktop Adobe Reader.
• FORM 2919, "REQUEST FOR A REGISTRATION PERMIT," EFFECTIVE 7/2026, is the middle tier's application, and it is not Form 2910. HHSC's Child Care Home Provider Application Forms page sets out three separate packets, and under "Registered Child Care Home Application" it lists exactly four documents: Form 2919, Form 2760, Form 2971 and Form 2974. Filing Form 2910 for a registered home, or Form 2919 for a licensed one, is an easy mis-file: both permits are "homes" and both are described on the same HHSC webpage. Which one you must file is decided by headcount, not preference: HRC §42.052(d) provides that "A family home that provides care for four or more children, excluding children who are related to the caretaker, shall register with the commission," and 26 TAC §747.113 defines the registered child-care home as care in the caregiver's own residence "for not more than six children from birth through 13 years," plus after-school care "for not more than six additional elementary school children," with the absolute ceiling of twelve including your own children. HRC §42.052(c) lets a home that is only required to LIST choose to register instead — "The home may register with the commission" — but the reverse is not available: once you take a fourth unrelated child, registration is mandatory and a listing permit is no longer lawful cover. The applicant signs Form 2919 and files it with CCR through the online Child Care Regulation Account or on paper to the local CCR office; HHSC's home-provider page instructs applicants not to pay anything up front — "do not submit fee payments until CCR contacts you with your operation number and sends you an invoice." Two things deserve checking on the day you use it. First, the form's page in the HHSC forms database prints "Effective Date 7/2026" — it is the newest of the three home application forms, and any 2919 saved from an earlier year is stale. Second, HHSC's own Child Day Care Regulation Forms index labels it "(English and Spanish)" while the forms database serves only 2919.pdf with no Spanish companion on the form's own page. Registration is not a one-and-done filing: HRC §42.052(f-1) directs the executive commissioner to "adopt rules governing the certification and registration renewal process," including renewal periods, staggered renewals, late applications, expiration dates and conditions for renewal, and §42.052(f-2) requires the renewal evaluation to "include a review of all required forms and records." And one non-form obligation outranks all of them: HRC §42.054(e) requires HHSC to "charge each family home that is listed or registered with the department an annual fee" due "on the date on which the department initially lists or registers the home and on the anniversary of that date," and §42.054(f) provides that "If a facility, agency, or home fails to pay the annual fee when due, the license, listing, or registration, as appropriate, is automatically suspended until the fee is paid. The license, listing, or registration shall be revoked if the fee is not paid within six months after the date the automatic suspension begins." No form, no notice, no hearing — an unpaid anniversary invoice suspends the permit by operation of statute.
• FORM 2986, "LISTING PERMIT REQUEST," EFFECTIVE 11/2021, WITH ITS ATTACHMENT "GUIDELINES FOR LISTED FAMILY HOMES" DATED OCTOBER 2021, is the bottom tier's application, and the form itself carries the completion checklist you will be graded against. Its own header says "Use this form to apply for a listing permit," and its transmittal line says "After completing all of this form, mail it and any other materials requested to the nearest Child Care Regulation (CCR) office" — the listing packet is the one home packet HHSC still routes on paper by default. Section 6, "Certification and Signature," is signed by the applicant personally and prints the checklist verbatim: "Form 2962, Verification of Liability Insurance, OR a document that covers the same information that is in Form 2962 (use of Form 2962 is optional); Form 2760, Controlling Person - Child Care Regulation, or the online submission of information regarding controlling persons through the CCR website; Online submission or a completed Form 2971, Child Care Licensing Request for Background Check, for all applicable persons; Proof of one training hour of safe sleep training." That last item is statutory, not discretionary: HRC §42.046(f) provides that "An applicant for a listing to operate a family home shall submit with the application proof of the applicant's successful completion of safe sleep training in accordance with commission rules," and Section 5 of Form 2986 specifies the content — one hour covering "Recognizing and preventing shaken baby syndrome and abusive head trauma," "Understanding and using safe sleeping practices and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)," and "Understanding early childhood brain development" — with the instruction "Please attach proof of training to this application." The signature block also binds you to a reporting duty most listed providers never notice: "I understand I am to notify CCR within 15 days if I move or when I am no longer caring for children," which is 26 TAC §742.401(f), requiring written notice to Licensing within 15 days of relocating or closing. Two stale statements sit inside this official packet and you should not act on either. The form, dated November 2021, calls the background-check form "Form 2971, Child Care Licensing Request for Background Check"; the form's current title in HHSC's forms database is "Form 2971, Child Care Regulation – Request for Background Check," effective 6/2026. Worse, the October 2021 attachment tells you the provider "must submit a completed Child Care Licensing Request for Background Check every 5 years" — the current rule, 26 TAC §745.621(b)(1), sets FIVE years only for a subject who had a fingerprint-based criminal history check and TWO years for a subject who only had a name-based Texas criminal history check, and at a listed family home the name-based check is the default under §745.615. Following the attachment's five-year line for a name-only household member runs you past the renewal date, and the attachment itself states the price of that: "Failure to submit the required background checks will result in the automatic suspension of the home's listing. If the background checks are not received within six months of the due date, the listing will be automatically revoked."
• FORM 2760, "CONTROLLING PERSON – CHILD CARE REGULATION," EFFECTIVE 12/2023, is the one form all three home tiers must file, and it is the one with a two-day deadline attached to it forever. HHSC lists it in the licensed, registered and listed packets alike. Its published instructions say who signs and when: "The applicant, designee or head of the governing body must complete and sign Form 2760, and enter the names of the controlling persons," and, under "When to Prepare," "Complete, sign and submit this form when submitting an application to Child Care Licensing for a permit and within two days after a person becomes a controlling person at the operation." Two days. Not two weeks, not at renewal. The minimum standards carry the same clock from the other direction: 26 TAC §747.303(a)(7) requires you to notify Licensing "as soon as possible, but no later than two days after … A new individual becomes a controlling person at your operation, or an individual that was previously a controlling person ceases to be a controlling person at your operation [Medium-High]" — so a controlling person LEAVING is reportable too, and Form 2760, which only adds names, does not discharge that half of the duty. The instructions' transmittal line is "Mail the completed form to the local Child Care Licensing office," though HHSC's controlling-person guidance and the Form 2986 checklist both allow the alternative of "the online submission of information regarding controlling persons through the CCR website." For a home the definition reaches into your household: the instructions name as controlling persons the "Owner of the operation or member of the governing body of the operation, including, as applicable, an executive, an officer, a board member, a partner, a sole proprietor and the sole proprietor's spouse, or the primary caregiver at a child care home and the primary caregiver's spouse," anyone who "either alone, or in connection with others, has the ability to influence or direct the management, expenditures or policies of the operation," including through "a personal, familial or other relationship." The form's own title, position and relationship picklist confirms the reach, offering "Primary Caregiver of a Child Care Home, Spouse of Primary Caregiver, and Adult Living in Child Care Home" as choices, described as "terms only associated with licensed, registered or listed child care homes." A controlling person is not automatically a background-check subject and vice versa — 26 TAC §745.605(b)(4) expressly excuses you from submitting a background-check request for "Controlling persons who do not fulfill a role specified in subsection (a) of this section" — so filing Form 2971 for your spouse does not discharge Form 2760, and filing Form 2760 does not discharge Form 2971. Note the naming drift you will hit while looking for this form. HHSC's Child Day Care Regulation Forms index still lists it as "Form 2760, Controlling Person - Child Care Licensing (English and Spanish)," and the instructions on the form's own page carry the header "Updated: 5/2018" and say "Child Care Licensing" throughout; the current, effective-12/2023 title in the forms database is "Controlling Person – Child Care Regulation." Child Care Licensing has not been the regulator's name since the function moved to HHSC. Take the form number, 2760, as the stable identifier; treat every version of the words around it as a date stamp to be checked.
• FORM 2971, "CHILD CARE REGULATION – REQUEST FOR BACKGROUND CHECK," EFFECTIVE 6/2026, WITH INSTRUCTIONS UPDATED 6/2026, is the background-check submission form, and for most Texas home operators it is a form you are NOT allowed to use. 26 TAC §745.617(a) splits the route by permit type in a figure printed in the rule itself: all operation types except listed family homes "Must submit a request for a background check online through your Licensing account," while listed family homes may submit "either: (A) Online through your Licensing account; or (B) By sending in a signed form provided by your local Licensing office or the CBCU." The form's own current instructions repeat it: "All operations, except listed family homes, submit background checks through the operation's online Child Care Regulation Account unless the person for whom you are submitting the background check does not have any of the following types of identification: Social Security number; driver license number; state-issued identification number." A licensed or registered child-care home that mails a paper 2971 has not submitted anything. The operator, not the subject, is the filer: §745.605(a) makes you submit for the owner, every employee and prospective employee, every person fourteen or older who is counted in the child/caregiver ratio, has unsupervised access, provides direct care, resides in the operation, or "is regularly or frequently present," and §745.619 lists the ten data points you "must verify and send" for each, including all maiden, married and alias names, the city and state of every out-of-Texas residence in the preceding five years, and the person's role and the ages of children they will care for. The deadlines are in §745.621: an initial request "When you submit your application for a permit to us," "When you hire someone," "When a resident 14 years or older moves into your home or operation," and "Between 90 days before and 90 days after a resident living in your home or operation becomes 14 years old"; a renewal request no later than "Five years from the date you last submitted a request" for a fingerprint-based subject, or "Two years" for a subject who only had a name-based Texas criminal history check. Every one of those items carries the [High] weight. What the check now includes changed in 2026 and this is where a 2025-vintage checklist goes stale: 26 TAC §745.609, as printed in CCR's Background Check Rules publication dated August 2026 and footered "Revised: 8/2026," now requires a fingerprint-based or name-based Texas criminal history check, a central registry check, AND "a SEMARC check" — the Search Engine for Multi-Agency Reportable Conduct, which reaches findings held by the Texas Education Agency, HHSC Long Term Care Regulation and the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. That obligation came in with the §745.21 and §745.609 amendment package HHSC filed on July 2, 2026 under TRD-202602707, effective August 31, 2026, implementing S.B. 1849 of the 88th Legislature. Costs are published separately: HHSC charges the operation "$2 to CCR for every background check submitted," and the subject pays the fingerprint vendor at the appointment — "$37.00" for a paid employee, "$35.00" for foster and adoptive applicants, household members and other uncompensated subjects.
• FORM 2974, "REQUEST FOR RISK EVALUATION BASED ON PAST CRIMINAL HISTORY OR CENTRAL REGISTRY FINDINGS," EFFECTIVE 3/2026, is the fourth document in all three home application packets, and it is the only one on HHSC's list that most applicants will never need to file. HHSC prints it under "Licensed Child Care Home Application," "Registered Child Care Home Application" and "Listed Family Home Application" alike, which reads as though it were mandatory; it is not. Its published instructions define the trigger: "A person interested in being associated with operations regulated by Child Care Licensing (CCL) must use this form to submit a risk evaluation for himself or herself if that person: has criminal history or Central Registry (or out-of-state abuse/neglect) history that is a violation of minimum standards that is eligible for a risk evaluation; and is pursuing an association (including employment or volunteering) with a child care operation or home regulated by CCL." The subject of the background check signs it, not the operator — 26 TAC §745.681 places responsibility for requesting a risk evaluation on the person, and §745.683 and §745.689 govern what the request must contain. It is the form the Centralized Background Check Unit points a household member to after an adverse but evaluable determination, and HHSC puts it in the application packet so an ineligible household member surfaces before you have paid a permit fee. Two dating problems attach to it. Its instructions on the form's own page in the HHSC forms database are headed "Updated: 1/2019" and speak throughout of "Child Care Licensing (CCL)" — a body that has not existed under that name since the child-care regulation function moved to HHSC; the form itself, however, was reissued with an effective date of 3/2026, so the instructions are seven years older than the document they instruct on. Do not read the 2019 instructions as evidence that the 2019 form is still good. A separate form covers the mechanical case where the subject cannot get to a fingerprinting site: Form 2856, "Child Care Licensing Homebound Fingerprint Request," effective 1/2019 with instructions updated 1/2019, still carries the pre-2017 agency name in its official title and has not been reissued, which is itself a useful signal — where CCR has revised a form since the rename it has dropped "Child Care Licensing," and where it has not, the form is old. Both forms are filed to CCR/CBCU rather than kept in your home file, and neither is a record you must retain at the operation. What you must retain is the determination: 26 TAC §747.901(7) requires "Proof of request for all background checks required by Chapter 745, Subchapter F," in each caregiver's personnel record, and 26 TAC §745.635 governs what you must do once the CBCU notifies you of a determination. A risk evaluation approved for one association does not travel: 26 TAC §745.697(a) provides that an approved risk evaluation "does not expire, unless" — among other triggers — "(2) The subject's role at the operation, including the circumstances of the subject's contact with children at the operation, becomes different than when the CBCU approved the risk evaluation" or "(3) The subject becomes employed at a different operation than when the CBCU approved the risk evaluation." A caregiver cleared at a centre down the road is not thereby cleared for your home, and a new Form 2974 cycle starts.
• FORM 2948, "PLAN OF OPERATION FOR LICENSED CENTER AND HOME OPERATIONS," EFFECTIVE 6/2020, AND FORM 2911, "CCR GOVERNING BODY OR DIRECTOR DESIGNATION," EFFECTIVE 4/2025, are the two documents that appear in the licensed child-care home packet and in NEITHER the registered nor the listed packet. That asymmetry is the whole point of them and it is easy to miss, because HHSC's applicant page describes the plan of operation in general terms — "a Plan of Operation, including policies and procedures, is a document that is a key part of the application for some licensed operations. It requires your time and attention. It is your written plan showing how you plan to comply with minimum standards. For example, it needs to include information about who is responsible for ensuring minimum standards are met at all times, the physical facility, activities, child to caregiver ratios, safety, and sanitation" — without saying which permits it attaches to. HHSC's Child Care Home Provider Application Forms page settles it: Form 2948 and Form 2911 are listed only under "Licensed Child Care Home Application." If you are applying to register or to list, you do not file either, and a consultant who sells you a plan-of-operation package for a registered home has sold you a document CCR did not ask for. The applicant or the designated head of the governing body signs both; both are filed with the application to CCR, through the eApplication or on paper to the local CCR office, and both then become part of the operation's file rather than a record you keep at home — although your written operational policies, a different obligation under 26 TAC §747.501, remain at the home permanently. Form 2911's title is the live example of why you should never cite a Texas form by the name on an HHSC webpage. HHSC's own Child Day Care Regulation Forms index calls it "Form 2911, Child Care Licensing Governing Body/Director Designation," and the link on the Child Care Home Provider Application Forms page prints the same old wording; the form's authoritative page in the HHSC forms database at https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms/2000-2999/form-2911-ccr-governing-body-or-director-designation prints the current title, "Form 2911, CCR Governing Body or Director Designation," and "Effective Date 4/2025." Two HHSC pages, two titles, one form; the forms database is the one that matches the PDF you will actually download. Form 2948, by contrast, has not been reissued since June 2020, which is a signal in its own right — a home applying in 2026 is filling in a plan-of-operation template that predates the August 2024 amendments to §747.501 and the December 2025 revision of the Chapter 747 minimum standards. Draft your plan against the current text of §747.501, not against whatever the 2020 template's headings suggest, and expect your assigned CCR inspector to test the plan against the rule rather than against the form.
• FORM 2985, "AFFIDAVIT FOR APPLICANTS FOR EMPLOYMENT WITH A LICENSED OPERATION OR REGISTERED CHILD-CARE HOME," EFFECTIVE 4/2018, AND FORM 2912, "PRE-EMPLOYMENT AFFIDAVIT FOR APPLICANTS FOR EMPLOYMENT AT CERTAIN CHILD CARE OPERATIONS," EFFECTIVE 9/2023, are two separate sworn statements, both signed by the job applicant before you let that person near a child, and both kept in your home's personnel file rather than sent to CCR. 26 TAC §747.901 lists them as items (4) and (5) of what "You must keep at least the following at the child-care home for each assistant caregiver and substitute caregiver": "(4) A Licensing Affidavit for Applicants for Employment with a Licensed Operation or Registered Child-Care Home (Form 2985) as specified in Texas Human Resources Code, §42.059 [Medium-Low]; (5) A Pre-Employment Affidavit for Applicants for Employment at Certain Child Care Operations (Form 2912) as specified in Texas Human Resources Code §42.0563 [Medium-Low]." 26 TAC §747.1207 repeats the duty at the hiring moment, requiring the assistant caregiver to "Complete a notarized Licensing Affidavit … (Form 2985) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver" and to "Complete a Pre-Employment Affidavit … (Form 2912) before you allow the person to be an assistant caregiver," with §747.1209 carrying the same qualifications across to substitute caregivers. The technical-assistance note under §747.1207 warns in terms: "the affidavit is not a substitute for complying with CCR's background" check requirements. The two affidavits do different work. HRC §42.059 prints its affidavit's text in the statute itself and requires the applicant to swear "under penalty of perjury" that they have never been convicted of, pleaded guilty or nolo contendere to, admitted, settled a claim of, had a licence or employment "suspended, revoked, terminated, or adversely affected because of," or had "a report of child abuse or neglect made and substantiated against" them for a list running from "Any felony" through "Endangerment of a child" to "Any type of child abduction"; it ends with a notarial block — "Subscribed and sworn to (or affirmed) before me this ____ day of ____" — so Form 2985 must be notarised. HRC §42.0563 is narrower and newer: the applicant "must submit, using a form adopted by the department, a pre-employment affidavit disclosing whether the applicant has ever been charged with, adjudicated for, or convicted of having an inappropriate relationship with a minor," must disclose "all relevant facts" if the answer is yes, is "not precluded from being employed based on a disclosed charge if the employing entity determines … that the charge was false," and — the sentence that matters to you as the employer — "A determination that an employee failed to disclose information required to be disclosed by an applicant under this section is grounds for termination of employment." Both exist in English and Spanish. And here is the live trap: the technical-assistance box under §747.901, printed in the Chapter 747 minimum standards footered "Revised: December 2025," says "you may obtain copies of Form 2985 and Form 2912 at https://www.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook/forms." That address returns "Page Not Found" today. Both forms now live in the HHSC forms database at fhb.hhs.texas.gov. A dead link inside a rulebook revised eight months ago is the ordinary condition of Texas child-care paperwork, not an anomaly.
• FORM 2551, "LICENSED AND REGISTERED HOME: CAREGIVERS, ASSISTANTS, SUBSTITUTES AND HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS INFORMATION RECORD," EFFECTIVE 7/2026, is the personnel-file cover sheet built specifically for homes, and it is optional in form but not in content. Its own header states the arrangement exactly: "This form simplifies maintenance of personnel records for caregivers, assistants, substitutes and household members by centralizing information required by Child Care Regulation (CCR) for child care homes. Providers may use their own form. This form should be completed for each caregiver, assistant caregiver and substitute caregiver in the home. Items with an asterisk are required for all household members." The asterisked fields on the July 2026 revision are Name, "Date Central Registry Completed," "Date DPS Check Completed" and "Date FBI Check Completed" — meaning that for every household member, not merely every paid caregiver, you must be able to produce the three background-check completion dates on demand. The substance is fixed by 26 TAC §747.901, which requires you to keep at the child-care home, for each assistant and substitute caregiver: documentation of the first and last day on the job; documentation of how the caregiver meets minimum age and education qualifications; "A copy of a health card or health care professional's statement verifying the caregiver is free of active tuberculosis, if required by the regional Texas Department of State Health Services tuberculosis program or local health authority"; Form 2985; Form 2912; "A record of training hours"; "Proof of request for all background checks required by Chapter 745, Subchapter F"; "A copy of a photo identification"; "A copy of the person's current driver's license if the person or caregiver transports a child in care"; and, at a licensed child-care home only, "A statement signed and dated by the caregiver … verifying the date the caregiver attended training during orientation that includes an overview regarding the prevention, recognition, and reporting of child maltreatment." 26 TAC §747.903 extends the identical file to household members counted in ratio, "whether they are paid or unpaid" — the unpaid grandmother who covers your lunch hour needs the same folder as an employee. Two adjacent forms complete the set: Form 7250, "Staff Training Record," effective 2/2025, is CCR's optional template for the training-hours item and for the documentation §747.1327 requires you to produce to Licensing to verify caregiver training; Form 7271, "Personnel Records Evaluation LCCH/RCCH," effective 3/2026, is not yours to fill in at all — it is the checklist your CCR inspector completes against your personnel files at a licensed or registered child-care home, which makes it the most useful self-audit document HHSC publishes. Do not reach for Form 2947, "Child Care Center Personnel Information Record": as its title says, that one is for centres regulated under Chapter 746, and using it in a home leaves out the household-member columns that Form 2551 exists to carry. Note the form-number drift here too — HHSC's forms database gives Form 2551 the title "Licensed and Registered Homes: Caregivers, Assistants, Substitutes and Household Members Information Record" on the PDF's own face while the index page prints "Home" singular.
• FORM 2935, "ADMISSION INFORMATION," EFFECTIVE 6/2026, is the child enrolment record, and the June 2026 revision quietly folded the operational-policies acknowledgement into it. The rule it serves is 26 TAC §747.605, which lists sixteen items you "must obtain … before admitting a child to the child-care home," including the child's name and birth date, address and telephone number, date of admission, parents' names, addresses and reachable telephone numbers, "Name, address, and telephone number of another responsible individual (friend or relative) who should be contacted in an emergency when the parent cannot be reached," "Names and telephone numbers of persons other than a parent to whom the child may be released [High]," "Permission for transportation, if provided, including any authorized pick-up and drop-off locations," permission for field trips, the physician or emergency-care facility, "Authorization to obtain emergency medical care and to transport the child for emergency medical treatment [High]," a statement of special care needs covering limitations, accommodations, adaptive equipment and "Symptoms or indications of potential complications," medications "prescribed for continuous, long-term use," the school attended, permission for a school-age child to ride a bus or walk or be released to a sibling under 18, "The child's allergies and a completed food allergy emergency plan for the child, if applicable," and permission for water activities with the parent's declaration whether the child "Is able to swim competently, as defined by the American Red Cross" or "Requires a personal flotation device." The June 2026 form tracks all of that on its face and adds the line "I acknowledge receipt of the facility's operational policies, including those for the following," which is how you discharge 26 TAC §747.503: "On or before the date of the child's admission, the parents must sign an enrollment agreement or other similar documents, which must include at least the operational policies listed in this division." The parent signs, and the timing is absolute — 26 TAC §747.607: "Yes. The parent must sign the admission information before you admit the child to your care." Updating is a standing duty, not an annual one: §747.609 requires you to "develop a procedure for regularly updating the admission information, including information on special care needs," and provides that "The parent must sign and date the updated information. You may use a new form or have the parent initial and date amendments to a previously signed form." §747.505 adds that when you change a policy or the enrolment agreement you must notify parents in writing, have them "sign and date the updated information," and keep it in the child's record. Retention is short and specific — 26 TAC §747.603(b)(3) keeps admission information "for three months after the child's last day in care" — and §747.601(a) requires that "All children's records must be immediately accessible to caregivers during hours of operation for use in an emergency." Two cautions. Form 2935 is an optional template; §747.605 obliges the information, not the form, and CCR's own inspection tool for this file is Form 7270, "Children's Records Evaluation of a Licensed Child Care Home or Registered Child Care Home," effective 7/2026. And a Form 2935 printed before June 2026 predates the personal-flotation-device and swim-competence questions and will fail a records review on that item alone.
• THE HEALTH STATEMENT, THE IMMUNIZATION RECORD, THE TUBERCULOSIS DOCUMENTATION AND THE VISION AND HEARING SCREENING have NO HHSC form number, and expecting one is how Texas home providers end up with an empty file at an inspection. 26 TAC §747.603(a) lists what must be in each child's record — "(3) Statement of the child's health from a health-care professional [Medium]; (4) Immunization records [Medium]; (5) Tuberculosis screening and testing information, if required by your regional Texas Department of State Health Services or local health authority [Low]; (6) Vision and hearing screening results, if applicable [Medium]" — and not one of those four is an HHSC-numbered form; they are documents produced by third parties that you collect. §747.611(a) defines the health statement as one of three things: "A written statement, from a licensed health-care professional who has examined the child within the past year, indicating the child is able to take part in the child-care home's program"; "A signed affidavit from the parent stating that medical diagnosis and treatment conflict with the tenets and practices of a recognized religious organization of which the parent is an adherent or a member"; or "A signed statement from the parent giving the name and address of a health-care professional who has examined the child within the past year stating that the child is able to participate in the program," which "must be followed by a signed statement from a health-care professional … within 12 months of the date of admission." The deadline is one week: §747.611(b) requires it at the home "within one week after the date of admission, for each child who does not attend pre-kindergarten or school away from the child-care home." Immunisation is set by another agency — §747.613(a) requires each child to "meet and continue to meet applicable immunization requirements specified by the Texas Department of State Health Services," §747.613(b) makes you "maintain current immunization records for each child in your care, including any immunization exemptions or exceptions," and §747.615(a) routes medical and reason-of-conscience exemptions away from HHSC entirely: "To claim an exemption, the person applying for the child's admission must meet criteria specified by the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) rule at 25 TAC §97.62 (relating to Exclusions from Compliance)," with naturally-acquired immunity handled under 25 TAC §97.65. §747.623 makes acceptable documentation broader than most providers assume: "A signed statement from the child's parent that the child's immunization record is current and on file at the pre-kindergarten or school that the child attends," "An official immunization record generated from a state or local health authority, including a record from another state," or "An official immunization record or photocopy" all qualify. Tuberculosis is local: §747.629 provides that "Requirements for tuberculosis screening and testing vary across the state" and that "Documentation of a TB screening is not required to be on file" unless your regional DSHS or local health authority requires testing. Do not paper this file with the HHSC benefits form H1012, "Immunization Record" — that is an eligibility document from a different HHSC programme and has nothing to do with Chapter 747. Retention is §747.603(b)(3): three months after the child's last day in care.
• FORM 7255, "MEDICATION AUTHORIZATION," EFFECTIVE 4/2018, is the parental authorisation you must hold before a single dose crosses your threshold, and the rule behind it puts an expiry date on the parent's signature that almost nobody diaries. 26 TAC §747.3603(a) requires that "Authorization to administer medication to a child in your care must be obtained from the child's parent: (1) In writing, signed and dated [Medium-High]; (2) In an electronic format that is capable of being viewed and saved [Medium-High]; or (3) By telephone to administer a single dose of a medication [Medium-High]." Then §747.3603(b): "Authorization to administer medication expires on the first anniversary of the date the authorization is provided [Medium-High]." One year from the date the parent signed, not one year from the school year, not for the duration of enrolment. §747.3603(c) adds that the parent "may not authorize you to administer medication in excess of the medication's label instructions or the directions of the child's health-care professional," and §747.3603(d) creates the only exception: "Parent authorization is not required if you administer a medication to a child in a medical emergency to prevent the death or serious bodily injury of the child, provided that you administer the medication as prescribed, directed, or intended." "Medication" is defined narrowly at §747.3601 — "A prescription medication; or A non-prescription medication, excluding topical ointments such as diaper ointment, insect repellant, or sunscreen" — with the technical-assistance note that "Supplements such as vitamins and minerals are not considered medications." Giving the medicine is a second, separate record: §747.3605(c) requires you to record "Full name of the child to whom the medication was given," "Name of the medication," "Date, time, and amount of medication given," and "Full name of the caregiver administering the medication, if it is not the primary caregiver," and §747.3605(d) requires you to "keep all medication records for at least three months after administering the medication," which §747.603(b)(1) repeats as a child-record retention period. §747.3605(b) also requires that medication "Be in the original container labeled with the child's full name and the date brought to the operation," be given only to the intended child, and never be administered after its expiry date. For a listed family home the same substance appears in a single condensed rule, 26 TAC §742.803, which uses identical language on written, electronic or single-dose telephone authorisation, and states at §742.803(d) that "Parental authorization to give medication is only good for one year. The child's parent must give you a new authorization in order for you to continue giving the child medication after the year expires." Form 7255 is available in English and Spanish and is kept in the child's file at the home; it is never sent to CCR. Its effective date, April 2018, is one of the oldest on the CCR home-relevant list — check the forms database page before printing a stack, because CCR reissued four other home forms in 2026 alone.
• FORM 7239, "INCIDENT OR ILLNESS REPORT," EFFECTIVE 10/2023, is the accident-and-incident record, named inside the rule, whose rule has an amendment pending. 26 TAC §747.701 provides: "You must record the following information on the Licensing Incident/Illness Report Form 7239 or another form that contains at least the same information: (1) An injury to a child in care that required medical treatment by a health-care professional or hospitalization [Medium]; (2) An illness that required the hospitalization of a child in care [Medium]; (3) An incident where a child in care had an emergency anaphylaxis reaction that required administration of an unassigned epinephrine auto-injector [Medium]; (4) An incident of a child in care or caregiver contracting a communicable disease deemed notifiable by the Texas Department of State Health Services … [Medium]; and (5) Any other non-routine situation that placed, or may have placed, a child at risk for injury or harm, such as forgetting a child in a vehicle or not preventing a child from wandering away from the child-care home [Medium]." "Or another form that contains at least the same information" is the licence to use your own template; the number is a safe harbour, not a monopoly. The form routes completion by scenario — injury or risk incidents use Sections I, II, V and VI; hospitalising illness I, III, V and VI; a communicable disease I, IV, V and VI — and closes with two duties: "notify parents as required by the minimum standards; and keep the form on file at the operation." It is a home record, not a CCR filing: it sits in the child's record under §747.603(a)(7), "Licensing Incident/Illness Report form, if applicable," retained three months after the child's last day in care under §747.603(b)(3). Separately, §747.305 governs which emergency and medical situations you must notify parents about, and §747.303(a) requires notice to Licensing "as soon as possible, but no later than two days after" an injury requiring medical treatment, an illness requiring hospitalisation, a notifiable communicable disease, the arrest or charging of any background-check subject, or "any other non-routine situation that places, or may place, a child at risk for injury or harm [High]," with §747.303(b) requiring immediate notice "if a child dies while in your care [High]." The abuse, neglect or exploitation report itself runs to DFPS, not to CCR. Now the live change. On June 22, 2026 HHSC filed a proposed amendment to §747.701 under TRD-202602568, published in the July 10, 2026 Texas Register, earliest possible adoption August 9, 2026, comment reference "26R014," implementing House Bill 163 of the 89th Legislature. It "changes the rule title to 'Accident and Incident Records'" and "replaces the requirement … to keep a written record of an incident where a child in care had an emergency anaphylaxis reaction that required use of an unassigned epinephrine auto-injector with a requirement … to keep a written record of an incident where a child in care required administration of an emergency medication," and "removes examples of non-routine situations that place or may place children at risk." Companion proposals amend §747.305 and §747.501 and, in Chapter 742, amend §742.401 and repeal §742.806 outright. As of the August 14, 2026 issue — the most recent the Texas Register archive index serves today — none had been adopted. Keep recording paragraph (3) as written until an adoption notice with an effective date appears.
• FORM 2962, "VERIFICATION OF LIABILITY INSURANCE," EFFECTIVE 2/2026, AND ITS SEPARATELY DOWNLOADABLE "FORM 2962, ATTACHMENT A, PARENTAL NOTIFICATION OF LACK OF REQUIRED LIABILITY INSURANCE," carry the one financial condition CCR imposes on every home permit. HHSC's applicant page: "CCR requires applicants for a licensed child care home, registered child care home, and listed family home to obtain proof of coverage before CCR issues a permit." For listed family homes the standard is quantified at 26 TAC §742.403: unless you have an acceptable reason not to, you must "Have liability insurance coverage: (A) Of at least $300,000 for each occurrence of negligence [Medium]; and (B) That covers injury to a child that occurs while the child is in your care, regardless of whether the injury occurs on or off the premises of your home [Medium]; and (2) Provide proof of coverage to Licensing each year by the anniversary date of the issuance of your permit to operate a listed family home [Medium]." Annually, on the permit anniversary — the deadline nobody diaries, and Form 2962 is how you meet it. §742.405 lists the only acceptable reasons not to carry it — "Of financial reasons," "You are unable to locate an underwriter who is willing to issue a policy to the home," or "You have already exhausted the limits of a policy that met the requirements" — and §742.405(b) then requires written notification to Licensing "by the anniversary date," stating the reason [Medium]. If you do not carry it, the duty flips to the parents: §742.407(a) requires written notice to a parent "before you admit a child into your care [Medium-High]," and §742.407(c) requires written notice "within 30 days after you stop carrying it." At licensed and registered homes the parallel rules are 26 TAC §747.209 (maintain "$300,000 for each occurrence of negligence" and "Provide proof of coverage to Licensing each year by the anniversary date of the issuance of your permit"), §747.211 (the same three acceptable reasons, with written notice to Licensing by the anniversary date) and §747.213, which sets a shorter clock than the listed-home rule — written notice to each parent "within 14 days after you stop carrying it," against thirty days at §742.407(c). Both chapters point at the same document: §742.407(d), "You may use Form 2962, Attachment A, Parental Notification of Lack of Required Liability Insurance, located on Licensing's provider website to notify parents. Regardless of whether you use this form, you must be able to demonstrate that you provided written notice to the parent of each child in your care," and the Chapter 747 equivalent, "You may use Form 2962, Verification of Liability Insurance, located on the Licensing provider website, to notify parents." Optional form, mandatory proof — the technical-assistance box offers a signed form in the child's file, a statement or addendum in your operational policies or parent handbook with a parent signature or initials specifically acknowledging it, or "Maintaining a copy of any electronic communication sent to a parent regarding liability insurance, including the date and address to which the communication was sent." What you keep at the home is fixed by §747.801(14): "Proof of current liability insurance coverage or, if applicable, that you have provided" the parental notice. The two halves of Form 2962 download as separate files, 2962.pdf and form-2962-attachment-a.pdf; Attachment A is the one that goes to parents.
• FORM 2970, "NOTIFICATION OF SAFE SLEEPING DEFICIENCY," EFFECTIVE 3/2026, AND FORM 7266, "NOTIFICATION OF ABUSE, NEGLECT OR EXPLOITATION DEFICIENCY," EFFECTIVE 8/2020, are the two forms Texas makes you hand to your own customers when CCR cites you, and the rule names them individually so you cannot substitute one for the other. 26 TAC §747.309(a): "Within five days after you receive notification of a deficiency described in §747.307 of this division …, you must notify the parents of each child attending your child-care home at the time of the notification, including a child who may not have been in care on the day of the actual incident [Medium-High]." Five days, and the notice reaches every currently enrolled family, not only the family whose child was involved. §747.309(b): "If the deficiency is for a safe sleeping standard, you must notify the parents using Form 2970, Notification of Safe Sleeping Deficiency, located on the Licensing provider website [Medium]." §747.309(c): "If the deficiency is for the standard related to the abuse, neglect, or exploitation of a child in care, you must notify the parents using Form 7266, Notification of Abuse/Neglect/Exploitation Deficiency, located on the Licensing provider website [Medium]." These are the two places in Chapter 747 where a specific HHSC form number is mandated rather than offered — everywhere else the standard reads "or another form that contains at least the same information." Do not draft your own letter here. Observe also that the rule's internal name for Form 7266, "Notification of Abuse/Neglect/Exploitation Deficiency," is not the title the forms database now prints, which is "Notification of Abuse, Neglect or Exploitation Deficiency"; the number is what identifies it. A third disclosure form belongs with these two: Form 2954, "Child Care Licensing Family Violence Calls Disclosure," effective 5/2018, which still carries the pre-2017 agency name in its official title and has not been reissued since. Its statutory neighbour, HRC §42.0561, requires an applicant to "provide the information on a form prescribed by the department" about "each family violence report at the applicant's residence to which a law enforcement agency responded during the 12 months preceding the date of the application" — a provision written for child-placing agency foster homes, which is why day-care home applicants should confirm with their local CCR office whether Form 2954 is being required of them rather than assuming from the title that it is. Two further HHSC forms round out the enforcement paperwork a home may need: Form 2937, "Child Care Regulation Waiver or Variance Request," effective 7/2026 with instructions updated 7/2026 — "A child care provider may use this form to request a waiver or variance related to a minimum standard for a specified period of time without compromising the safety of children served by the operation" — and Form 2940, "Request for an Administrative Review," effective 9/2025, which is how you contest a citation. Form 7277, "Child Care Regulation Plan of Action," effective 3/2024 with instructions updated 7/2025, is the corrective-action document you co-sign: "Child Care Regulation (CCR) staff complete Section I. The provider completes Section II. CCR and the provider will sign Section III once everyone agrees with the plan." HHSC's forms index still calls 2937 the "Child Care Licensing Waiver/Variance Request"; the current form does not.
• FORM 2885, "CHILDREN'S PRODUCTS CERTIFICATION," EFFECTIVE 6/2018, is an annual signed certification that most home providers have never heard of, and it is required by rule, kept at the home, and open to inspection by parents. 26 TAC §747.3935(b) provides: "You must certify annually in writing using a form provided by HHSC that you have reviewed each of the recall notices issued by the CPSC and that there are no unsafe products in the home except products specified in subsection (a) of this section. The form must be kept on file and available for review upon request by Licensing staff, parents, and employees during hours of operation [Medium]." Subsection (a) makes you responsible for reviewing the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission recall list and ensures "there are no unsafe children's products in your child-care home" unless the product "is an antique or collectible children's product and is not used by, or accessible to any child" or "is being retrofitted to make it safe and the product is not used by, or accessible to any child." §747.3933 defines unsafe: a recalled product where "The recall has not been rescinded" and "The product has not been made safe through being remanufactured or retrofitted." §747.3935(c) adds a posting duty — "You must post a notice for parents and employees in a prominent and publicly accessible place that includes information on how to access a listing of unsafe children's products through the CPSC Internet website or through the HHSC Internet website [Medium]." The completed certification is also one of the enumerated records §747.801(12) requires you to keep at the home: "Most recent Licensing form certifying that you have reviewed each of the bulletins and notices issued by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission regarding unsafe children's products and that there are no unsafe children's products in use or accessible to children in the home [Medium]." The primary caregiver signs; nothing is sent to CCR. Two things about this rule are stale in HHSC's own current publication, and both are worth seeing because they show how to read a Texas rulebook. First, the technical-assistance box under §747.3935, printed in the Chapter 747 minimum standards footered "Revised: December 2025," says "the HHSC product certification form may be found at: Child Care Regulation Forms | Texas Health and Human Services (https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/protective-services-providers/child-care-regulation/child-day-care-provider/child-care-regulation-forms). Select Form 2885, Children's Product Certification." That URL returns "Page not found" today; the live page is https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-day-care-regulation-forms, and the form's own record is at https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/forms/2000-2999/form-2885-childrens-products-certification. Second, the rule text calls the form "Children's Product Certification," singular; the form's actual current title is "Children's Products Certification," plural. Neither error changes what you must do, but both mean that anyone verifying your compliance by following the rulebook's own link will land on a 404 — and it is a rulebook revised in December 2025 that is doing it. Anchor to the number 2885 and to §747.3935; treat printed URLs and titles as perishable.
• THERE IS NO SANITATION INSPECTION REQUEST FORM AND NO FIRE INSPECTION REQUEST FORM FOR A TEXAS CHILD-CARE HOME, because HHSC does not require either inspection — and if you have been told otherwise you have been handed a centre checklist or an out-of-state one. The rules say so in one sentence each. 26 TAC §747.3201, "Must my child-care home have an annual sanitation inspection?": "No. We do not require you to have an annual sanitation inspection, although your local ordinances may require this." 26 TAC §747.4901, "Must I have a fire inspection of my child-care home?": "We do not regulate fire inspections and do not require that you have a fire inspection as part of these minimum standards; however your local ordinances may require one. If you want to care for children above or below the ground floor of your child-care home, you must obtain written approval from the state or local fire marshal as specified in §747.4015 of this title (relating to May I care for children above or below ground level?)." That single exception is the only fire-authority document Chapter 747 makes you hold, and it is an enumerated home record under §747.801(11): "Written approval from the fire marshal to provide care above or below ground level, if applicable [Medium-High]." It comes from your state or local fire marshal on their letterhead — there is no HHSC form number for it, and no CCR office issues it. HHSC's own applicant page frames the wider point correctly: "In some areas, you may need to meet zoning, building code, homeowner association, and other requirements concerning the location and construction of a child care operation. These are not CCR requirements, but you may have to meet them before local authorities will perform fire and sanitation inspections." Read that carefully — CCR is telling you that fire and sanitation inspections, where they exist at all, are a municipal matter you arrange with your city, not a state filing. What Chapter 747 does require instead is a set of self-maintained safety records under §747.801(7): "Safety documentation for emergency drills, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, and emergency evacuation and relocation diagram, as required in §747.5005 …, §747.5007 …, §747.5107 … (relating to How often must I inspect and service the fire extinguisher?), §747.5115 … (relating to How often must the smoke detectors at my child-care home be tested?), and §747.5117 … (relating to How often must I have an electronic smoke alarm system tested?) [Medium]." CCR publishes two optional templates that cover this ground: Form 7263, "Emergency Practices," effective 5/2018, and Form 1100, "Daily Building and Grounds Checklist," effective 4/2018 — note that HHSC's forms index calls the latter "Form 1100, Daily Buildings and Grounds Checklist," plural, while the form's own record says "Building." Neither is mandatory; both are safer than an undated notebook. §747.801 also requires you to hold, if applicable, the "Most recent Texas Department of State Health Services immunization compliance review form," the "Most recent Texas Department of Agriculture Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) report," and the "Most recent local workforce board Child-Care Services Contractor inspection report" — three documents from three agencies that are not HHSC, which is the general shape of Texas home-care paperwork: HHSC numbers fewer forms than you expect and requires you to file other agencies' output.
• THE LISTED FAMILY HOME KEEPS ALMOST NONE OF THIS, and that is the single most valuable fact in the Texas forms picture. Chapter 742, "Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes," in the publication dated June 2022 and footered "Revised: December 2025," contains the word "record" ZERO times and the word "immunization" ZERO times across its entire text. There is no record-keeping subchapter, no admission-information rule, no health-statement rule, no immunisation rule, no attendance rule and no personnel-file rule for a listed family home. A listed provider who buys a Texas child-care forms bundle and is handed Form 2935, Form 7255, Form 7239, Form 2551 and an immunisation tracker has bought a licensed-home kit. What Chapter 742 DOES require of a listed home is short and can be listed exhaustively: the notification duties of §742.401, including immediate notice to DFPS at 1-800-252-5400 "if: (1) There is any suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation [High]; (2) A child dies while in your care [High]; or (3) A child was forgotten in a vehicle or wandered away from your home or care unsupervised [High]," immediate notice to Licensing of a notifiable illness, immediate parental notice of injuries requiring medical treatment, and written notice to Licensing "within 15 days of: (1) Relocating your listed family home; or (2) Closing the home"; the liability-insurance proof of §742.403 and the parental notice of §742.407, on Form 2962 Attachment A or its equivalent; and the one-year parental medication authorisation of §742.803(b) and (d). That is the whole documentary load. By contrast, the registered and licensed tiers carry the Chapter 747 Subchapter C record set in full, and CCR grades it with two published checklists that a home can and should self-administer before an inspection: Form 7270, "Children's Records Evaluation of a Licensed Child Care Home or Registered Child Care Home," effective 7/2026, and Form 7271, "Personnel Records Evaluation LCCH/RCCH," effective 3/2026 — LCCH and RCCH being licensed and registered child care home. Attendance is the one Chapter 747 record with no mandated form at all: §747.635(a) provides that "You must maintain a record of attendance for each child in your care. You may use a sign-in and sign-out log or other attendance chart [Medium-High]," and §747.635(b) that "You must keep attendance records for the previous three months and make them available to Licensing for review upon request [Medium-Low]"; CCR offers Form 2941, "Child Care Operation Sign-in and Sign-out Log," effective 6/2018, and Form 7240, "Monthly Attendance Record," effective 4/2018, as optional templates. And a change is coming for listed homes: on July 31, 2026 the Texas Register carried HHSC's proposed new 26 TAC §742.402, "Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements," implementing HRC §42.0562 as added by S.B. 225 of 2021, which would extend occupational-revocation disclosure and a parental-notice duty to listed family homes for the first time. It is proposed, not adopted, as of the August 14, 2026 Texas Register. If it is adopted, the "listed homes keep no records" rule of thumb acquires its first real exception, and you should re-check §742 before relying on this paragraph after that date.

What's specific about getting licensed in Texas

Unlike most states that issue a single 'family child care' license, Texas splits home-based care into three distinct permit tiers — Listed Family Home, Registered Child-Care Home, and Licensed Child-Care Home — each with its own age minimum, capacity, inspection frequency, and (for the Licensed tier) a director-level credential requirement. The other Texas-specific twist that trips people up: your own related children count toward the 12-child maximum, and the exemption line is drawn at 3 or fewer unrelated children with no subsidy money. This tier-selection decision, made correctly up front, is what makes or breaks a smooth Texas application.

How long it takes and what it costs in Texas

Timeline: HHSC does not publish a guaranteed processing time, so plan for roughly 2 to 4 months for a home permit from orientation to permit-in-hand. The stretch points are scheduling your Child Care Home Orientation class, clearing background checks for you and every household member (commonly 2-6 weeks, and the top reason applications stall), and scheduling the required pre-permit inspection. Organized applicants who hit no fingerprint snags land at the short end.

Cost: Texas state permit fees for a home are modest — in the low tens of dollars for the application plus a small annual fee due on your permit anniversary (set in the HHSC fee schedule, 26 TAC §745.507); confirm the current figure with HHSC because the exact amounts are set in an attached schedule that changes and secondary sources disagree. Budget separately for the real costs: background checks (a small per-person fee plus roughly $40 for FBI fingerprinting, for you and each household member), pediatric CPR/first-aid certification (about $70-$100), liability insurance (required before the permit issues — a home policy will not cover child care, so expect a few hundred dollars a year for a daycare policy), and home safety items (smoke/CO detectors, fire extinguisher, safe-sleep cribs, fencing). Note: much of the required training is free — Texas A&M AgriLife Extension's Childcare Online Training is a no-cost HHSC-recognized option.

Source: PRIMARY SOURCES ACTUALLY OPENED DURING RESEARCH, FIELD BY FIELD (not summarised from memory). [agency] Sources opened 2026-08-26 for TX / agency. Method note first: the Texas Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer (texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC) was retired and now 302s to an Appian portal (texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings) whose only data endpoint answers {"message":"Client not supported"} to any non-SAIL client. I could therefore NOT read the codified 26 TAC text directly from the Secretary of State today. I substituted two official routes and say so on every affected assertion: (a) HHSC's own current minimum-standards publications, which reprint the adopted rule text of 26 TAC ch. 742 and ch. 747 verbatim, reached from the HHSC minimum-standards index rather than from any pinned URL; and (b) the Secretary of State's Texas Register archive, which carries adopted and proposed rule text verbatim with TRD numbers and effective dates. Same reason the Texas statute links are to tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/... : statutes.capitol.texas.gov is now a JavaScript app that serves an empty shell to any fetcher, and tcss.legis.texas.gov is the Texas Legislative Council backing store that app itself reads (base URL found in the app's own bundle, chunk-7GRZWKYH.js, "TCASCore":"https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/api/", "FileServerPath":"https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources"). https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42 in full, current text served today.

Established: ch. 42 caption and 1979 enactment (Acts 1979, 66th Leg., p. 2358, ch. 842, art. 1, Sec. 1); §42.001 purpose quote; §42.002 has no definition of "department" or "commission"; §42.021(a) and (d) division-designation and region-division language; §42.041(a) required-license sentence; §42.044(a),(b),(c) inspection/investigation and annual-unannounced language; §42.046(a)-(e) application (mixed "commission"/"department"); §42.048(a),(d) licensing; §42.0461(b)(4) "the department as the licensing authority"; §42.052(c),(d),(e),(i),(k) listing/registration and the all-caps listing legend; §42.054(e) annual fee for listed/registered family homes; and the 2025 amendment table (89th Leg. Chs. 202/H.B.1610, 423/H.B.2789, 461/H.B.4529, 556/H.B.1403, 629/H.B.3597, 67/S.B.1619, 7/H.B.16, plus S.B. 225 of 2021 at Ch. 547). https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.40.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 40. Established: §40.001 opens "In this subtitle" and defines "Department" as DFPS (so it governs ch. 42 by subtitle); §40.002(b) opening words "Except as provided by Section 40.0025" and subdivision (b)(3) still assigning child-care licensing to DFPS;

§40.0025(b) "the department performs only functions ... related to the following services" with child-care licensing absent, added by S.B. 200 (2015, Ch. 837) eff. 9/1/2017 and amended by H.B. 4611 (2023, Ch. 769) eff. 4/1/2025; §40.0026 and §40.0027 reference-translation rules; §40.003 DFPS Sunset date September 1, 2027. Also established that H.B. 140 (2025, 89th Leg., Ch. 541) repeals the Family and Protective Services Council effective September 1, 2026 (noted but not used in the field text). https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/GV/htm/GV.521.htm — Government Code ch. 521. Established §521.0001(2) ("Commission" = HHSC) and the full text of §521.0002, including subsection (b)(4) and the recital that §§531.0201, 531.02011 and 531.02012 expired September 1, 2023; and §521.0003 translating officer references.

Added by H.B. 4611 (2023) eff. April 1, 2025. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/GV/htm/GV.523.htm — Government Code ch. 523. Established §523.0001 (HHSC is an agency of this state) and §523.0003, the HHSC Sunset provision abolishing the commission September 1, 2027 unless continued, with ch. 531 and its derived provisions expiring that date. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/GV/htm/GV.526.htm — Government Code ch. 526. Established §526.0506, "INVESTIGATION UNIT FOR CHILD-CARE FACILITIES OPERATING ILLEGALLY," quoted verbatim, which is the provision that calls CCR "the commission's child-care licensing division." Added by H.B. 4611 eff. April 1, 2025. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/GV/htm/GV.531.htm — Government Code ch. 531 as served today. Established the negative fact used in the field: the chapter has been reduced to a single surviving section, §531.084 (Medicaid long-term care cost containment). Every citation to §531.0201 / §531.02001 / §531.02011 / §531.02013 / §531.02014 for the child-care transfer is now a citation to nothing. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/FA/htm/FA.261.htm — Family Code ch. 261, subchapter E. Established §261.401(b) as amended by H.B. 4611 eff.

April 1, 2025, which itself now says "former Section 531.02013(1)(D), Government Code," confirming the DFPS carve-out for abuse/neglect investigations survives as a reference to expired law. Checked §261.404 and confirmed it is the provider/waiver investigation section, not the day-care one — so the DFPS-investigates-ANE-in-child-care statement in the field text rests on the HHSC minimum-standards introduction and the SoS rule-transfer notice, not on ch. 261. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/minimum-standards — the HHSC index of minimum standards in effect, opened today and used as the starting index rather than any remembered file name.

Established the live chapter list and the exact file names served today, and the label discrepancy noted below. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes," Child Care Regulation, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, title page "September 2024," every page footered "Revised: December 2025." Established: the Introduction text on minimum standards, deficiencies (definition quoted), weights, "your assigned CCR inspector," administrative review, SOAH appeals, and the CCR-vs-DFPS investigation split quoted verbatim; §747.101 purpose; §747.111 scope; §747.113 registered child-care home; §747.115 licensed child-care home; §747.117 responsibility;

and §747.121(2) "We, us, our, and Licensing – The Child Care Regulation department of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC)" (rule dated March 2023 in the publication). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-742-listed-family-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes," CCR / HHSC, title page "June 2022," footered "Revised: December 2025." Established §742.101, §742.103 (listed family home definition quoted), §742.105(a) and (b), §742.107 with its Technical Assistance box, §742.109(2) "Licensing--The Child Care Regulation department of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission," and §742.111. Also established the stale-citation finding: the only "40 Texas Administrative Code" reference in either home chapter, at §742.107, points to "40 Texas Administrative Code §745.43," a title that stopped carrying ch. 745 on July 15, 2019. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/index.shtml — Secretary of State index of rule transfers and agency name changes, used as the index rather than guessing at transfer URLs. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/dfps021618.html — DFPS rule transfer effective March 9, 2018. Quoted verbatim for "the regulation of child care formerly provided by DFPS has been moved to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), while only the investigations of allegations of child abuse, neglect, and exploitation in child care operations will remain in DFPS," and for the list of chapters moved (744, 746, 747, 748, 749, 750).

https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/dfps050418.html — transfer of ch. 743 effective May 15, 2018. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/dfps061419.html — transfer of ch. 745 Licensing from 40 TAC Part 19 to 26 TAC Part 1 effective July 15, 2019, quoted verbatim including the carve-out of Subchapter K (Inspections and Investigations) and Subchapter M (Administrative Reviews and Due Process Hearings). https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/family040904.html — name change from Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services to Texas Department of Family and Protective Services effective February 1, 2004. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/transfers/family091704.html — H.B. 2292 (2003) abolition of the Texas Department of Human Services and the resulting 40 TAC Part 1 to Part 19 reorganisation effective September 1, 2004. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/index.shtml — Texas Register issue index, used to sweep every 2026 issue rather than trusting a remembered adoption date.

Swept both Adopted Rules and Proposed Rules, Title 26, for every issue from January 2, 2026 through August 14, 2026. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July172026/Adopted%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — HHSC adoption of amendments to 26 TAC §§745.21, 745.609, 745.615, 745.631, 745.643, 745.683, 745.695, 745.751, 745.775, 745.8483, new §745.675, and repeal of §745.601 and §745.607. Established the full adopted text of §745.21 (definitions (6) CBCU, (7) CCR, (8) central registry, (23) DFPS, (34) HHSC, (40) "Licensing--CCR, which was formerly titled Child Care Licensing," (41) minimum-standards chapter list); the S.B. 1849 (88th Leg., 2023) background and the Health and Safety Code ch. 810 search engine; the comment record ("The 31-day comment period ended May 26, 2026. HHSC did not receive any comments."); the current statutory-authority formula (Government Code §524.0151 and §524.0005 plus HRC §42.042); TRD-202602707 filed July 2, 2026, effective August 31, 2026, proposal published April 24, 2026;

and separately TRD-202602696 / TRD-202602697 (amendments to §745.117 and §745.273) filed June 30, 2026, effective July 20, 2026, signed by Karen Ray, Chief Counsel. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July102026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — pending proposals touching §742.401, repeal of §742.806, and §747.305, §747.501, §747.701 (plus 743, 744, 745.469, 746, 748). https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July312026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — proposed new 26 TAC §742.402, Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements, implementing HRC §42.0562 as added by S.B. 225 (87th Leg., 2021). Established the name and title "Rachel Ashworth-Mazerolle, Deputy Executive Commissioner for Child Care Regulation." https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/August72026/Adopted%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — opened and checked; it is the ch. 749 child-placing-agency rewrite, nothing bearing on home-based care.

Recorded so the sweep is auditable. https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook/1100-hhsc-regulatory-authority — HHSC Child Care Regulation Handbook §1100 and subsections.

Established, and is quoted in the field text as a stale-citation example: §1100 "Revision 22-5; Effective Nov. 4, 2022" still routing the transfer through "Chapter 531 of the Texas Government Code" and citing "Texas Government Code Sections 531.02001; 531.02011; 531.02013; 531.02014; and 2401.002"; §1100's own designation sentence "HHSC has designated the Child Care Regulation (CCR) Department for being responsible for carrying out the responsibilities outlined in Chapters 42 and 43"; §1110 CCR's regulatory activities; §1122 and §1123 both "Revision 25-3; Effective Aug. 15, 2025"; §1123.1 table of applicable 26 TAC chapters (742, 743, 744, 745, 746, 747, 748, 749); §1140-§1143 "Revision 25-2;

Effective July 1, 2025," including the internal inconsistency where §1143 reverts to "Child Care Licensing (CCL)." https://www.hhs.texas.gov/services/family-safety-resources/child-care/contact-child-care-regulation — the live list of local CCR offices grouped into Central Texas, North Texas, Houston, East Texas, Metroplex, Panhandle, West Texas and South Texas areas, with shared area phone numbers, plus the separate region-numbered contact table for 24-hour residential child care. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ccr-director-contact-information.pdf — "Director Contact Information, Child Care Regulation," footered "Revised: 07/2026." Established the day-care field structure (Director of Field DC; regional directors over Regions 1/2/7/11, 3/4, 5/6, 8/9/10; a separate UOU director) and the parallel residential structure (Director of Field RC and three regional directors), and the sheet's own note that "Regional boundaries are defined by HHSC service areas." https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider — HHSC's applicant page for home providers.

Established the inspection-frequency statements quoted in the field text for licensed child care homes (at least one unannounced inspection per year), registered child care homes (at least one unannounced inspection every one to two years) and listed family homes (not routinely inspected unless a complaint is received). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation — CCR section index, used to locate the pages above rather than guessing URLs. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/about/leadership — opened to try to source the executive commissioner by name; the page does not print a name. No name asserted in the field text as a result. Where I contradicted the brief: the brief said to establish which agency holds the function "from primary text, not memory," and warned that Texas has moved child care regulation between DFPS and HHSC. Confirmed, and the primary text is sharper than the brief implies in three ways worth recording. (1) The Human Resources Code has NOT been conformed: ch. 42 still sits under a subtitle captioned for DFPS, HRC §40.001(3) still defines "Department" as DFPS for that whole subtitle, and HRC §40.002(b)(3) still recites a DFPS duty to license child-care facilities.

Nothing in ch. 42 tells the reader otherwise; the redirect is entirely external, via HRC §40.0025(b) and Government Code §521.0002(b)(4). (2) The transfer citation everybody uses, Government Code §531.0201, is dead twice over — the section expired September 1, 2023 and ch. 531 was recodified into Government Code chs. 521-526 by H.B. 4611 effective April 1, 2025, leaving only §531.084 standing. HHSC's own handbook still cites the expired sections. (3) The brief named "26 TAC ch. 745 and the home chapters" — correct, and the home chapters are specifically ch. 742 (listed family homes) and ch. 747 (registered and licensed child-care homes); ch. 746 is centers and does not apply to a residence. UNVERIFIED: the codified, currently-effective text of 26 TAC ch. 745 (including §745.21, §745.31, §745.33, §745.35, §745.37 and §745.43) could not be read from the Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code today, because the SoS TAC viewer has moved to an Appian portal that refuses non-browser clients. The §745.21 definitions quoted in the field text are the version ADOPTED July 2, 2026 with an effective date of August 31, 2026 (TRD-202602707), read verbatim from the Texas Register; between today, 2026-08-26, and August 31, 2026, the codified §745.21 is the prior version, whose exact wording I did not read.

The field text dates the quote explicitly for that reason. The substantively identical, currently-effective naming rules that actually bind a home operator — 26 TAC §747.121(2) and §742.109(2) — were read from the HHSC publications revised December 2025 and are not affected. UNVERIFIED: the name of the current HHSC executive commissioner. Not asserted anywhere in the field text. UNVERIFIED: whether 40 TAC ch. 745 Subchapters K and M (Inspections and Investigations; Administrative Reviews and Due Process Hearings), expressly excluded from the July 15, 2019 transfer, have since been repealed from Title 40 and re-adopted in Title 26. HHSC's handbook §1122 refers to "26 TAC Chapter 745, Subchapter K, Division 3," which implies they have, but no rule-transfer notice on the Secretary of State's transfer index records the move and I did not find the adoption. The field text therefore states only what the 2019 transfer notice says and does not claim where Subchapters K and M live today.

UNVERIFIED: the HHSC minimum-standards index labels the Spanish Chapter 747 file "As of January 2026" while the English Chapter 747 file it serves is footered "Revised: December 2025." I did not resolve which date is authoritative; the field text cites only the December 2025 footer that appears on the document I actually opened. [annual_training_hours] All URLs below were opened on 26 August 2026. Research started from the Secretary of State's index of rules in effect, not from any pinned or dated file. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/tac/index.shtml — SOS welcome page for the Texas Administrative Code; establishes that the TAC is now served from the Appian portal ("View the current Texas Administrative Code") and no longer from the legacy viewer. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=4&ti=26&pt=1&ch=747 — legacy TAC viewer, still linked by consultants and vendors; today it returns only "This Site Has Moved" with no rule text.

Established the dead-link trap quoted in the entry. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC — SOS TAC portal root; Title 26 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES present. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&title=26 — Title 26 Part 1 chapter index; established that Chapter 742 "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR LISTED FAMILY HOMES" and Chapter 747 "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-CARE HOMES" are separate chapters in force today. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=742&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&title=26 — Chapter 742 subchapter list (A through H only); established that no Professional Development division exists for listed family homes. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=742&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&subchapter=C&title=26 — Chapter 742 Subchapter C rule list: only §742.301, §742.303, §742.305, §742.307. Confirms the absence of any training rule. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=747&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&title=26 — Chapter 747 subchapter list. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=747&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&subchapter=D&title=26 — Subchapter D divisions 1-6, including Division 4 PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=747&division=4&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&subchapter=D&title=26 — Division 4 rule list in effect on 26 Aug 2026: §§747.1301, 1303, 1305, 1309, 1311, 1313, 1314, 1315, 1317, 1319, 1321, 1323, 1327, with their exact titles.

Established the section numbers and titles cited throughout, and that there is no §747.1307 or §747.1325 in force. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=220737&queryAsDate=08%2F26%2F2026&interface=VIEW_TAC_SUMMARY — SOS record for §747.1309 queried as of today; gives Chapter Review Date 05/17/2024. (same record, HISTORICAL tab) — prior versions of §747.1309 "Effective Through" 09/25/2024, 02/28/2023, 10/07/2018; establishes that the current 30-hour text took effect after 25 September 2024. (same record, TEXAS REGISTER tab) — six Texas Register entries for §747.1309: Adopted 09/13/2024, Proposed 04/26/2024, Adopted 02/17/2023, Proposed 09/23/2022, Adopted 10/05/2018, Proposed 06/22/2018. Establishes the operative adoption date. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=439259&interface=VIEW_TEXAS_REGISTER_SUMMARY — SOS Texas Register record confirming the 09/13/2024 adopted entry for §747.1309. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=220735 / 220736 / 188717 / 192543 / 192544 / 188719 / 188720 / 188725 / 188722 / 220738 / 192545 (VIEW_TAC_SUMMARY, queryAsDate 08/26/2026) — the remaining Division 4 records;

each confirms rule number, title and chapter review date as in force today. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July312026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — Texas Register, 31 July 2026, proposed rules Title 26. Full preamble and rule text for new §742.402 and new §747.311 ("Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements") and the amendment to §747.207. Established that the live rulemaking touches nothing in Chapter 747 Subchapter D Division 4. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/index.shtml — SOS Texas Register archive index; establishes that only the current year (2026) is served as HTML and that pre-2026 issues are not available at /texreg/archive/<date>/ (September132024 returns "the requested file was not found"). https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code Chapter 42 as the Legislature publishes it today.

Established §42.0421 MINIMUM TRAINING STANDARDS in full, including (a)(2) 24 hours annual for day-care centre / group day-care home employees, (a)(3) 30 hours annual for a director or "operator of a registered family home" with the six-hour four-topic block, (b) and (c) the one-hour shaken baby / SIDS / brain development component, (e) two hours annual transportation safety, (f) the seven categories of permitted trainer including the Texas Trainer Registry, (g) and (g-1) the enforcement-history bar on provider-delivered training, and (h) the statutory ceiling forbidding HHSC to require more hours than (a). Also §42.042(l) and (p) (rulemaking authority for family-home training), §42.04261 (the one-hour annual abuse-prevention training, which by its terms binds only "a child-placing agency or day-care center"), §42.046(f) (safe sleep training submitted with a listing application), §42.052(c)-(f-1), (e-1) and (i) (listing valid until revoked or surrendered; the prescribed listing warning text). Amendment history checked act by act: §42.0421 last amended by Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 1091 (S.B. 1242), eff. 1 Sept 2023; §42.042 last amended by Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 556 (H.B. 1403), eff. 1 Sept 2025. https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=87R&Bill=SB225 — bill history for S.B. 225, 87th Leg. R.S.: "Relating to the regulation of certain child-care facilities and family homes", effective 9/1/21. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/html/SB00225F.htm — enrolled text of S.B. 225 ("Ellie's Law"); establishes that its subject is searchable-database disclosure, tummy-time supervision standards (new HRC §42.04291) and application/renewal mechanics, not training hours.

This is the act the 31 July 2026 rulemaking implements, five years after its effective date. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — HHSC compilation of 26 TAC Chapter 747, footer "Revised: December 2025". Source of the verbatim rule text quoted for §747.123 (definitions of clock hour, CEUs, instructor-led training, self-instructional training, self-study training), §747.803(b), §747.901, §747.903, §747.905, §747.909, §747.911, §747.915, §747.917, §747.1007(7), §747.1107(7), §747.1203, §747.1207, §747.1301, the §747.1303 chart items (1)-(7), §747.1305(a)-(h), §747.1309(a)-(j), §747.1311(a)-(c), §747.1313, §747.1314, §747.1315, §747.1317, §747.1319, §747.1321, §747.1323, §747.1327, §747.1401, §747.1403, §747.1405. Also the Introduction's explanation of the bracketed weights. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-742-listed-family-homes.pdf — HHSC compilation of 26 TAC Chapter 742, footer "Revised: December 2025". Source of §742.201, §742.203, §742.301 and its Technical Assistance list of merely recommended training topics, §742.303, §742.305, §742.307, §742.501, §742.507, §742.508. Confirms zero annual training hours and no mandatory CPR/first aid for a listing. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/safe-sleep-training-listed-homes.pdf — "Safe-Sleep Self-Instructional Training for Listed Family Homes", revised March 2026; quotes HRC §42.046(f) and states the 80% / 10-of-13 pass mark and that the completed test is submitted with the application.

Establishes the training is one-time and pre-permit. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/licensed-registered-listed-family-child-care-home.pdf — HHSC "Child Care Home Provider Types", revised 03/2026; source of the inspection frequencies quoted (licensed home at least one unannounced inspection per year; registered home at least one every one to two years; listed home not routinely inspected unless a report is received). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/provider-news/2026/07/31/public-comment-period-chapters-742-747-child-care-home-requirements — HHSC provider news, 31 July 2026; establishes the open comment period "July 31 through Aug. 31, 2026" and that the project implements S.B. 225 of the 87th Legislature. CORRECTIONS TO THE BRIEF, made because the official text says otherwise. (1) The brief asked for a mandatory annual child abuse/neglect component. There is none for a registered or licensed child-care home: prevention, recognition and reporting of child maltreatment appears only as an orientation item (§747.1301(3)) and as a pre-permit qualification (§747.1007(7)(A), §747.1107(7)(A)), and the statutory annual hour at HRC §42.04261 binds only child-placing agencies and day-care centres. (2) The brief asked how the hour counts "DIFFER between Listed Family Home, Registered Child-Care Home and Licensed Child-Care Home".

For the primary caregiver they do not differ between registered and licensed homes: both are 30 clock hours under §747.1309(a). The divergence is in assistant and substitute caregivers (15 vs 24 hours, §747.1303 items (3) and (4)) and in the instructor-led floor (3 vs 5 hours, §747.1305(f) and (g)). A listed family home has no annual hours at all. (3) A listed family home is governed by Chapter 742, not by any subchapter of Chapter 747; any material placing listed homes inside Chapter 747 is stale. UNVERIFIED: the verbatim text of §§747.1301-747.1327 and §§742.301-742.307 was read from HHSC's own December 2025 compilations, because the Secretary of State's Appian portal renders only rule metadata (title, chapter review date, historical effective-through dates, Texas Register entries) and does not expose full section text to a non-interactive client; the portal's "VIEW PDF" control produced no retrievable document. The section numbers, section titles, existence in force on 26 August 2026, and the effective/adoption dates were verified directly against the SOS portal with queryAsDate=08/26/2026, and every hour figure quoted was independently cross-checked against Human Resources Code §42.0421 read at the Legislature's own site.

Readers who need a certified verbatim text should request it from the SOS portal record pages listed above. UNVERIFIED: the Texas Register issue of 13 September 2024 containing the adopted §§747.1303, 747.1305, 747.1309 and 747.1323 could not be opened; the SOS archive serves only 2026 issues as HTML and the pre-2026 backview files were not located. The adoption date and type are taken from the SOS TAC record's own Texas Register tab. UNVERIFIED: 26 TAC Chapter 745 (Licensing) was not opened. Nothing in this entry rests on it beyond the cross-references quoted from within Chapters 742 and 747 themselves (background checks under Chapter 745 Subchapter F; the "Licensing pre-application course" named in §747.1007(3), §747.1107(3) and §747.1309(j)). Permit renewal periods for a registration or licence, which HRC §42.052(f-1) directs the executive commissioner to set by rule, live in Chapter 745 and were not read; no renewal-linked training claim is made here. [background_check] https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=745&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&subchapter=F&title=26 — Texas Secretary of State INDEX OF RULES IN EFFECT (new Appian portal), browsed live 2026-08-26, not a pinned URL.

Establishes the eight current divisions of 26 TAC ch. 745 subch. F and the record IDs for every section. Each rule page is served with queryAsDate=08/26/2026. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=4&ti=26&pt=1&ch=745 and .../readtac$ext.TacPage?...ti=26&pt=1&ch=745&rl=601 — tested live 2026-08-26: both return HTTP 200 with a page titled "Site Has Moved" and a meta refresh to https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=LANDING_PAGE. The legacy TAC citation URLs used by every guide are dead. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=205739 (745.601), 195852 (745.605), 205740 (745.607), 209681 (745.609), 209682 (745.611), 209683 (745.613), 209684 (745.615), 209685 (745.617), 195859 (745.619), 195860 (745.621), 195861 (745.623), 195862 (745.625), 195863 (745.627), 195864 (745.629), 195866 (745.633), 195868 (745.637), 195870 (745.641), 195871 (745.643), 195872 (745.645), 195873 (745.647), 195875 (745.651), 195878 (745.663), 195880 (745.667), 205742 (745.669), 195884-195892 (745.681-745.697), 195895 (745.751) — full current rule text read today (the rule body sits in a cross-origin iframe; read through the browser, not a plain fetch).

Source of every 26 TAC quotation in the entry, and of the "Repealed Date: 08/31/2026" field shown on the §745.601 and §745.607 record pages. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July172026/Adopted%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — Texas Register, 17 July 2026, HHSC adoption. Source of the adopted list of sections, TRD-202602708 to TRD-202602715, "Effective date: August 31, 2026" on every one, the SB 1849 background-and-justification statement, the "31-day comment period ended May 26, 2026. HHSC did not receive any comments," and the sentence "HHSC is not adopting the proposed changes to division numbers for Subchapter F, Division 7". Also the republished §745.21 definitions (CBCU, central registry, fingerprint-based criminal history check, name-based Texas criminal history check, present at an operation, regularly or frequently present, risk evaluation, SEMARC, SEMARC finding, HHSC EMR, unsupervised access). https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/April242026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — Texas Register, 24 April 2026 (51 TexReg 2589), the proposal adopted without changes.

Source of the marked-up post-31-August text of §745.609 (the inserted "a SEMARC check"), §745.615, §745.631, §745.643, new §745.675 (SEMARC findings, absolute bars, kinship-caregiver five-year exception, risk-evaluation-eligible findings), §745.683, §745.695 and §745.751, and of the division renumbering scheme. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42, rendered today (a plain fetch returns only the Angular app shell). Page states it is "current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025." Source of §42.056(a)-(a-5), (b)-(b-2), (c), (g)-(l) and its amendment history ending at Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 954 (S.B. 1849); §42.0523; §42.072(c), (c-1), (d), (f), (g). https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.810.htm — Texas Health and Safety Code ch. 810, "INTERAGENCY REPORTABLE CONDUCT SEARCH ENGINE," rendered today. Source of §810.001(6) "reportable conduct", §810.002 applicability with "Acts 2025, 89th Leg., R.S., Ch. 2 (S.B. 2), Sec. 5, eff. September 1, 2025" adding the comptroller, §810.003(a) participating registries, §810.004 with the 2025 amendments by S.B. 571 (Ch. 1138) and H.B. 1620 (Ch. 204), §810.005(b) no pre-inclusion notice or hearing, §810.006(a)-(d) required query and periodic queries, §810.007(b)-(c) discretionary hearing and burden. https://capitol.texas.gov/Search/BillSearchResults.aspx (session selector, read live 2026-08-26) — establishes that 89(2) - 2025 is the most recent Texas legislative session; there is no 2026 session.

Legislative sweep therefore covers 89(R), 89(1) and 89(2), all 2025. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/89th-legislative-bills-impacting-child-care-operations.pdf — HHSC, "89th Legislative Bills Impacting Child Care Operations," revised 08/2025. Establishes that none of the 2025 child-care bills (SB 1619, HB 163, HB 1403, HB 2789, SB 2306, HB 3153, HB 3597, HB 4529, HB 5129, HB 5629, SB 1818, HB 2809, SB 571) touches background checks. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/provider-news/2026/07/30/new-required-background-check-type — HHSC provider news, 30 July 2026. Source of PGL-26-11003 and the words "effective Sept. 1, 2026" and "Permit holders must comply with this guidance on Sept. 1, 2026" — the one-day conflict with the TAC effective date of 31 August 2026. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks — HHSC CCR background-check landing page, read today.

Source of the eight authorised check types and of the agency's SEMARC membership list ("Texas Education Agency, Texas Health and Human Services Long Term Care Regulation, and Texas Juvenile Justice Department"). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks/background-check-fees — source of "$2 to CCR for every background check submitted," "$37.00" employee / "$35.00" household-member and non-compensated rate, and the DPS $15 / FBI $12.00 or $10.00 / vendor $10.00 breakdown. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks/fingerprinting — source of the IdentoGO vendor sentence, the Service Code + UEID scheduling flow, Form 2856 (Homebound Fingerprint Request) and the out-of-state hard-card procedure. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks/criminal-history-requirements — establishes the three charts and that they supplement §745.661 and §745.775. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/criminal-history/reg-list-home-chart.pdf — "Registered Child Care Homes and Listed Family Homes: Criminal History Requirements," Revised January 2026. Source of every band definition quoted, of the catch-all rows ("Varies – Any offense not otherwise listed on this chart"; "Any offense under Title 5 or 6, Penal code, or Chapter 43, Penal Code" = Absolute Bar at both levels), of the four footnotes (* = HRC 42.072(f); † = 42 U.S.C. 9858f(c)(1)(D); †† = 42 U.S.C. 9858f(c)(1); ^ = TPC 12.44(b) reduction), and of the §745.663 deferred-adjudication assumption.

https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ccr-background-check-timeline.pdf — CCR "Background Check Process Timeline" (26D0695), already showing the Multi-Agency Reportable Conduct search.

Source of the 2-5 / 2-10 / 1-15 / 2-5 business-day figures and of the sequencing (central registry and SEMARC generated only after fingerprint results are received). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/provider-guide-background-check-process.pdf — CCR "Guide to Understanding the Background Check Process" (26D0691). Source of the Provider Portal description, the mailed-notification fallback when no e-mail is supplied, the 30-day applicant action deadline and the ineligible-on-default consequence, and the decisive line "The out-of-state background check requirement doesn't generate unless the child care provider manually selects the applicable U.S. states and territories." https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/out-of-state-background-check-resource-guide.pdf — "Out-of-State Resource Guide for Child Care Employees and Foster and Adoptive Parents in Texas," revised 06/24/2026. Source of the requesting-agency rule, the no-results-to-operations rule, the closed-registry / second-fingerprint warnings and the CBCU contact route. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/min-standards/745-sub-f-background-checks.pdf — HHSC "Background Check Rules" booklet for Subchapter F, cover dated August 2026, footer "Revised: 8/2026". Contains §745.675 and the SEMARC lines, i.e. the manual is AHEAD of the codified TAC.

Its table of contents runs Divisions 1, 2, 3, 4, then 6, 7, 8 — no Division 5 — which is how the entry resolves the adoption's internally inconsistent division numbering. CORRECTIONS TO THE BRIEF, stated explicitly as METHOD requires: 1. The brief asked me to ground the work in "26 TAC ch. 745 subchapter F via the Texas Secretary of State" at its usual address. That address no longer serves law. texreg.sos.state.tx.us now returns a "Site Has Moved" page for every TAC URL; rules in effect are served from an Appian portal (texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings) where the rule text is delivered inside a cross-origin iframe, so an ordinary HTTP fetch of a rule page returns metadata only and no rule. The same is now true of statutes.capitol.texas.gov, which serves a JavaScript application shell. Any tool that reads these by plain fetch will silently report an empty rule. 2. The brief's premise that the current regime is the operative one is wrong by five days. The entry leads on the 31 August 2026 effective date of the SEMARC amendments (TRD-202602708 to TRD-202602715) and on the one-day conflict with PGL-26-11003's "Sept. 1, 2026". 3. The brief listed the checks as DPS name-based, FBI fingerprint, central registry, out-of-state registries and sex offender registry.

That is the pre-31-August list. From 31 August there are five categories, the fifth being the SEMARC check under new §745.675. 4. The brief said "every household member aged 14+ — confirm the exact age from the rule." Confirmed: fourteen, at §745.605(a)(5)-(7) and HRC §42.056(a)(7)-(8). No provision uses any other age. 5. The brief asked for "cost per person, who pays." The rule does not set either. HRC §42.056(c) authorises an operation-paid fee capped at administrative cost; the dollar figures ($2 to CCR per submission; $37.00 / $35.00 at the fingerprint appointment, split DPS $15 / FBI $12 or $10 / vendor $10) come only from HHSC's Background Check Fees page and are cited as such. UNVERIFIED: the exact membership of SEMARC as actually queried for a child-care applicant. Three official texts disagree — HSC §810.003(a) (DFPS central registry, HHSC employee misconduct registry, TEA registry under Educ. Code §22A.151, TJJD), adopted §745.675(a) ("HHSC EMR, TEA, and TJJD"), and HHSC's public page ("Texas Education Agency, Texas Health and Human Services Long Term Care Regulation, and Texas Juvenile Justice Department").

The entry reports all three and does not resolve them. UNVERIFIED: the content of the tables published as "Attached Graphic" in §745.607 (types of checks), §745.629 (the four possible determinations), §745.663 (when deferred adjudication counts) and §745.671 (central-registry finding outcomes). The portal renders them as images; their substance is reconstructed only where another rule or the January 2026 chart states it in words. The four determinations are named in §745.635 and §745.641 (eligible; eligible with conditions; provisionally eligible with conditions; ineligible) and are used on that basis. UNVERIFIED: PGL-26-11003 itself. Only HHSC's 30 July 2026 provider-news summary of it was read; the letter PDF was not opened. UNVERIFIED: whether the $2 per-check fee appears anywhere in 26 TAC ch. 745. It was not located in Subchapter F; only HRC §42.056(c) and the HHSC fee page were confirmed. UNVERIFIED: whether, after 31 August 2026, Subchapter F genuinely has no Division 5. The adoption preamble and the adoption's own division headers contradict each other; the entry follows the preamble and HHSC's August 2026 booklet, both of which leave the gap.

Section numbers are unaffected either way. [capacity_max] https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC — Texas Secretary of State's current Texas Administrative Code viewer (index of rules in effect); entered from the title list, drilled Title 26 > Part 1 > Chapters 742/745/747, rules read at queryAsDate 08/26/2026. Established that the SOS TAC index today serves Chapter 742 (Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes), Chapter 745 (Licensing) and Chapter 747 (Minimum Standards for Child-Care Homes) under Title 26 Part 1. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=4&ti=26&pt=1&ch=747 — DEAD as of 2026-08-26: returns HTTP 401 and a "This Site Has Moved" page redirecting to the Appian Rules & Meetings portal. Established that every pinned texreg.sos.state.tx.us TAC URL in circulation is now non-functional; this is stated in the field text. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1&chapter=747&subchapter=E — Subchapter E "Child/Caregiver Ratios and Group Sizes" division list: Div 1 Determining ratios, Div 2 Regular ratios in the registered child-care home, Div 3 Regular ratios in the licensed child-care home, Div 4 field trips, Div 5 water activities. 26 TAC §747.1601 (recordId 188748, SOS TAC viewer) — "The child/caregiver ratio is the maximum number of children one caregiver may be responsible for."

Source note: adopted eff. 09/01/2003, 28 TexReg 1462; transferred eff. 03/09/2018, 43 TexReg 909. 26 TAC §747.1603 (recordId 188730) — full text of paragraphs (1)-(5) quoted verbatim in the field, including (3) "All children present, including children related to you, assistant and substitute caregiver's children, and drop-in and part-time children must be counted in the child/caregiver ratio, by age of the child, regardless of the length of time they are present" and (5) the registered-home-only pre-kindergarten counting concession. Source note: adopted eff. 09/01/2003; amended eff. 12/01/2010, 35 TexReg 10266; transferred eff. 03/09/2018. 26 TAC §747.1605 (recordId 188731) — "No. The total number of children in care must never exceed 12 ... This number includes all children present in the child-care home and any children in your care away from the child-care home, such as those on a field trip or being transported." The single hard ceiling for both registered and licensed homes. 26 TAC §747.1607 (recordId 188732) — "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers while children are napping." 26 TAC §747.1609 (recordId 188733) — "No.

You may not reduce the number of caregivers supervising the children during opening and closing times." Establishes there is no drop-off/pick-up grace. 26 TAC §747.1701 (recordId 188734) + its attached figure (S3-served HTML captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701") — registered child-care home chart. Columns and all 25 rows transcribed verbatim into the field text; max column is "Maximum number of children allowed in the child-care home at any one time, including children related to the caregiver"; last infant row is 4 infants / max 6 total. Source note: adopted eff. 09/01/2003; transferred eff. 03/09/2018. 26 TAC §747.1703 (recordId 188735) — "If your child-care home is registered, you may not increase the number of children in care if two or more caregivers are caring for the children." 26 TAC §747.1801 (recordId 188736) + attached figure "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1801" — licensed child-care home, one caregiver. Columns birth-17 months / 18 months through three years / four years and older / "Maximum number of children one caregiver may supervise"; all 29 rows transcribed.

Source note: adopted eff. 09/01/2003; amended eff. 12/01/2010, 35 TexReg 10266; transferred eff. 03/09/2018. 26 TAC §747.1803 (recordId 188740) + attached figure "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1803" — two caregivers in a licensed home; all 11 rows transcribed, including the 10/0/10 cliff row and the absence of any row for 11 or 12 infants. 26 TAC §747.1805 (recordId 188741) — "If your child-care home is licensed and more than two caregivers are present caring for the children, then you may care for 12 children of any age from birth through 13 years." 26 TAC §747.1901 (recordId, Subchapter E Div 4) — field trip ratios; subsection (b) allows non-caregiver adults only when mixing with the public and only if the regular ratio is still met with qualified caregivers; (c) regular ratio applies in enclosed controlled areas. 26 TAC §747.1903 — "(a) You must have one caregiver in addition to the driver if you transport more than four children who are younger than 24 months." 26 TAC §747.207 (recordId, Subchapter B Div 1) — paragraph (10): "Ensuring the total number of children in care at the home or away from the home, such as during a field trip, never exceeds the capacity of the home as specified on the license or registration."

This is the rule that makes the permit number, not the chart, the operative limit. Source note: last amended eff. 03/01/2023, 48 TexReg 950. 26 TAC §747.205 — primary caregiver must routinely be present during hours of operation. 26 TAC §747.301 — the list of changes requiring prior written notice to Licensing; note it includes "Changing the age range of children to be cared for" but does not itself list a capacity increase. 26 TAC §747.123 (recordId 220733) — definitions: (11) Caregiver, (36) Infant "A child from birth through 17 months", (45) Pre-kindergarten age child, (51) School-age child "A child who is five years of age and older and is enrolled in or has completed kindergarten", (58) Toddler "A child from 18 months through 35 months". Source note: last amended eff. 09/26/2024, 49 TexReg 7358. 26 TAC §747.3003 — nighttime care limits (16 hours in 24; three consecutive 24-hour periods, six per month). Confirms nighttime care adds no capacity. 26 TAC §747.4001 — "Your registered or licensed child-care home must have at least 30 square feet of indoor useable activity space for each child in care." 26 TAC §747.4003 — "No.

We will limit the number of children you may care for based on the indoor useable activity space in the child-care home." 26 TAC §747.4009 — pre-09/01/2003 homes exempt from the space requirement only until the permit is no longer valid. 26 TAC §747.4013 — indoor useable activity space may not be shared with other programs while children are in care. 26 TAC §745.37(1) (recordId 221109) + attached figure PDF 202404488-1.pdf "Figure: 26 TAC §745.37(1)" — the Types of Child Day-Care Operations chart; the Listed Family Home, Registered Child-Care Home and Licensed Child-Care Home entries are quoted verbatim in the field text, including the "seven to twelve children" definition of the licensed home. Source note: adopted eff. 03/01/2002; amended eff. 12/01/2012; transferred eff. 07/15/2019; amended eff. 10/15/2024, 49 TexReg 8158 — this October 2024 adoption is the newest authoritative Texas home-capacity text. 26 TAC §745.31 — child day care and residential child care subject to regulation; amended eff. 10/15/2024. 26 TAC §745.43 — duties of a relative-only listed family home, first of which is "Operate within the limits of its permit."

Adopted eff. 08/23/2023, 48 TexReg 3990. 26 TAC §745.339 — factors considered when Licensing decides "whether to issue or amend a permit"; establishes that capacity changes run through a permit amendment. 26 TAC §745.341 — full permit issued to listed family homes and registered child-care homes; initial then full license for licensed operations. 26 TAC §745.371 — "We can issue only one registration or listing per single living unit." 26 TAC §745.373 — "you may not have more than one licensed child-care home", with the pre-09/01/2003 group day-care home legacy exception. 26 TAC §742.103 (recordId 204000) — listed family home definition including "(2) May not provide care for more than 12 children, including children related to the primary caregiver."

Adopted eff. 03/10/2021, 46 TexReg 1247. 26 TAC §742.107 — relative-only listed family home receiving TWC subsidies exempt from Chapter 742 minimum standards. 26 TAC §742.111 — definitions, including (2) "Children related to the primary caregiver" and (7) School-age child. 26 TAC §742.201 / §742.203 — primary caregiver must live in the home and be routinely present. 26 TAC §742.307(3) (recordId 204010) — "(A) The number of children not related to the primary caregiver never exceeds three; and (B) The total number of children, both related and not related to the primary caregiver, never exceeds 12". The operative LFH capacity duty. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42, read in full today; page states "The statutes available on this website are current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025." Established: §42.002(9) "Family home" definition (six unrelated, six additional elementary school children after school, total not exceeding 12 including related children); §42.002(16) "Children who are related to the caretaker"; §42.052(c) listing at three or fewer unrelated, §42.052(d) mandatory registration at four or more unrelated and the relatives-only exemption; §42.002 last amended by Acts 2021, 87th Leg., R.S., Ch. 807 (H.B. 1540); §42.052 last amended by Acts 2021, 87th Leg., R.S., Ch. 547 (S.B. 225). Also established that ch. 42 contains no numeric ratio or capacity figure other than the "family home" definition. https://capitol.texas.gov/Search/BillSearchResults.aspx — Texas Legislature Online bill search; session list confirms the most recent session is 89(2) - 2025 (no 2026 session).

Legislative sweep basis. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB02789F.htm — H.B. 2789 (89th R.S., 2025) enrolled text, "relating to the regulation of child welfare, including licensure, community-based care contractors, family homes, and child-care facilities." Read section by section: adds §42.0413 and amends §§42.043(b), 42.049(a), 42.0495, 42.051(b), 42.068, 42.0431(b) and Ch. 43. Contains no capacity, ratio or "twelve children" provision. Establishes that the 2025 sessions did NOT change Texas home capacity. https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB01403F.htm — H.B. 1403 (89th R.S., 2025), the only 2025 amendment to §42.042; caption "relating to the collection and confidentiality of information regarding firearms in agency foster homes; creating a civil penalty." Not capacity-related. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/licensed-registered-listed-family-child-care-home.pdf — HHSC "Child Care Home Provider Types", Revised 03/2026. Used only as an agency-material cross-check, not as authority.

Confirms the licensed home's "seven to 12 children" floor-and-ceiling and supplies the complaint ground "the caregiver is caring for more children than the permit allows." DIVERGENCES FOUND AND DELIBERATELY NOT FOLLOWED: (a) it describes the registered home's base six as "up to six unrelated children who are ages 13 or younger during school hours", a qualifier that appears in neither §42.002(9) nor §745.37(1) nor the §747.1701 chart; (b) it calls the add-on "six additional school-age children" where the statute and §745.37(1) both say "six additional elementary school children" and the §747.1701 chart column says "children five years old and older after school hours"; (c) its Listed Family Home entry says only "for up to three unrelated children" and omits the 12-child total cap that §742.103(2), §742.307(3)(B) and §745.37(1)(A) all impose. The field text follows the rule and statute text on all three points. CONTRADICTION WITH THE BRIEF, STATED EXPLICITLY AS METHOD REQUIRES: the brief asked for "the maximum number of children each Texas home permit type may serve — Listed Family Home, Registered Child-Care Home, Licensed Child-Care Home", which implies three different maxima.

The text in hand says otherwise. All three permits share the same statutory and regulatory ceiling of 12 children including the caregiver's related children (§742.103(2) and §742.307(3)(B) for the listing; §745.37(1)(B) and the §747.1701 chart for the registration; §745.37(1)(C), §747.1605 and §747.1805 for the license). The permits differ in the number of UNRELATED children admitted at the front door (three, six-plus-six-after-school, seven-to-twelve), in the permitted age mix, and in the number of caregivers required to reach twelve — not in the ceiling. The field text is written on that basis. UNVERIFIED: the precise administrative mechanism and fee, if any, by which an existing registered or licensed child-care home requests an increase to the capacity printed on its permit. 26 TAC §745.339 refers to "a request to amend the permit" and §747.301 requires prior written notice for a change in age range but not expressly for a capacity increase; no rule stating the amendment procedure or its cost was located in Chapter 745 Subchapter D (whose divisions run only to Permit Renewal and Relocation) within today's search.

No claim about that procedure or fee is made in the field text. UNVERIFIED: whether HHSC currently has a proposed (not yet adopted) amendment to 26 TAC Chapter 747 Subchapter E pending in the Texas Register. The source notes read today show §§747.1701, 747.1703, 747.1805 and 747.1609 unamended since their 2003 adoption and §747.1801/§747.1603 unamended since 2010, with a Chapter Review Date of 05/17/2024, but the Texas Register proposed-rules stream was not swept for a pending project. UNVERIFIED: the literal wording of 26 TAC §747.1901(a)'s field-trip ratio figure. The attached graphic's caption and title ("Ratios for Field Trips Mixing with Other Children or Adults Away from the Child-Care Home") were read, but the numeric rows were not fully captured; the field text therefore cites only §747.1901(b) and (c), whose rule text was read directly, and makes no claim about the field-trip numbers themselves. [home_type_definition] SOURCES OPENED 26 AUGUST 2026 — TX / home_type_definition METHOD NOTE ON ACCESS. Both official Texas sources have moved behind single-page applications since these fields were last written, and the old direct URLs now return only a JavaScript shell.

Recording the working paths so the next writer does not repeat the hour: (1) statutes.capitol.texas.gov is now an Angular app; its chapter documents are served from the file host https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/<CODE>/htm/<CODE>.<CH>.htm (the app's own FileServerPath), which returns the real HTML. Fetching https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm, /Docs/HR/pdf/HR.42.pdf, /Zips/HR.htm.zip or the legacy www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us mirror all return the same 250 KB SPA shell with HTTP 200 and no statute text. (2) The Secretary of State's TAC viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC is DEAD — it now serves a "This Site Has Moved" redirect page to https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC, an Appian portal that renders only under JavaScript and whose rule text sits in a cross-origin iframe. Individual rules are addressable once you have drilled the index: https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=<ID>&queryAsDate=08%2F26%2F2026&interface=VIEW_TAC_SUMMARY (the queryAsDate parameter is what makes it "rules in effect today").

Every TAC citation below was read by driving that portal from the Title 26 index down, never from a pinned or remembered URL. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Human Resources Code ch. 42 as compiled today.

Established §42.002(1) "Child"; §42.002(3) "Child-care facility"; §42.002(7) "Day-care center"; §42.002(8) "Group day-care home"; §42.002(9) "Family home" (six unrelated under 14, six additional after-school elementary, 12 total including related, related-only care excluded); §42.002(16) "Children who are related to the caretaker"; §42.002(17) "Regular care"; §42.002(18) "Controlling person"; §42.041(a) licence requirement and the full §42.041(b) exemption list including (10) family home registered or listed, (17) short duration, (20) prior-relationship caretaker, (25) Family Code ch. 34 authorization agreement, and the new (26)/(27) DoD certificates; §42.042(d-1), (e) and (g) (separate standards for listed and registered homes); §42.049 and §42.0495 (liability insurance, $100,000, as amended); §42.051(b); §42.052(c)-(e), (i) (listing/registration duty, mandatory listed-home disclaimer, display rules); §42.0522 (advertising disclaimers); §42.0523 (relative-only listing under Labor Code ch. 313). https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB02789F.htm — H.B. 2789, 89th Legislature Regular Session (enrolled), Acts 2025 ch. 423. Established that SECTION 3 amends HRC §42.049(a) and SECTION 4 amends §42.0495 to reduce liability coverage from $300,000 to $100,000 per occurrence and to strike the listed family home's annual certificate-filing duty, and that SECTION 11(a) makes both effective 1 January 2026. Also SECTION 5 (initial licence 6 -> 12 months) and SECTION 1 (adds §42.0413). https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB04529F.htm — H.B. 4529, 89th Leg. R.S. (enrolled), Acts 2025 ch. 461, eff. 1 Sept. 2025. Established that the DoD military-base and military family child-care exemptions at HRC §42.041(b)(26) and (27) are 2025 additions.

Texas Administrative Code, Title 26, Part 1 (HHSC), read via the Secretary of State View TAC portal, queryAsDate 08/26/2026: 26 TAC §742.103 (recordId 204000) — definition of a listed family home: own home, for compensation, three or fewer unrelated children 13 or younger, the four-hour/three-day/three-week or 40-day thresholds, and the 12-child cap including related children. 26 TAC §742.107 (recordId 204002) — listed family home need not meet ch. 742 standards if receiving TWC federal subsidies and caring only for related children. 26 TAC §742.111 (recordId 204004) — ch. 742 definitions, including "Children related to the primary caregiver" and "School-age child". 26 TAC §742.401 and §742.403 (recordIds 206492, 204012) — notification duties; and the liability insurance rule STILL reading "$300,000 for each occurrence of negligence" plus annual proof of coverage, source note showing no amendment since 10 March 2021, 46 TexReg 1247. This is the rule/statute conflict flagged in the entry. 26 TAC §745.21 (recordId 204666) — ch. 745 definitions: "Capacity", "Caregiver", "Child", "Child-care facility" (expressly excluding listed family homes, employer-based and shelter care), "Children related to the caregiver", "Operation", "Permit", "Minimum standards". 26 TAC §745.31 (recordId 221108) — what is subject to regulation;

uses the current agency name "Child Care Regulation (CCR)"; amended eff. 15 October 2024, 49 TexReg 8158. 26 TAC §745.33 (recordId 195759) — "child day care" defined as care of an unrelated child under 14 "in a place other than the child's own home", plus the Labor Code ch. 313 relative-care variant. 26 TAC §745.37 (recordId 221109) and its adopted figure "Figure: 26 TAC §745.37(1)" (Texas Register document 202404488-1.pdf, served from the portal as the rule's Attached Graphic) — the operative permit-tier chart: (A) Listed Family Home, caregiver at least 18, three or fewer unrelated, birth through 13; (B) Registered Child-Care Home, up to six unrelated birth through 13 plus up to six additional elementary school children after school hours; (C) Licensed Child-Care Home, seven to twelve children birth through 13, less than 24 hours but at least two hours a day, three or more days a week; (D) Licensed Child-Care Center, at a location other than the home of the director/owner/operator, seven or more under 14; (G) Employer-Based Child Care compliance certificate; (H) Shelter Care compliance certificate.

Rule amended eff. 15 October 2024, 49 TexReg 8158. 26 TAC §745.41 and §745.43 (recordIds 195762, 214278) — permit required unless exempt; requirements for a relative-only listed family home (adopted eff. 23 August 2023, 48 TexReg 3990). 26 TAC §745.111, §745.113 and §745.129 with its Attached Graphic "Figure: 26 TAC §745.129" (recordIds 195764, 195765, 204673) — what "exempt from regulation" means, the four exemption categories, and the miscellaneous-exemption chart (neighbourhood recreation programme, skills programme, caregiver with a written agreement with a parent, emergency shelter for minors). 26 TAC §745.371, §745.373 and §745.379 (recordIds 204703, 204704, 204705) — one registration or listing per single living unit in the primary caregiver's name; no more than one licensed child-care home "because a primary caregiver must provide care in the caregiver's own residence", with the pre-1 September 2003 group day-care home grandfather; no two day-care licences at one location. 26 TAC §746.111 and §746.113 (recordIds 188280, 188281) — scope of the child-care CENTER standards, including unlicensed centres. 26 TAC §747.111, §747.113, §747.115, §747.117 (recordIds 188633, 188636, 188634, 188635) — scope of the child-care home standards (12 or fewer children in the caregiver's own home, plus unlicensed homes that require a permit);

the registered child-care home; the licensed child-care home with the pre-2003 off-residence grandfather; and who must comply, including the unpermitted operator and controlling person. 26 TAC §747.121 (recordId 220733) — ch. 747 definitions, including (16) "Child-care home", (41) "Permit is no longer valid", (45) pre-kindergarten age child, (51) school-age child. 26 TAC §747.1603 and §747.1605 (recordIds 188730, 188731) — all children present including the caregiver's own related children, assistant and substitute caregivers' children, drop-in, part-time and supervised neighbourhood children count in ratio; the total in care must never exceed 12 and includes children away from the home on field trips or in transport.

CONTRADICTIONS OF THE BRIEF, STATED EXPLICITLY AS METHOD REQUIRES. The brief asked for verbatim statutory AND rule definitions of "child-care home", "listed family home", "registered child-care home" and "licensed child-care home". THREE OF THOSE FOUR HAVE NO STATUTORY DEFINITION AT ALL. Human Resources Code §42.002 defines "family home", "group day-care home" and "day-care center" and does NOT define "child-care home", "registered child-care home" or "licensed child-care home"; those terms exist only in 26 TAC (§747.121(16), §747.113, §747.115 and the §745.37 chart). "Listed family home" likewise has no §42.002 definition — the statutory hook is §42.052(c) plus §42.0522(b), and the definition proper is 26 TAC §742.103. The entry says so rather than manufacturing statutory text. Second, the brief's framing of "the small-number exemption" does not describe Texas: there is NO small-number exemption for paid regular care of unrelated children in the caregiver's home. Under §42.052(c) even ONE unrelated child in regular care for compensation triggers a mandatory listing. What actually takes care outside regulation in Texas is frequency (§42.002(17) "regular care"), relationship (related-only care, §42.002(9) and §42.052(d)), location (care in the CHILD'S own home, 26 TAC §745.33(1)) and the itemised §42.041(b) exemptions — not a headcount floor.

Third, the statutory term "group day-care home" (§42.002(8)) is still on the books but is not a permit anyone can obtain today; the corresponding live permit is the licensed child-care home, and the statutory term survives only in the pre-1 September 2003 grandfather clauses at §747.115(b) and §745.373(b). UNVERIFIED: the age-tiered capacity charts adopted as Attached Graphics under 26 TAC §747.1701 (registered child-care home) and the licensed child-care home equivalent in ch. 747 subch. E div. 3 were not read — the portal's Amazon S3 presigned link for the §747.1701 figure expired before it could be retrieved, so no age-by-age capacity number is asserted anywhere in this entry; only the absolute 12-child ceiling of §747.1605, which was read in full, is stated. UNVERIFIED: whether HHSC has published a proposed or adopted amendment to 26 TAC §742.403 conforming it to the $100,000 figure enacted by H.B. 2789 — the Texas Register proposal stream was not swept; what is verified is that the rule as SERVED on 26 August 2026 still reads $300,000 with annual proof of coverage. UNVERIFIED: which agency "the department" denotes across Chapter 42 after the child-care regulation transfer; the entry reports the statute's internal inconsistency (§42.041(a) "department", §42.052 "commission", §42.0522(a) "DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY AND PROTECTIVE SERVICES" against §42.0522(b) and §42.052(i) "HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION") without resolving it.

UNVERIFIED: local zoning, deed restriction and fire-marshal overlays, which §42.041(e) preserves ("The exemptions provided by Subsection (b) do not affect the authority of local, regional, or state health department officials, the state fire marshal, or local fire prevention officials to inspect child-care facilities") but which are not part of this field. [max_group_size] Sources opened 2026-08-26. All Texas Administrative Code text was read from the Secretary of State's current "Rules and Meetings" portal, starting from the title index (Title 26 > Part 1 > Chapter 747 > Subchapter E), never from a pinned or previously saved rule URL. Every rule page was served with queryAsDate=08/26/2026, i.e. the rules in effect today. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=3&ti=26&pt=1 — DEAD. Returns a "Site Has Moved" stub (2,517 bytes) with a meta refresh. Same for readtac$ext.TacPage and tacctx$.startup. Established that every legacy Texas TAC deep link in circulation is now non-authoritative; this is the first trap for this state. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/tac/index.shtml — the Secretary of State's TAC landing page; its only live viewer links are to texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com (interface=VIEW_TAC and interface=SEARCH_TAC).

Established the current official viewer. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC — title index in effect today; walked TITLE 26 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES > PART 1 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION > chapter list. Established that Chapter 747 is currently captioned "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-CARE HOMES" (not "for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", the title HHSC still prints on its manual), and that Chapters 742, 744, 745 and 746 sit beside it. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=747&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&subchapter=E&title=26 — Subchapter E "CHILD/CAREGIVER RATIOS AND GROUP SIZES", Divisions 1-5. Established the subchapter's own structure and titles. 26 TAC §747.1601 (recordId 188748) — "The child/caregiver ratio is the maximum number of children one caregiver may be responsible for." Chapter Review Date 05/17/2024. 26 TAC §747.1603 (recordId 188730) — paragraphs (1)-(5) verbatim, including the requirement to count related children, employees' children and drop-ins by age. Source note: adopted 2003, amended eff.

December 1, 2010, 35 TexReg 10266; transferred eff. March 9, 2018, 43 TexReg 909. Fetched twice on two independent browser sessions to confirm the wording of (5). 26 TAC §747.1605 (recordId 188731) — the flat 12-child ceiling, including children in your care away from the home. 26 TAC §747.1607 and §747.1609 (recordIds 188732, 188733) — no caregiver reduction at naptime or at opening/closing. 26 TAC §747.1701 (recordId 188734) and its attached figure "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701" — the full registered-home chart, all 25 rows, captured from the figure file the portal serves. Established the registered-home totals of 12/10/8/7/6 and the absence of any row above four children birth-through-17-months. 26 TAC §747.1703 (recordId 188735) — a registered home may not increase numbers with a second caregiver. 26 TAC §747.1801 (recordId 188736) and figure "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1801" — the full licensed-home one-caregiver chart, all 29 rows. 26 TAC §747.1803 (recordId 188740) and figure "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1803" — the two-caregiver chart, 11 data rows; column heading verbatim "Maximum group size and number of children two caregivers may supervise"; the final row (10 infants, 0 older, total 10) verified by parsing the figure's table rows individually. 26 TAC §747.1805 (recordId 188741) — three or more caregivers, 12 children of any age birth through 13. 26 TAC §747.1901 (recordId 188742) and figure — field-trip ratios; (b) volunteers; (c) enclosed controlled outings. 26 TAC §747.1903 (recordId 188737) — extra caregiver beyond the driver above four children under 24 months. 26 TAC §747.2001 (recordId 220739) and figure "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2001(c)" — wading-pool ratios; (b) second adult when more than one child under 24 months is in care.

Amended eff. September 26, 2024, 49 TexReg 7358. 26 TAC §747.2005 (recordId 220740) and figure "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2005(b)" — swimming ratios. Amended eff. September 26, 2024, 49 TexReg 7358. Together with §747.2001 these establish that the recently amended figures carry "26 TAC" captions while the 2003/2010 ratio figures still carry "40 TAC" captions. 26 TAC §747.111 (recordId 188633), §747.113 (188636), §747.115 (188634), §747.117 (188635) — scope, registered child-care home, licensed child-care home, who must comply. Established the 12-child cap in both permit types and the pre-September-2003 group-day-care-home carve-out. 26 TAC §747.123 (recordId 220733) — the chapter's definitions, read in full.

Established that there is NO definition of "group" or "group size" in the home chapter, and supplied Infant = birth through 17 months, Toddler = 18 through 35 months, Pre-kindergarten age child, School-age child, and Caregiver = "A person who is counted in the child to caregiver ratio ... [who] must meet the minimum education, work experience, and training qualifications required under Subchapter D". 26 TAC §747.201 (recordId 188669) — primary caregiver must live in the home; also carries the internal miscite "Refer to §747.111 of this title (relating to What is a licensed child-care home?)" when the licensed-home definition is at §747.115. 26 TAC §747.207 (recordId 212750) — permit holder responsibilities, paragraph (10) tying compliance to "the capacity of the home as specified on the license or registration". 26 TAC §747.1005 (188681) and §747.1105 (188685) — only one primary caregiver in a registered home and in a licensed home. 26 TAC §747.1201 (188706), §747.1203 (188707), §747.1207 (219546), §747.1209 (192538), §747.1211 (188710) — the two kinds of caregiver, the assistant's dependence on a primary or substitute being present, the assistant's qualifications including Forms 2985 and 2912, the substitute's additional pediatric first aid/CPR, and the 16-18 year old exception with its "never has sole responsibility for a group of children" condition. 26 TAC §747.1501 (recordId 212768) — general caregiver responsibilities, including freedom from administrative and janitorial duties. 26 TAC §747.4001 (188876), §747.4003 (188877), §747.4007 (188879), §747.4009 (188880), §747.4011 (188881) — 30 square feet per child;

HHSC limits the number based on space; NO requirement to care for children younger than 18 months separately from older children; the pre-September-1-2003 exemption; and the measurement method whose sum "determine[s] the maximum number of children you may care for". §747.4007 is the section that settles the group-size question outright. 26 TAC §747.3003 (recordId 188800) — nighttime care hour limits, cross-referencing §745.383. 26 TAC §745.21 (recordId 204666) — "Capacity--The maximum number of children that a permit holder may care for at one time" at paragraph (4), and "Caregiver--A person who is counted in the child to caregiver ratio ..." at paragraph (5). 26 TAC §746.1503 (188319), §746.1505 (188320), §746.1609 (188326), §746.1707 (188333) — the child-care CENTRE group-size regime, opened solely to prove the contrast: centres get a definition of "group", a rule on multiple groups in one room, and a maximum-group-size chart; homes get none of the three. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Human Resources Code Chapter 42, rendered in full from the Legislature's own site (the page is now a JavaScript application; the raw HTTP response contains no statutory text, so it was rendered before reading).

Established §42.002(9) "Family home", §42.002(7) "Day-care center" and §42.002(8) "Group day-care home"; §42.041(b)(10) exempting family homes from licensure; §42.052(c) and (d) drawing the listing/registration line at three versus four unrelated children; §42.042(d-1), (e) and (m), the last requiring a cost-benefit analysis before the Commission sets staff-to-child ratios, group sizes or square footage for nonresidential facilities. Same source, amendment histories swept act by act for the 88th and 89th Legislatures: Acts 2023 88th R.S. Ch. 58 (S.B. 1469), Ch. 644 (H.B. 4559), Ch. 768 (H.B. 4595), Ch. 954 (S.B. 1849), Ch. 1091 (S.B. 1242), Ch. 1097 (S.B. 1327), Ch. 1158 (S.B. 1098); Acts 2025 89th R.S. Ch. 67 (S.B. 1619), Ch. 202 (H.B. 1610, eff. April 1, 2027), Ch. 423 (H.B. 2789), Ch. 461 (H.B. 4529), Ch. 556 (H.B. 1403), Ch. 629 (H.B. 3597); Acts 2025 89th 2nd C.S. Ch. 7 (H.B. 16), eff. December 4, 2025. Each was located against the section it amends. Established that none of them amended §42.002(9), §42.052, or the ratio/group-size authority — the capacity and ratio scheme described here survived the 2025 sessions unchanged. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — HHSC "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", cover-dated September 2024, footer "Revised: December 2025". Opened deliberately as the agency manual, NOT as law, and diffed against the codified text.

Its charts for §747.1701, §747.1801 and §747.1803 match the codified figures exactly. Two divergences found and reported in the entry: (1) it prints §747.1603(5) as "attending a pre-kindergarten program away from the home during the customary school day", three words the codified rule does not contain and has not contained since its last amendment on December 1, 2010; (2) it reprints §745.21 with Capacity at paragraph (3) and with the older, shorter definition of "Caregiver", where the codified §745.21 has Capacity at (4) and a Caregiver definition tied to being counted in the ratio. CONTRADICTION WITH THE BRIEF, STATED EXPLICITLY AS THE METHOD REQUIRES: the brief asked for "the caregiver-to-children limits that function as group caps in each home permit type" and for "sub-limits for children under 18 months and under 2". The official text does not support treating any Texas home number as a group cap in the technical sense, and Texas publishes no free-standing sub-limit for children under 18 months or under 2 in a home. The under-18-months constraint exists only as a shrinking total inside the §747.1701, §747.1801 and §747.1803 charts (12/10/8/7/6 registered; 12/11/10/7/6 licensed with one caregiver; 12 up to nine infants and then 10 with two caregivers), and the 24-month thresholds appear only in the transportation, wading and field-trip rules, never in the regular ratio charts.

The entry says so plainly rather than manufacturing a rule Texas did not enact. UNVERIFIED: the SOS portal's own "VIEW PDF" rendition of individual rules was not opened (the browser session driving that click dropped); the §747.1603(5) divergence from the HHSC manual therefore rests on two independent renderings of the Secretary of State's HTML text on 2026-08-26 plus the rule's source note showing no amendment after December 1, 2010, not on a third-format confirmation. UNVERIFIED: 26 TAC Chapter 742 (Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes) was seen in the Part 1 chapter index but its sections were not opened; the three-or-fewer-unrelated-children boundary for a listed home in this entry rests on Human Resources Code §42.052(c) alone. UNVERIFIED: 26 TAC §745.373 ("May I have more than one licensed child-care home?") and §745.383 (24-hour care) were read only as cross-references inside §747.115 and §747.3003, not opened directly. UNVERIFIED: the capacity figure actually printed on any specific permit, and any additional numeric limit a municipality or fire marshal may impose — §747.4011's own technical assistance note warns that "Local ordinances or fire marshals may have additional restrictions or limitations", and that text appears in the HHSC manual rather than in the codified rule. [prelicensing_steps] METHOD NOTE — the Texas Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us was retired and now serves only a "This Site Has Moved" notice.

The live index of rules in effect is the SoS Appian portal at https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC. Every 26 TAC citation below was read on 2026-08-26 by walking that index down from the Titles list (Title 26 > Part 1 > Chapter > Subchapter > Division > Rule), and every rule page was retrieved with queryAsDate=08/26/2026, i.e. "as in effect today". No pinned or dated PDF of the Texas Administrative Code was used, and no HHSC minimum-standards booklet was used as the source of any rule text. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=4&ti=26&pt=1&ch=745 — establishes that the old SoS TAC viewer is dead: returns a redirect notice only.

Any citation sourced from this host is unreadable today. https://www.sos.texas.gov/tac/index.shtml — establishes the two live TAC entry points, VIEW_TAC and SEARCH_TAC, on the Appian portal. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings/_/ui?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1&chapter=745 — subchapter index of 26 TAC ch. 745 as served today: A Precedence and Definitions, B Operations Subject to Regulation, C Exempt, D Application Process, E Fees, F Background Checks, G Controlling Persons, H, I, J, K Inspections/Investigations/Confidentiality, L Enforcement, M Administrative Reviews and Due Process Hearings, N, O, P. CORRECTION TO TX/agency.txt — agency.txt states that Subchapter K (Inspections and Investigations) and Subchapter M (Administrative Reviews and Due Process Hearings) "will remain in Title 40, Part 19, Chapter 745". The SoS index served today shows BOTH subchapters present in 26 TAC Chapter 745, and the Subchapter K rules carry 2023-2024 source notes adopted under Title 26 (§745.8401 adopted effective August 23, 2023, 48 TexReg 3990; amended effective December 22, 2024, 49 TexReg 9553). The 2019 transfer notice quoted in agency.txt was accurate when written; it is stale now.

This field cites Subchapter K as 26 TAC. 26 TAC §745.211 (recordId 204678) — the seven parts of the application process; pre-application interview not required for a listed family home or compliance certificate. 26 TAC §745.213, §745.215 (recordId 195821, 204679) — purpose and the five permitted formats of the pre-application interview, including online/virtual (amended eff. 25 Apr 2021, 46 TexReg 2437). 26 TAC §745.241 (204680) — who submits the application. 26 TAC §745.243 (219542) and its attached figure, captioned "Figure: 26 TAC §745.243" (PDF served from sos-appian-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com via the rule page) — the complete application contents for a listing (Form 2986), a registration (Form 2919), and a licensed child day-care operation including a licensed child-care home (Form 2910, Form 2911, Form 2982, Form 2948), plus the one-year shelf life of the pre-application interview verification. 26 TAC §745.245, §745.247 (195825, 195826) — franchise tax proof for a for-profit corporation or LLC; forfeiture notice duty and suspension/revocation exposure. 26 TAC §745.249, §745.251, §745.253 (204682, 204683, 204684) — $300,000 per-occurrence liability insurance;

the three acceptable reasons not to carry it; parental notice and Form 2962 Attachment A. 26 TAC §745.255 (204685) — one hour of safe sleeping training required of every listed family home applicant, including relative-only homes. 26 TAC §745.301, §745.303 (204688, 195835) — the 21-day completeness review and the four possible notices; three-strike rule and the one-year lockout. 26 TAC §745.321, §745.323, §745.325, §745.327 (204689, 204690, 204691, 195781) — two-month decision clock; complaint to the Associate Commissioner for Child Care Regulation at Mail Code E-550; the four good-cause grounds. 26 TAC §745.339, §745.341, §745.343, §745.344, §745.345, §745.347, §745.349, §745.351, §745.353, §745.355 (204692, 204694-204702) — evaluation factors; full permit issued directly for listings and registrations; initial licence six months, maximum one year; full licence after three months, continuing compliance, three inspections and payment; denial appeal rights. 26 TAC §745.471, §745.473, §745.475, §745.477 (204732, 204731, 213743, 213744) — registrations and full licences renew every two years;

listings have no renewal; 60-day renewal window plus 30 late days; renewal validated on the provider website. 26 TAC §745.501-§745.523 (195839-195850) — fee framework, exemptions, refundability, and the stale payment rule §745.517. Figure to 26 TAC §745.505(a) — listing: $20 application, $20 annual, $2 per background check. (Figure still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §745.505(a)" — stale title digit in HHSC's own attached graphic.) Figure to 26 TAC §745.507 — registration: $35 application, $35 annual, $2 per background check. (Figure still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §745.507".) Figure to 26 TAC §745.509 — licence: $35 application, $35 initial licence fee, $35 + $1 per licensed capacity for the non-expiring licence and for the annual fee, $1 per added capacity for an amendment, $2 per background check. (Figure still captioned "Figure: 40 TAC §745.509".) §745.517 verbatim still directs payment to "the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, Accounting Division E-672, P.O. Box 149030" — an agency renamed in 2004 and stripped of child-care regulation in 2017. Published as a live trap, not as instructions. 26 TAC §745.605, §745.609, §745.611, §745.613, §745.615, §745.617, §745.619, §745.621, §745.623, §745.625 (195852, 209681-209685, 195859-195862) — who needs a check, fingerprint vs. name-based, out-of-state checks, timing at application, CBCU fingerprint scheduling, FBI rap back.

Figure to 26 TAC §745.617(a) — captioned "Figure: 26 TAC §745.617(a)": all operation types except listed family homes must request background checks online through the Licensing account. 26 TAC §745.8401, §745.8403, §745.8405, §745.8407, §745.8409, §745.8411, §745.8413 (222341, 214292-214297, 222342) — CCR inspects for minimum-standard compliance and DFPS investigates abuse/neglect; inspection powers; unannounced frequencies. Figure to 26 TAC §745.8405(a) — captioned "Figure: 26 TAC §745.8405(a)": registered child-care homes and licensed operations are inspected PRIOR to issuance; listed family homes are not inspected prior to issuance and are not routinely inspected. 26 TAC §747.111, §747.113, §747.115, §747.117 (188633-188636) — scope; definitions of registered and licensed child-care home; unpermitted homes still bound by Chapter 747. 26 TAC §747.401, §747.403 (188674, 220270) — required postings and required telephone numbers, including the 8 1/2 x 11 employee list. 26 TAC §747.501, §747.503, §747.505 (220271, 188676, 188677) — the fourteen required written operational policies; the signed enrollment agreement on or before admission; notice of policy changes. 26 TAC §747.1001-§747.1015 (188679-188686, 192535) — registered-home primary caregiver qualifications, the twelve training topics, the 18-to-20 alternative route. 26 TAC §747.1101-§747.1153 (188684-188705, 212759-212761) — licensed-home primary caregiver qualifications and the Child-Care Director's Certificate.

Figure to 26 TAC §747.1107(8) — the seven education-and-experience combinations. Note: option (F) inside the current figure still cross-references "40 TAC Chapter 745, Subchapter P" — another live stale title digit inside HHSC's own attached graphic. 26 TAC §747.1113, §747.1115, §747.1119, §747.1121, §747.1129, §747.1131, §747.1141 — what counts as experience (30 hours/week full-time, paid or unpaid), substitutions, and what happens when qualifications are not met. 26 TAC §747.4015 (Subchapter T, Division 1, last rule) — written fire-authority approval required to care for children above or below ground level. 26 TAC §747.4901 (188930) — the whole of Subchapter W Division 1: "We do not regulate fire inspections and do not require that you have a fire inspection as part of these minimum standards; however your local ordinances may require one." CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF — the task brief assumed "the fire and health inspections and which local authorities sign off". For a Texas child-care HOME there is no state-required fire inspection and no state-required health/sanitation inspection as an application item: §747.4901 disclaims the first, and neither Chapter 747 nor the figure to §745.243 imposes the second on any of the three home permits.

The only mandatory fire-authority document is the §747.4015 written approval for above/below ground-level care. Fire and sanitation inspections for a home are purely a local-ordinance matter, coordinated (not required) by HRC §42.0443 and §42.04431. Published accordingly, against the brief. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — the Texas Legislature's own served text of Human Resources Code Chapter 42 (the statutes.capitol.texas.gov front end is now an Angular SPA whose /Docs/ paths return only the app shell; this is the file that front end loads). Established: §42.041(a) required licence; §42.044(a)-(c) inspection authority; §42.0441 review of inspection results; §42.0443 coordination of fire safety and sanitation inspections; §42.04431 municipal/county enforcement of fire safety standards; §42.046(a)-(f) application, two-month decision, listing safe-sleep training proof; §42.048(a),(a-1),(d),(e) licensing, name association, display, automatic revocation on change of ownership; §42.049(a),(c),(c-1) and §42.0495 liability insurance at $100,000; §42.052(c)-(l) listing/registration thresholds, display, the listing legend, automatic suspension for background-check failure, English/Spanish issuance, name association; §42.054(a)-(h) fees and the automatic suspension/revocation for unpaid annual fees; §42.055 and §42.0551 sign and employee-list posting; §42.056(a) required background checks.

CONFLICT NOTED AND PUBLISHED — HRC §42.049(a) sets liability insurance at $100,000 per occurrence; 26 TAC §745.249(a)(1) sets it at $300,000 per occurrence. The rule is the stricter and is what CCR applies at the application stage. Both texts were read today; the divergence is real and is published as a trap. Chapter 42 contains no provision on zoning, restrictive covenants or deed restrictions (searched for "zoning", "restrictive covenant", "deed restriction", "single-family", "residential purpose" — zero hits). Published as a verified negative. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider — HHSC's live applicant page. Established: the five steps; the three home permit types and their capacities and inspection frequencies; Step 2 orientation and the information packet; Step 4 online account creation, the "Do you have a permit number?" = No instruction and the 24-hour confirmation email; Step 5 eApplication, confirmation number, operation number, and the instruction "do not submit fee payments until CCR contacts you with your operation number and sends you an invoice"; the paper-application fallback; the Application Inspection paragraph; and the "Zoning, Building Codes and other Legal Requirements" paragraph stating that these "are not CCR requirements, but you may have to meet them before local authorities will perform fire and sanitation inspections". https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider/child-care-home-provider-application-forms — the form numbers HHSC currently serves per permit type, including Form 2971 (Request for Background Check) and Form 2974 (Request for Risk Evaluation), which are not named in the §745.243 figure.

UNVERIFIED: the effective date of the July 2, 2026 amendment package to 26 TAC §745.21, §745.609, §745.615, §745.631 and others (TRD-202602707, reported in TX/agency.txt as effective August 31, 2026, implementing S.B. 1849, 88th Leg. 2023, and repealing §745.601 and §745.607). I could not open the Texas Register issue index today; the SoS portal's VIEW_TAC interface returns the same text for queryAsDate=09/15/2026 as for 08/26/2026, so it cannot be used to confirm a future adoption. What IS verified is that as served on 2026-08-26, §745.601, §745.607, §745.609 and §745.615 all remain in force in the form quoted in this field. No assertion about the post-August-31 text of the background-check rules is published. UNVERIFIED: whether any specific Texas municipality requires a fire or sanitation inspection of a registered or licensed child-care home. The state rules disclaim the requirement; local ordinance content was not surveyed and no city is named in this field. UNVERIFIED: real-world elapsed times. The week ranges in element 17 are arithmetic on the rule clocks (§745.301's 21 days, §745.321's two months) plus the sequencing the rules impose; they are presented as planning estimates, not as measured HHSC performance, and no HHSC processing-time statistic was located or relied on. [preservice_training] Sources opened 2026-08-26 for TX / preservice_training.

Method note first, because it changes what could be cited. The Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.TacPage is retired: I requested 26 TAC ch. 745 rl=213 today and got back a 2,517-byte "Site Has Moved" page with a meta-refresh to texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings, and that Appian portal serves a JavaScript SAIL shell with no data to a non-browser client. I therefore could NOT read codified 26 TAC text from the Secretary of State today, and I say so on every affected assertion below. The two official substitutes I used are (a) HHSC's own current minimum-standards publications, which reprint the adopted rule text of ch. 742 and ch. 747 verbatim with the rule's own adoption date under each section heading, reached from the HHSC minimum-standards INDEX rather than from any pinned file name; and (b) the Secretary of State's Texas Register archive, swept issue by issue from the archive index. Statutes are from tcss.legis.texas.gov, the Texas Legislative Council file server, because statutes.capitol.texas.gov is a JavaScript app that returns an empty shell to a fetcher.

Note also that hhs.texas.gov returns HTTP 403 to the WebFetch tool but 200 to a plain HTTPS GET; everything below was fetched directly and parsed locally, not summarised by a fetch tool. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/minimum-standards — the HHSC index of minimum standards in effect, opened first and used to discover which files are served TODAY rather than reusing a remembered URL. Established that the current home-relevant files are "Chapter 742 Listed Family Homes (PDF)" at /sites/default/files/documents/chapter-742-listed-family-homes.pdf and "Chapter 747 Registered and Licensed Child-Care Homes" at /sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf, and that no revision memo or "display of changes" file is posted for ch. 742 or ch. 747 later than August 2024 (the ch. 747 items on the index are the two August 2024 memos on parents' rights and the pre-employment affidavit). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes," CCR/HHSC, title page September 2024, every page footered "Revised: December 2025"; 1,563,883 bytes, extracted locally with pdftotext.

This is the source for every ch. 747 quotation in the field text: §747.201 and §747.203 (primary caregiver definition, substitute in charge); §747.803(b) training-record retention; §747.901 personnel records including (10), the licensed-home-only signed maltreatment-orientation statement; §747.903 and §747.905 household-member records; §747.909 the primary caregiver's own records; §747.1003 and §747.1103 ("before we register" / "before we license"); §747.1005 and §747.1105 (only one primary caregiver); §747.1007 (rule date October 2018) quoted at length including the full paragraph (7) topic list (A) through (L); §747.1013 under-21 route; §747.1015 foreign education; §747.1107 (rule date March 2023) including the seven-row education-and-experience table (A) through (G); §747.1113 (a), (b), (c) what counts as experience; §747.1115 substitutions; §747.1123, §747.1129, §747.1131, §747.1139, §747.1141, §747.1143, §747.1145, §747.1147, §747.1149, §747.1151 (director's certificate chain); §747.1201, §747.1203, §747.1207 (rule date August 2024), §747.1209, §747.1211, §747.1213 (assistant and substitute caregivers);

§747.1301 (rule date October 2018) orientation, all fifteen items; §747.1303 (rule date September 2024) and its Figure: 26 TAC §747.1303 timing chart, rows (1) through (7), which is the source for the seven-day orientation deadline, the "before we register or license" CPR deadline for the primary caregiver, the "before being counted in the child/caregiver ratio" deadline for substitutes and the "within 90 days of employment" allowance for assistants; §747.1305 annual training for assistants and substitutes including (h) exclusivity; §747.1309 annual training for the primary caregiver; §747.1311 when annual training must be obtained; §747.1313 (rule date October 2018) pediatric first aid and CPR including the manikin / written and hands-on skill-based instruction requirement and the blended-learning allowance, plus the reprinted American Heart Association warning; §747.1314(b) and §747.1323(c), the only two places the chapter uses the words "pre-service training"; §747.1315 trainer criteria; §747.1317 "No.

We do not approve or endorse training resources or trainers"; §747.1319, §747.1321; §747.1327 documentation including (d) the two-signature orientation statement; §747.1401, §747.1403, §747.1405 household members, volunteers and contractors. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-742-listed-family-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes," CCR/HHSC, title page June 2022, footered "Revised: December 2025"; 293,915 bytes, extracted locally. Established the central negative finding of this field: §742.301 is the entire caregiver-qualification rule for a listed family home and reads, in full, "Primary caregivers and substitute caregivers must: (1) Be at least 18 years of age[Medium]; and (2) Meet the requirements in Chapter 745, Subchapter F of this title (relating to Background Checks)." A case-insensitive search of the whole extracted chapter for "training", "orientation", "CPR" and "first aid" returns no rule imposing any of them; the only training content is the Technical Assistance box under §742.301 listing "Some recommended topics of training for caregivers", and Technical Assistance is guidance, not rule.

Also established §742.201 (primary caregiver must live in the home and be the permit holder), §742.203 (substitute caregiver in the caregiver's absence, with no qualification beyond §742.301), §742.303, §742.305, §742.307, and §742.401 as it stands today. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42, full current text served today (415,760 bytes), parsed locally. Established: §42.042(d-1) the listed-family-home standards mandate, which does not mention training; §42.042(p) the rule-making authority for minimum training standards; §42.042(t) (the only use of "preservice training" in ch. 42, and it is about foster and prospective adoptive parents, not homes); §42.0421 in full, including (a)(1) the 24-hour/8-hour initial training that applies to "an employee of a day-care center", (a)(3) the 30 hours of annual training for "operator of a registered family home", (b) and (c) the infant special-training provisions, (e) transportation safety, (f) the trainer-qualification list that 26 TAC §747.1315(a) mirrors, (g) and (g-1) the two-year enforcement bar on a provider training her own staff, and (h) the cap forbidding the executive commissioner from requiring more hours than subsection (a) prescribes; §42.0426 in full, including (a) the licensed-facility training duty, (a-1) the signed attendance statement, and (c) the seven-day orientation deadline for an employee of "a day-care center, group day-care home, or registered family home"; §42.052(c),(d) listing and registration thresholds; §42.0562 (occupational-revocation information, added by S.B. 225, 87th Leg., 2021); §42.0563 the pre-employment affidavit, added by Acts 2023, 88th Leg., R.S., Ch. 58 (S.B. 1469), eff.

September 1, 2023; and §42.059 the notarised employment affidavit in full, including (b) "good cause for refusal to hire". https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/892/billtext/html/HB00016F.htm — enrolled H.B. 16, 89th Legislature, 2nd Called Session, 2025 (Acts 2025, 89th Leg., 2nd C.S., Ch. 7), fetched and parsed locally, 931,803 bytes. Opened because the ch. 42 amendment table shows H.B. 16 §10.08 amending §42.0426 effective December 4, 2025 — the training-of-personnel section — and a stale reading would have assumed the orientation rule moved. SECTION 10.08 amends only §42.0426(b), the residential child-care behaviour-intervention subsection. Subsections (a), (a-1) and (c), which are the ones that bind a home, were not touched. Recorded so the negative is auditable. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/index.shtml — Texas Register issue index, used as the index (not a pinned issue) to enumerate what exists. Confirms the most recent issue posted today is August 14, 2026 (pages 5301-5486); there is no August 21 or August 28, 2026 issue on the index yet. Texas Register sweep, 49 issues from September 2025 through August 14, 2026, both the Adopted Rules and the Proposed Rules Title 26 "HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES" pages of each issue (98 documents fetched from https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/<Issue>/Adopted%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html and .../Proposed%20Rules/...).

Every rule number in the 742/745/747 families was extracted from each document. Result, which is the basis for the field text's statement that the printed rule dates are the live ones: NOTHING in that period adopted or proposed any change to 26 TAC ch. 747 Subchapter D (Personnel, §§747.1001-747.1501) or to 26 TAC §742.301. The only hits were April 24, 2026 proposed and July 17, 2026 adopted ch. 745 background-check packages (§745.21 and neighbours); March 27, 2026 proposed §§745.115, 745.273, 745.275; July 10, 2026 proposed §742.401, repeal of §742.806, and §§747.305, 747.3411, 747.3603, 747.501, 747.701; July 31, 2026 proposed §742.402, §747.207 and §747.311; August 7, 2026 adopted ch. 749 (a passing reference to §745.243); and October 31, 2025 adopted §745.8301. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July102026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — read in full to confirm the ch. 742 and ch. 747 proposals in that issue are about unassigned epinephrine auto-injectors (implementing H.B. 163, 89th Leg., R.S., 2025) and rule-title style, not training.

Recorded so the negative is auditable. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July312026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — source for the one live item quoted in the field text: proposed new 26 TAC §742.402 and new §747.311, "Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements," implementing HRC §42.0562 as added by S.B. 225 (87th Leg., 2021); the quoted phrase "Each listed family home permit holder, controlling person, employee, and prospective employee"; "Filed with the Office of the Secretary of State on July 15, 2026. TRD-202602924 Karen Ray Chief Counsel Health and Human Services Commission Earliest possible date of adoption: August 30, 2026." Also established that HHSC is retitling ch. 747 "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD CARE [CHILD-CARE] HOMES" and removing the hyphen throughout. https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook — handbook index, then https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook/3100-regulatory-process-operations and https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook/3200-processing-application-a-license-certificate-compliance-certificate-registration-or-listing — the Child Care Regulation Handbook, section 3200. Source for items 3210, 3211, 3212, 3213, 3213.3, 3213.5 and 3214, all stamped "Revision 25-2;

Effective July 1, 2025", quoted verbatim in the field text for the definition of the pre-application interview, the rule that it is required for a license, certificate or registration and optional for a listing, the one-year window for registrations, the approved locations and hardship one-on-one option, the administrative topics covered, and "After completion of the pre-application interview, the inspector provides the applicant with a certificate of completion."

The handbook cites 26 TAC §§745.211, 745.213, 745.215 and 745.243 for these; see the UNVERIFIED note below, because I could not read those codified rules. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider — HHSC's own applicant page, fetched and parsed today. Source for the five-step process, for the naming of step 2 as "Attend a Child Care Home Orientation" and the later phrase "your pre-application class", and for the finding named at the end of the field text: the page's Registered Child Care Home block states only "Must be at least 21 years old and have a high school diploma or high school equivalent to apply" and omits the pre-application course certificate, the pediatric first aid and CPR certificate, the TB record and the twelve-topic training list, all of which §747.1007 makes pre-registration conditions. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.TacPage?...ti=26&pt=1&ch=745&rl=213 and https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?chapter=745&interface=VIEW_TAC&part=1&title=26 — both opened today to attempt the codified ch. 745 text; both failed as described in the method note.

Recorded because the failure is itself a finding an applicant needs: the URL every Texas child-care compliance guide prints for "look it up in the TAC" no longer serves rule text. Where I contradicted the brief. The brief asked for "the pre-service orientation and its hour count quoted verbatim." There is no hour count to quote. Neither 26 TAC ch. 742 nor ch. 747 attaches clock hours to anything a home must complete before the permit issues or before a caregiver is counted in ratio: §747.1301 orientation is specified by fifteen contents with no hour figure, and §747.1007(7)/§747.1107(7) are a twelve-item topic list with no hour figure. The only hour figures in the pre-permit space belong to somebody else — HRC §42.0421(a)(1)'s 24 initial hours with 8 before responsibility for a group applies to "an employee of a day-care center", and 26 TAC ch. 747's own hour figures (30, 24, 15) are all ANNUAL training, expressly carved out of the pre-service items by §747.1305(h). The field text says this in its first paragraph rather than manufacturing a number. Second contradiction: the brief assumed a per-permit gradient in training.

For listed family homes the gradient is a cliff, not a slope — the pre-service training requirement is literally zero, and the CPR/first-aid item that most guides state as a listed-home requirement is a Technical Assistance recommendation. Third: the brief asked about "approved trainer/registry requirements" as though Texas approved trainers. It does not, and says so in a rule (§747.1317); the Texas Trainer Registry is one of seven qualifying routes under §747.1315(a), not an approval scheme. UNVERIFIED: the codified, currently effective text of 26 TAC §§745.211, 745.213, 745.215 and 745.243 (the pre-application interview rules) could not be read, because the Secretary of State's TAC viewer has moved to an Appian portal that refuses non-browser clients and no Texas Register issue in the swept period reprints them. Everything the field text says about the pre-application interview's scope, location, content and certificate is sourced to the CCR Handbook items 3210-3214 (Revision 25-2, Effective July 1, 2025) and is labelled as handbook-sourced in the text. The binding requirement itself — that the primary caregiver hold "a certificate of completion of the Licensing pre-application course within one year prior to your application date" — is quoted from §747.1007(3) and §747.1107(3), which I did read.

UNVERIFIED: whether the handbook's statement that the one-year window applies "For a registration" reflects a §745.243 rule that differs from §747.1107(3), which imposes the same one-year window on licensed homes. I could not read §745.243. The field text flags the discrepancy and says the rule governs rather than resolving it. UNVERIFIED: the content of 26 TAC ch. 745 Subchapter F (Background Checks) beyond what §747.1007(4), §747.1207(4) and §742.301(2) incorporate by reference. HHSC posts a Subchapter F PDF on the minimum-standards index; I did not open it, because background checks are a separate field. No assertion about background-check timing or content is made in the field text beyond the cross-references quoted from ch. 742 and ch. 747. UNVERIFIED: whether the December 2025 revision that the ch. 747 and ch. 742 footers announce changed any Subchapter D or §742.301 text. HHSC posts no revision memo or display-of-changes file for either chapter dated December 2025 on its index, and the Texas Register sweep found no rule action, so the most likely explanation is a republication rather than a rule change — but I could not confirm that from a document HHSC published, and the field text therefore relies on the per-section rule dates printed inside the publications (October 2018, March 2023, August 2024, September 2024) rather than on the December 2025 footer.

UNVERIFIED: the phrase "training year," which §747.803(b), §747.1305(a) and §747.1401(b) all turn on, is not defined in the definitions rule §747.121 as printed in the December 2025 publication. I searched the extracted definitions section and found no entry for it. The field text quotes the rules that use the term and does not assert a definition. [program] https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=3&ti=26&pt=1 and .../readtac$ext.TacPage?...ti=26&pt=1&ch=747&rl=101 — both return HTTP 200 with a 2,517-byte "Site Has Moved" page and a 10-second meta refresh. Establishes that the old Texas Register/TAC host is dead and that every pre-2025 Texas citation pointing at it is a dead link. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/tac/index.shtml — Secretary of State's TAC landing page, retrieved 2026-08-26. INDEX OF RULES IN EFFECT, not a pinned URL. Its only two live TAC links are https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC ("View the current Texas Administrative Code") and ...?interface=SEARCH_TAC.

This is the entry point used for every TAC quotation below. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1 — chapter index of 26 TAC Part 1 (HHSC), served 2026-08-26. Establishes the chapter set actually in force today: 742 MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR LISTED FAMILY HOMES, 743 SHELTER CARE, 744 SCHOOL-AGE AND BEFORE OR AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS, 745 LICENSING, 746 CHILD-CARE CENTERS, 747 MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-CARE HOMES (hyphen still present), 748, 749. Confirms Chapter 742 exists as a real standards chapter. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?recordId=221109&queryAsDate=08%2F26%2F2026&interface=VIEW_TAC_SUMMARY — 26 TAC §745.37 as in effect 26 Aug 2026. Body text plus source note "amended to be effective October 15, 2024, 49 TexReg 8158". The rule body carries no definitions; it points to attached graphics. https://sos-appian-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/.../202404488-1.pdf (signed download served from the §745.37 record, saved locally as g_202404488-1.pdf) — "Figure: 26 TAC §745.37(1)", the chart of Types of Child Day-Care Operations.

SOURCE OF EVERY VERBATIM DEFINITION of Listed Family Home (row A, permit column "Listing"), Registered Child-Care Home (row B, "Registration") and Licensed Child-Care Home (row C, "License"), including the three-or-fewer / up-to-six-plus-six / seven-to-twelve bands, "birth through 13 years", the four-hour and 40-day regular-care triggers, the two-hour licensing trigger, and the 12-child ceiling. recordId=221108 — 26 TAC §745.31, amended eff. October 15, 2024, 49 TexReg 8158. Establishes the agency now calls itself "Child Care Regulation (CCR)" in the newest text while older rules in the same chapter still say "Licensing". recordId=195759 — 26 TAC §745.33 "What is child day care?", including the Labor Code Chapter 313 limb for related-child care under a listed family home. recordId=195762 — 26 TAC §745.41; recordId=214278 — 26 TAC §745.43 "What are the requirements for a relative-only listed family home?", adopted eff.

August 23, 2023, 48 TexReg 3990. Source of the seven-duty list quoted. recordId=204666 — 26 TAC §745.21 AS CURRENTLY IN FORCE (source note ends "amended to be effective April 25, 2021, 46 TexReg 2437"). Source of (7) child-care facility (excludes listed family homes), (10) children related to the caregiver, (21) full license, (22) full permit, (26) initial license, (28) minimum standards with its unclosed parenthesis at limb (A), (33) permit. recordId=204694, 204695, 204696, 204697, 204698, 204700 — 26 TAC §§745.341, 745.343, 745.344, 745.345, 745.347, 745.351. Source of "We issue a full permit to an applicant seeking to operate a listed family home, registered child-care home..."; of §745.347(a)-(c) "An initial license is valid for six months... maximum of one year"; and of the five §745.351 conditions for a full licence. recordId=204732, 204731, 204736 — 26 TAC §§745.471, 745.473, 745.481. Source of "There are no renewal requirements for a compliance certificate or listing" and of the every-two-years renewal, the 60-day renewal period and the 30-day late window. recordId=195841, 195842, 195843 — 26 TAC §§745.505, 745.507, 745.509, with their attached fee charts downloaded and read (201603941-1.html, 200605838-2.html, 201205628-1.html).

Source of every fee amount and every "consequences for failure to pay" clause quoted, and of the fact that all three charts are still headed "Figure: 40 TAC §745.505(a)/§745.507/§745.509" — Title 40, not Title 26. recordId=214293 and its attached graphic 202302448-1.pdf — 26 TAC §745.8405(a), adopted eff. August 23, 2023, 48 TexReg 3990. Source of the inspection matrix: no pre-issuance and no routine inspection for listed and relative-only listed homes; pre-issuance plus at-least-biennial (annual with TWC subsidy) for registered homes; pre-issuance plus annual for licensed operations. recordId=214294 — 26 TAC §745.8407, the "as often as is necessary" catch-all. recordId=203999, 204000, 204002 — 26 TAC §§742.101, 742.103, 742.107, all adopted eff. March 10, 2021, 46 TexReg 1247. Source of the verbatim listed-family-home definition and of the relatives-only-plus-TWC-subsidy exemption from the Chapter 742 standards. Chapter 742 subchapter index (interface=VIEW_TAC&chapter=742) — establishes the eight substantive subchapters A through H, disproving the common claim that listed family homes have no minimum standards. recordId=188632, 188633, 188636, 188634 — 26 TAC §§747.101, 747.111, 747.113, 747.115, all adopted eff.

April 15, 2017, 42 TexReg 1906, transferred eff. March 9, 2018, 43 TexReg 909. Source of "registered or licensed by us to care for 12 or fewer children", of the §747.111(2) trap for unpermitted homes, of §747.113(a)'s omission of the word "unrelated", and of §747.115(b)'s pre-2003 group day care home grandfather. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Human Resources Code Chapter 42, rendered in a browser on 2026-08-26 (the raw URL now returns a JavaScript shell with no statutory text). Banner: "The statutes available on this website are current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025." Source of §42.002 in full (no definition of listed/registered/licensed child-care home exists; §42.002(8) group day-care home and §42.002(9) family home quoted verbatim), §42.041(a) and (b)(10), §42.049, §42.0495, §42.050, §42.051(a)-(b), §42.052(c),(d),(e),(e-1),(f-2),(f-3),(i), §42.0522(a)-(b), §42.0523(a)-(e), §42.054(a)-(h). Also the full "Amended by" list: the only 2025-2026 marks on Chapter 42 are H.B. 2789 (Ch. 423), H.B. 4529 (Ch. 461), H.B. 1403 (Ch. 556), H.B. 3597 (Ch. 629), S.B. 1619 (Ch. 67), H.B. 1610 (Ch. 202, deferred to 1 April 2027) and 89th 2nd C.S. H.B. 16 (Ch. 7, eff. 4 December 2025). https://capitol.texas.gov/ — Texas Legislature Online session list, retrieved 2026-08-26. Establishes that the most recent session is 89(2) - 2025 and that no Texas legislature has met in 2026. The session sweep is therefore complete at 89(R), 89(1) and 89(2). https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/html/HB02789F.htm — H.B. 2789 ENROLLED, 89th Leg., R.S., 2025, "relating to the regulation of child welfare, including licensure, community-based care contractors, family homes, and child-care facilities."

SECTION 3 and SECTION 4 quoted with brackets: liability insurance cut from $300,000 to $100,000 per occurrence in both §42.049(a) and §42.0495(a), and the listed family home's annual insurance-certificate filing struck. SECTION 5 quoted verbatim: "(b) An initial license is valid for 12 [six] months from the date it is issued and may be renewed for an additional six months." SECTION 11: Sections 3 and 4 take effect January 1, 2026; the rest September 1, 2025. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/annualindexes/pdf.shtml, then https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/25ai/Rules.pdf and https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/2ndqt/Rules.pdf — official Texas Register Index of Rules for calendar 2025 and for 1 January to 26 June 2026. Swept for every 26 TAC 742-747 entry. Establishes that no 2025 or 2026 rulemaking touched §745.37, §745.347, §745.473, §745.505/507/509, §742.103 or §747.111/113/115, and that §745.21 was proposed in 2026 at 51 TexReg 2591. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/pdf/backview/0717/0717adop.pdf — Texas Register, 17 July 2026, Adopted Rules, 51 TexReg 4693-4696. The full readopted text of 26 TAC §745.21 with 73 renumbered definitions.

Source of the new (31) Full permit, (38) Initial license ("valid for 12 months from the date of issuance; however, CCR may renew an initial license for up to an additional six months"), (40) Licensing ("CCR, which was formerly titled Child Care Licensing"), (41) Minimum standards, (51) Permit. Filed with the Secretary of State on 2 July 2026, TRD-202602707, EFFECTIVE DATE: AUGUST 31, 2026, proposal publication date 24 April 2026 (51 TexReg 2589). §745.347 was NOT part of this adoption. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/pdf/backview/0710/0710prop.pdf and .../0731/0731prop.pdf, with the tables of contents of the 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 July and 7, 14, 21 August 2026 issues — establishes the live HHSC proposals implementing H.B. 163 (89R): amendment of §742.401 and §742.402, repeal of §742.806, amendment of §747.207 and §747.311, repeal of §745.469; earliest possible date of adoption 9 August 2026. Also establishes the pending chapter retitling, printed as "CHAPTER 747. MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD CARE [CHILD-CARE] HOMES", and that as of the 21 August 2026 issue it had NOT been adopted. CORRECTIONS TO THE BRIEF, stated explicitly as METHOD requires: 1. The brief asked for "the chapter specific to each home type", implying three chapters.

There are only TWO home-standards chapters, not three: Chapter 742 for listed family homes, and Chapter 747 for BOTH registered and licensed child-care homes. §747.111 puts them in the same chapter by name. 2. The brief's framing that a licensed child-care home is simply the top tier is incomplete: under Human Resources Code §42.041(b)(10) a listed or registered family home is EXEMPT from the licence requirement, and §42.002 has no definition for any of the three permit names. The statute knows only "family home" and "group day-care home", and it still legislates for group day-care homes in §42.0421, §42.0423, §42.0426(c), §42.0441 and §42.055(a-1). 3. "How long it lasts" cannot be answered with the fee chart. 26 TAC §745.509 is still written around a "non-expiring license", but §745.473(a), in force since 25 April 2021, requires renewal of a full licence, certification or registration "every two years after the date we issue your full permit." Only a listing and a compliance certificate never renew (§745.471(b); HRC §42.052(e-1)). 4. VERIFIED FALSE IN THE CODE ITSELF: 26 TAC §745.347(a)-(b) ("six months... maximum of one year") is contradicted by Human Resources Code §42.051(b) as amended by H.B. 2789, Ch. 423, §5, effective 1 September 2025, which makes an initial licence valid for 12 months, renewable for six more.

The rule is stale; the statute controls. HHSC's fix reaches only the definition at §745.21(38) and only on 31 August 2026, five days after this entry, leaving §745.347 in open conflict inside its own chapter. 5. VERIFIED FALSE IN THE STATUTE ITSELF: HRC §42.0522(a) still compels registered homes to advertise "REGISTERED WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY AND PROTECTIVE SERVICES BUT IS NOT LICENSED OR REGULARLY INSPECTED", while 26 TAC §745.8405(a)(3) requires a pre-issuance inspection and an inspection at least every two years (annually with a TWC subsidy), and the regulator has been HHSC, not DFPS, since the rules moved from 40 TAC to 26 TAC on 15 July 2019. The mandated sentence is doubly wrong and still mandatory. 6. The widespread claim that listed family homes have "no minimum standards" is FALSE. Chapter 742 has eight substantive subchapters. The only exemption is the relative-only, TWC-subsidised home under §742.107 and HRC §42.0523(e). 7. §747.113(a) ("not more than six children") CONFLICTS with §745.37(1)(B) and HRC §42.002(9), which both exclude the caregiver's own relatives from the six. §745.37 and the statute control.

UNVERIFIED: the fee charts attached to §§745.505, 745.507 and 745.509 are served today under Title 40 headings and carry no independent effective date; their currency rests on the parent rules' source notes (§745.505 amended eff. 1 September 2016; §745.507 amended eff. 1 January 2007; §745.509 amended eff. 1 December 2012), so the dollar figures are as old as those dates and were not cross-checked against any HHSC fee schedule. UNVERIFIED: the official Texas Register Index of Rules for 2026 covers only 1 January to 26 June 2026. Rulemaking published between 27 June and 21 August 2026 was checked issue by issue from the weekly tables of contents rather than from a consolidated index, and only for 26 TAC chapters 742 through 747. UNVERIFIED: Texas Workforce Commission subsidy eligibility rules (40 TAC Chapter 809) were not opened; the TWC references above come only from the text of HRC §42.0523, 26 TAC §742.107, §745.505(b) and the §745.8405(a) inspection chart. [ratios] METHOD NOTE — the Secretary of State's classic TAC viewer at texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC is DEAD as of 26 August 2026; every path on that host now returns a "Site Has Moved" interstitial.

The Texas Administrative Code now lives in an Appian single-page portal that renders nothing to a plain HTTP fetch. All TAC text below was read today by driving a headless Chrome against that portal, starting from the index of titles (never from a pinned deep link), navigating Title 26 > Part 1 > Chapter > Subchapter > Division > Rule, and reading the rule text out of the cross-origin iframe the portal renders it into. Every rule URL carries queryAsDate=08/26/2026, i.e. the portal served the text in effect TODAY. Attached figures (the ratio charts) are served as separate presigned S3 documents and were downloaded and converted individually. https://www.sos.texas.gov/tac/index.shtml — the Secretary of State's own TAC landing page; establishes that the only two current entry points are https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC and ...?interface=SEARCH_TAC. This is how the dead readtac host was replaced. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC — index of titles in effect; established Title 26 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Part 1 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1 — chapter index; established that child day care sits at Chapter 742 (MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR LISTED FAMILY HOMES), 744, 745 (LICENSING), 746, 747 (MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-CARE HOMES).

CORRECTION TO ANY BRIEF SAYING "40 TAC" OR "DFPS": these rules are Title 26 under the Health and Human Services Commission, not Title 40 under DFPS. The 40 TAC citations survive only inside the older attached figures, which are still headed "Figure: 40 TAC §747.1701" etc. even though the rule itself is 26 TAC — a genuine artefact of the 2018 transfer, not an error on my part. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1&chapter=747&subchapter=E — established the five divisions of Subchapter E: Determining Ratios and Group Sizes; Regular Ratios in the Registered Child-Care Home; Regular Ratios in the Licensed Child-Care Home; Ratios for Field Trips; Ratios for Water Activities. 26 TAC §747.1601 (portal recordId 188748) — "The child/caregiver ratio is the maximum number of children one caregiver may be responsible for." Source Note: adopted eff. 1 Sept 2003, 28 TexReg 1462; transferred eff. 9 Mar 2018, 43 TexReg 909. 26 TAC §747.1603 (recordId 188730) — the five counting rules quoted verbatim in the field, including (3) all children present including your own and your assistant's, and (5) the registered-home pre-kindergarten exception.

Amended eff. 1 Dec 2010, 35 TexReg 10266. 26 TAC §747.1605 (recordId 188731) — the absolute 12-child ceiling and the sentence extending it to children away from the home on field trips or in transport. 26 TAC §747.1607 (recordId 188732) — naptime: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers while children are napping." 26 TAC §747.1609 (recordId 188733) — opening and closing: "No. You may not reduce the number of caregivers supervising the children during opening and closing times." 26 TAC §747.1701 + its attached figure (recordId 188734) — registered-home chart, all 24 rows transcribed from the figure "Number of Children One Caregiver May Care for in a Registered Child-Care Home"; columns birth-through-17-months / 18-months-and-older / five-and-older-after-school-hours / maximum in home. 26 TAC §747.1703 (recordId 188735) — "If your child-care home is registered, you may not increase the number of children in care if two or more caregivers are caring for the children." This is the money trap. 26 TAC §747.1801 + figure (recordId 188736) — licensed-home one-caregiver chart, all rows; columns birth-through-17-months / 18-months-through-three-years / four-and-older / maximum one caregiver may supervise.

Amended eff. 1 Dec 2010, 35 TexReg 10266. 26 TAC §747.1803 + figure (recordId 188740) — two-caregiver licensed chart; establishes the 10-infants-and-nobody-else ceiling. 26 TAC §747.1805 (recordId 188741) — three or more caregivers: "you may care for 12 children of any age from birth through 13 years." 26 TAC §747.1901 + figure (recordId 188742) — field-trip ratios keyed on the youngest child; subsection (b) volunteers; subsection (c) enclosed controlled areas and neighbourhood walks revert to the regular ratio. 26 TAC §747.1903 (recordId 188737) — transport: one caregiver in addition to the driver above four children younger than 24 months; driver may be counted if qualified. 26 TAC §747.2001 + figure "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2001(c)" (recordId 220739) — wading ratios; subsection (b) second adult when more than one child under 24 months is in care. Amended eff. 26 September 2024, 49 TexReg 7358. 26 TAC §747.2005 + figure "Figure: 26 TAC §747.2005(b)" (recordId 220740) — swimming ratios; subsection (a) two caregivers once four or more children are swimming. Amended eff. 26 September 2024, 49 TexReg 7358. 26 TAC §747.2009 (recordId 220741) — certified lifeguard required above 18 inches of water.

Amended eff. 26 September 2024. 26 TAC §747.2011 (recordId 188745) — when the lifeguard may and may not be counted in ratio. 26 TAC §747.2013 (recordId 220742) — caregivers counted in swimming ratio must be able to swim. Amended eff. 26 September 2024. 26 TAC §747.2015 (recordId 220743) — unqualified adult volunteers and household members in water ratios, on three conditions. Amended eff. 26 September 2024. 26 TAC §747.2017 (recordId 188743) — sprinkler play requires no additional caregivers. 26 TAC §747.1503 (recordId 212769) — supervision duty, quoted verbatim.

Source Note: adopted to be effective 1 March 2023, 48 TexReg 950 — this section is newer than the rest of the chapter and its text is NOT the pre-2023 text. 26 TAC §747.111 (recordId 188633), §747.113 (188636), §747.115 (188634) — scope, definition of a registered child-care home (six plus six after-school, total 12), definition of a licensed child-care home including the pre-1 September 2003 group day care home grandfather. 26 TAC §747.1201 (188706), §747.1203 (188707), §747.1207 (219546, amended eff. 14 August 2024, 49 TexReg 4918), §747.1209 (192538), §747.1211 (188710) — the two kinds of caregiver, the bar on leaving an assistant alone, assistant and substitute qualifications, 16/17-year-olds. 26 TAC §747.203 (188670) and §747.205 (188667) — substitute in charge during absence; the closed list of permitted temporary absences. 26 TAC §747.2811 (188794) — lowered naptime lighting must still permit visual supervision. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=VIEW_TAC&title=26&part=1&chapter=747&subchapter=U — Subchapter U (Indoor and Outdoor Active Play Space and Equipment) division and rule index; established by inspection that it contains NO outdoor child/caregiver ratio, only equipment, swings, use zones, surfacing and inflatables.

The "outdoor ratio" question is answered by absence plus §747.1503. 26 TAC §742.103 (recordId 204000), §742.201 (204005), §742.203 (204006), §742.301 (204007), §742.303 (204008), §742.305 (204009), §742.807 (204029), §742.809 (204030) — the entire Listed Family Home regime relevant to staffing. All adopted to be effective 10 March 2021, 46 TexReg 1247. Established by walking every subchapter index of Chapter 742 (A through H) that the chapter contains NO ratio chart and NO age-band table; the only numeric caregiver requirement is §742.807(b), one caregiver per infant or toddler in a water activity. 26 TAC §745.37(1) + attached figure "Figure: 26 TAC §745.37(1)" (recordId 221109) — the permit-type chart, amended to be effective 15 October 2024, 49 TexReg 8158. This is the current authority for "listed = three or fewer unrelated", "registered = up to six unrelated plus six after-school", "licensed = seven to twelve children". The figure is now a 26 TAC figure, superseding the old 40 TAC version. 26 TAC §745.505(a) figure (195841), §745.507 figure (195842), §745.509 figure (195843) — listing, registration and licence fee charts, all downloaded as attached figures. $20/$20 listing; $35/$35 registration; $35 application + $35 initial licence + $35 plus $1 per licensed capacity annually, plus $1 per child amendment fee. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code Chapter 42, read today via headless browser (the statute site is also JS-rendered and returns only chrome to a plain fetch).

Page states: "The statutes available on this website are current through the 89th 2nd Called Legislative Session, 2025." Sections read in full: §42.002 (definitions, including "Family home" = not more than six children under 14 excluding related children, plus six additional elementary school children after school, total never above 12; last amended Acts 2021, 87th Leg., Ch. 807 (H.B. 1540), eff. 1 Sept 2021), §42.041 (required licence and the exemption at (b)(10) for "a family home, whether registered or listed"), §42.042 (rule-making; (d-1) directs separate minimum standards for listed family homes; (g) permits the executive commissioner to treat listed, registered and licensed operations differently — this is why Chapter 742 has no ratio chart), §42.052 (certification, listing and registration; (c) three or fewer children shall list, (d) four or more shall register, (i) the mandatory listing disclaimer; last amended Acts 2021, 87th Leg., Ch. 547 (S.B. 225), eff. 1 Sept 2021). SESSION-LAW SWEEP — Chapter 42's amendment histories for §42.002, §42.042 and §42.052 end in 2021; the statute compilation is current through the 89th Legislature's 2nd Called Session of 2025, so no 2023 or 2025 act touched the definitions or the listing/registration thresholds.

Texas fixes no numeric home ratio by statute at all; every number in this field is rule-made under HRC §42.042(e) and (d-1). The only caregiver-to-child ratio written into Chapter 42 itself is §42.156, "An employer-based day-care facility operating under this subchapter shall maintain a caregiver-to-child ratio of at least one caregiver to every four children receiving care", which governs employer-based care under a compliance certificate and does NOT apply to listed, registered or licensed homes; it is deliberately excluded from the published field. FUTURE-EFFECTIVE CHECK — re-queried §747.1701, §747.1703, §747.1801 and §747.2005 through the same portal with queryAsDate=12/31/2026. The served text and Source Notes were byte-for-byte the same as the 08/26/2026 query, so no adopted-but-not-yet-effective amendment to the ratio charts is pending as of today. CROSS-CHECK ONLY, NOT RELIED ON — https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf, HHSC's compiled "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", cover dated September 2024 and marked "Revised: December 2025". Downloaded and read; its Subchapter E structure matches the codified rules.

Per the method rule that an agency manual is not the law, nothing in the published field rests on this PDF — every quotation was taken from the Secretary of State's portal. UNVERIFIED: the exact scope of §747.1313 (pediatric first-aid and pediatric CPR) was not opened directly; it is referenced in the field only as it is quoted inside §747.1209(2), which I did read. Do not extend any claim about who else must hold pediatric CPR beyond that cross-reference without opening §747.1313. UNVERIFIED: no attempt was made to confirm whether HHSC has PROPOSED (as opposed to adopted) amendments to 26 TAC Chapter 747 Subchapter E in the 2026 Texas Register. The Texas Register search now lives behind the same Appian portal (interface=SEARCH_TEXAS_REGISTER) and was not exercised. The published field therefore states the rules in effect on 26 August 2026 and makes no claim about pending proposals. UNVERIFIED: 26 TAC §745.373 (more than one licensed child-care home), cross-referenced inside §747.115(b) for the pre-2003 group day care home grandfather, was not opened. The field repeats the cross-reference as it appears in §747.115 and asserts nothing about §745.373's own content. [required_forms] Sources opened 2026-08-26 for TX / required_forms.

Method note first, and it is the finding that governs everything below: THE HHSC FORMS INDEX MOVED. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms — the address printed in guides, in the CCR handbook and in HHSC's own navigation — now serves nothing but the sentence "The form pages have moved. Please visit fhb.hhs.texas.gov/forms and bookmark the new page." Every form number below was therefore re-verified against the live database at https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/forms, whose per-form pages print the official title and an "Effective Date," rather than against any pinned PDF or remembered URL. Second method note: www.hhs.texas.gov and fhb.hhs.texas.gov both answer HTTP 403 to curl (Akamai). All hhs.texas.gov pages and PDFs below were opened in a real browser session via Chrome DevTools Protocol; PDFs were pulled by same-origin fetch() from an already-loaded HHSC page. Third: as recorded in TX/agency.txt, the Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code viewer has moved to an Appian portal that refuses non-browser clients, so the codified 26 TAC text could not be read from the SoS today; the rule text quoted in the field is taken from HHSC's own minimum-standards publications, which reprint the adopted rule verbatim, reached from the HHSC minimum-standards index rather than from a saved file name, plus the Secretary of State's Texas Register archive for pending and adopted rulemaking. https://fhb.hhs.texas.gov/forms — the CURRENT HHSC forms index, opened today and used as the starting index.

Established the search parameter (search-forms), the series facets, and the per-form page URL pattern. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/regulations/forms — established the redirect notice quoted above. This is the retirement of the index every stale guide still points at. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider — HHSC's applicant page for home providers. Established the three permit tiers and their inspection frequencies, the five application steps, the eApplication route through the online CCR Account, the paper alternative ("If you prefer to complete a paper application, please complete the application packet forms and send it to your local Child Care Regulation office"), the liability-insurance-before-permit statement, the fee-invoice sequence ("do not submit fee payments until CCR contacts you with your operation number and sends you an invoice"), and the zoning/fire/sanitation paragraph quoted in element 17. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/become-a-provider/become-a-child-care-home-provider/child-care-home-provider-application-forms — THE authoritative packet list, and the source for which forms attach to which tier.

Licensed Child Care Home Application: Forms 2910, 2948, 2911, 2760, 2971, 2974. Registered Child Care Home Application: Forms 2919, 2760, 2971, 2974. Listed Family Home Application: Forms 2986, 2760, 2971, 2974. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-day-care-regulation-forms — the live CCR day-care forms index. Established the full published list (Forms 1099, 1100, 2550, 2551, 2760, 2841, 2881, 2885, 2910, 2911, 2912, 2919, 2935, 2937, 2940, 2941, 2947, 2948, 2962, 2971, 2974, 2982, 2985, 2986, 3019, 4001, 7239, 7240, 7243, 7250, 7259, 7260, 7261, 7263, 7270, 7271, 7277) and the title drift recorded in elements 04, 07 and 15 (this page still prints "Controlling Person - Child Care Licensing," "Child Care Licensing Governing Body/Director Designation," "Child Care Licensing Waiver/Variance Request," "Child Care Licensing Request for Background Check," "Incident/Illness Report," "Emergency Telephone Numbers").

Per-form pages opened in the fhb.hhs.texas.gov database, each establishing the CURRENT official title and effective date quoted in the field: 2910 (CCR Application for a License or Certification to Operate a Child Day Care Facility, 6/2026); 2911 (CCR Governing Body or Director Designation, 4/2025); 2912 (Pre-Employment Affidavit for Applicants for Employment at Certain Child Care Operations, 9/2023); 2919 (Request for a Registration Permit, 7/2026); 2935 (Admission Information, 6/2026); 2937 (Child Care Regulation Waiver or Variance Request, 7/2026, instructions updated 7/2026); 2940 (Request for an Administrative Review, 9/2025); 2941 (Child Care Operation Sign-in and Sign-out Log, 6/2018); 2948 (Plan of Operation for Licensed Center and Home Operations, 6/2020); 2550 (Operational Policy on Infant Safe Sleep, 9/2023); 2551 (Licensed and Registered Home: Caregivers, Assistants, Substitutes and Household Members Information Record, 7/2026); 2760 (Controlling Person – Child Care Regulation, 12/2023, instructions "Updated: 5/2018"); 2856 (Child Care Licensing Homebound Fingerprint Request, 1/2019);

2885 (Children's Products Certification, 6/2018); 2954 (Child Care Licensing Family Violence Calls Disclosure, 5/2018); 2962 (Verification of Liability Insurance, 2/2026, plus form-2962-attachment-a.pdf); 2970 (Notification of Safe Sleeping Deficiency, 3/2026); 2971 (Child Care Regulation – Request for Background Check, 6/2026, instructions updated 6/2026); 2974 (Request for Risk Evaluation Based on Past Criminal History or Central Registry Findings, 3/2026, instructions "Updated: 1/2019"); 2982 (Personal History Statement, 7/2026); 2985 (Affidavit for Applicants for Employment with a Licensed Operation or Registered Child-Care Home, 4/2018); 2986 (Listing Permit Request, 11/2021); 3019 (Infant Sleep Exception/Health Care Professional Recommendation, 4/2018); 1099 (Operational Discipline and Guidance Policy, 11/2025); 1100 (Daily Building and Grounds Checklist, 4/2018); 7239 (Incident or Illness Report, 10/2023); 7240 (Monthly Attendance Record, 4/2018); 7243 (Emergency Phone Numbers, 7/2026); 7250 (Staff Training Record, 2/2025); 7255 (Medication Authorization, 4/2018); 7263 (Emergency Practices, 5/2018);

7270 (Children's Records Evaluation of a Licensed Child Care Home or Registered Child Care Home, 7/2026); 7271 (Personnel Records Evaluation LCCH/RCCH, 3/2026); 7277 (Child Care Regulation Plan of Action, 3/2024, instructions updated 7/2025). Form PDFs downloaded and read: 2986.pdf and form-2986-guidelines-for-lfh.pdf (the Listing Permit Request dated November 2021 and its "Guidelines for Listed Family Homes" attachment dated October 2021) — established the Section 5 safe-sleep-training block, the Section 6 certification and signature text, the completion checklist quoted verbatim in element 03, the 15-day relocation/closure undertaking, and the two stale statements inside the attachment (the "Child Care Licensing Request for Background Check" title and the "every 5 years" background-check line). 7239.pdf — established the section-by-scenario directions and "notify parents as required by the minimum standards; and keep the form on file at the operation." 2551.pdf — established the July 2026 header text, the "Providers may use their own form" sentence and the asterisked household-member fields. 2935.pdf, 7255.pdf, 2910.pdf, 2919.pdf, 2971.pdf, 2948.pdf, 2962.pdf, 7270.pdf — these are dynamic Adobe LiveCycle (XFA) documents that render only in desktop Adobe Reader;

the visible strings of 2935 were read out of the embedded XFA template, establishing the June 2026 revision's emergency-contact, release-authorisation, transportation-consent, water-activity, "I acknowledge receipt of the facility's operational policies" and "Center Designee Signature" blocks. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/minimum-standards — the HHSC index of minimum standards in effect, opened as the index rather than from any remembered file name.

Established which chapter files are served today. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes," title page September 2024, every page footered "Revised: December 2025." Established, verbatim: §747.209, §747.211, §747.213 (liability insurance); §747.301, §747.303, §747.305, §747.307, §747.309 (notifications, including the Form 2970 and Form 7266 mandates and the two-day controlling-person notice); §747.401 (postings); §747.501, §747.503, §747.505 (operational policies and the enrolment agreement); §747.601, §747.603, §747.605, §747.607, §747.609, §747.611, §747.613, §747.615, §747.623, §747.629, §747.635 (children's records); §747.701 (Form 7239); §747.801 (records kept at the home, items 7, 11, 12 and 14); §747.901, §747.903 (personnel records, Forms 2985 and 2912); §747.1207, §747.1209 (assistant and substitute caregiver qualifications); §747.3201 (no annual sanitation inspection); §747.3601, §747.3603, §747.3605, §747.3607 (medication); §747.3933, §747.3935 (Form 2885); §747.4901 (no fire inspection) and §747.4015; §747.5001-§747.5007 (emergency preparedness). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-742-listed-family-homes.pdf — "Minimum Standards for Listed Family Homes," title page June 2022, footered "Revised: December 2025." Established §742.401 (notification requirements, including the 15-day relocation/closure notice), §742.403, §742.405, §742.407 (liability insurance and Form 2962 Attachment A), §742.803 (medication), §742.805, §742.806, §742.807, §742.809, §742.811. AND the negative finding that carries element 18: a case-insensitive count over the whole publication returns ZERO occurrences of "record" and ZERO of "immuniz."

Listed family homes have no record-keeping, admission-information, health-statement, immunisation, attendance or personnel-file requirement in their minimum standards. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/min-standards/745-sub-f-background-checks.pdf — "Background Check Rules," Child Care Regulation, title page August 2026, footered "Revised: 8/2026." Established §745.605 (for whom), §745.609 (the three-plus check types INCLUDING the new SEMARC check), §745.611, §745.613, §745.615 (relative-only listed family homes), §745.617 with its Figure: 26 TAC §745.617(a) (online for all operation types except listed family homes), §745.619 (the ten data points), §745.621 (initial and renewal timing, five years fingerprint / two years name-based), §745.681-§745.699 (risk evaluation, including §745.697(a) expiry triggers). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks — established the eight authorised check types and the SEMARC description (TEA, HHSC Long Term Care Regulation, TJJD). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-background-checks/background-check-fees — established "$2 to CCR for every background check submitted," "$37.00" for a paid employee and "$35.00" reduced fee, with the DPS/FBI/vendor breakdown. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/controlling-person — HHSC's controlling-person page;

corroborates the online-submission alternative to Form 2760. https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm — Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42, current text served today (statutes.capitol.texas.gov is a JavaScript shell; tcss.legis.texas.gov is the Legislative Council backing store that app reads).

Established §42.046(a), (a-1), (b)-(e) and (f) (safe sleep training proof with a listing application); §42.050 (licence renewal, "must include a review of all required forms and records"); §42.052(c), (d), (e), (f-1), (f-2); §42.054(a)-(h), including (e) annual fee for listed or registered family homes and (f) automatic suspension and revocation after six months for non-payment; §42.056(a) and (a-2); §42.0561 (family violence reports, on "a form prescribed by the department"); §42.0562; §42.0563 (pre-employment affidavit); §42.059 (the full statutory affidavit text and its notarial block). https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/index.shtml — Texas Register issue index, used as the index. The most recent issue served today is August 14, 2026. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/July102026/Proposed%20Rules/26.HEALTH%20AND%20HUMAN%20SERVICES.html — established the pending HB 163 package: amendment to §742.401 and repeal of §742.806 (TRD-202602557, filed June 22 2026, comment reference 26R013) and amendments to §747.305, §747.501 and §747.701 (TRD-202602567 and TRD-202602568, filed June 22 2026, comment reference 26R014), all with "Earliest possible date of adoption: August 9, 2026," and the section-by-section summaries quoted in element 13. https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/August72026/index.html and https://www.sos.state.tx.us/texreg/archive/August142026/index.html — checked the Adopted Rules, Title 26, of both issues.

August 7 adopted only the Chapter 749 child-placing-agency rewrite; August 14 adopted only 26 TAC §§910.301-910.307. NEITHER the Chapter 742 nor the Chapter 747 proposals had been adopted as of the latest issue served. Recorded so the sweep is auditable. Dead-link checks performed today, each opened and confirmed to return HHSC's "Page not found" / "Page Not Found" page: https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/protective-services-providers/child-care-regulation/child-day-care-provider/child-care-regulation-forms (the URL printed in the technical-assistance box under §747.3935 in the December 2025 Chapter 747 publication); https://www.hhs.texas.gov/handbooks/child-care-regulation-handbook/forms (the URL printed under §747.901 in the same publication); https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-forms; https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-fees. WHERE I CONTRADICTED THE BRIEF. The brief asked for "the sanitation and fire inspection requests" among the forms a Texas home applicant must file. There are none, and the rule text says so in terms. 26 TAC §747.3201: "No.

We do not require you to have an annual sanitation inspection, although your local ordinances may require this." 26 TAC §747.4901: "We do not regulate fire inspections and do not require that you have a fire inspection as part of these minimum standards; however your local ordinances may require one." The only fire-authority document Chapter 747 makes a home hold is the state or local fire marshal's WRITTEN APPROVAL to provide care above or below ground level, under §747.4015 and §747.801(11), and it has no HHSC form number. Element 17 states this as a correction rather than publishing a form number that does not exist. The brief also assumed a distinct "child admission/enrolment record, health statement, immunization record, medication authorisation, incident/injury report, emergency medical consent, transportation authorisation, [and] operational policies acknowledgement" each with its own number. In Texas they collapse: Form 2935 (June 2026) carries the admission record, the emergency medical authorisation, the transportation authorisation AND the operational-policies acknowledgement on one document; the health statement, immunisation record and TB documentation have NO HHSC form number at all; and none of it applies to a listed family home.

UNVERIFIED: the codified, currently-effective text of 26 TAC chs. 742, 745 and 747 could not be read from the Secretary of State's Texas Administrative Code today (the SoS TAC viewer now redirects to an Appian portal that answers {"message":"Client not supported"} to any non-SAIL client). Every rule quotation above is from the HHSC publication that reprints the adopted text — Chapter 747 footered "Revised: December 2025," Chapter 742 footered "Revised: December 2025," Background Check Rules footered "Revised: 8/2026" — not from the codified TAC. Where the two could differ is the background-check subchapter: the CCR publication dated August 2026 already prints §745.609 with the SEMARC check and prints §745.675, and those are the amendments HHSC filed on July 2, 2026 under TRD-202602707 with an effective date of AUGUST 31, 2026. Between today, 2026-08-26, and August 31, 2026, the codified §745.609 is the prior version. Element 05 dates the SEMARC assertion explicitly for that reason. UNVERIFIED: whether Form 2954, "Child Care Licensing Family Violence Calls Disclosure," is required of a child DAY care home applicant or only of child-placing-agency foster homes.

HRC §42.0561, its apparent statutory hook, is written for a child-placing agency issuing a verification certificate for an agency foster home; I found no rule in ch. 742, ch. 745 subch. F or ch. 747 requiring it of a day-care home. Element 15 says so and tells the reader to confirm with the local CCR office rather than asserting the form is part of a home packet. Related: HRC §42.0448 and §42.0449 on family-violence-call notification were amended by H.B. 1610 of 2025 with an effective date of April 1, 2027 (per TX/agency.txt); I did not open those sections today. UNVERIFIED: whether Form 2982, "Personal History Statement" (effective 7/2026), applies to home-based day care. It appears on the Child Day Care Regulation Forms index but not in any of the three home application packets and is not named in ch. 742 or ch. 747. Not published in the field. UNVERIFIED: the dollar amounts of the application fee, the initial permit fee and the annual fee for each home permit tier. HRC §42.054(h) leaves them to executive-commissioner rule; the HHSC page at /providers/child-care-regulation/child-care-regulation-fees returns "Page not found" today and I did not locate the current fee schedule rule in 26 TAC ch. 745 (SoS TAC viewer unavailable, see above).

Element 02 therefore cites the fee OBLIGATION and its consequence — HRC §42.054(e) and (f), automatic suspension until paid and revocation if unpaid for six months — without publishing an amount, and elements 01 and 02 quote HHSC's own instruction not to pay until CCR invoices you. Background-check fees ($2 / $37 / $35) ARE verified, from the HHSC background-check fees page. UNVERIFIED: the current title of Form 2551 as it appears in HHSC's forms database uses "Home" singular while the PDF's own face reads "Licensed and Registered Homes" plural. Element 09 records both rather than picking one. [required_postings] https://www.sos.state.tx.us/tac/index.shtml — the Secretary of State's TAC landing page, opened 2026-08-26. Its "View the current Texas Administrative Code" link is the start point for this research. Confirms the SoS still publishes the TAC under Government Code §§2002.051-2002.056. https://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.ViewTAC?tac_view=4&ti=26&pt=1&ch=747 — opened 2026-08-26 and returns "This Site Has Moved". The entire legacy texreg viewer (ViewTAC and TacPage endpoints alike) is dead and redirects to the Appian portal.

This is the single most important finding for anyone re-verifying Texas rules: every texreg.sos.state.tx.us citation in circulation is now a dead link, and no pinned Texas rule URL can be re-downloaded to self-confirm. https://texas-sos.appianportalsgov.com/rules-and-meetings?interface=LANDING_PAGE — the replacement Rules & Meetings portal. Its interfaces VIEW_TAC, SEARCH_TAC, SEARCH_TEXAS_REGISTER and TAC_DOC_REQUEST were driven directly for this research. VIEW_TAC issues section links carrying queryAsDate=08/26/2026, i.e. the index served the rules in effect TODAY, not a dated snapshot. VIEW_TAC, Title 26 index — 17 TAC titles listed; Title 26 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, Part 1 HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION. Chapter 747 MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD-CARE HOMES is in effect there today, alongside Chapter 742 (Listed Family Homes), 744 (School-Age), 745 (Licensing), 746 (Centers). Disproves any claim that the child-care standards still live in 40 TAC. VIEW_TAC, 26 TAC ch. 747 index — 22 subchapters, A,B,C,D,E,F,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X. There is no Subchapter G and no Subchapter O. Subchapter B Division 3 is headed REQUIRED POSTINGS and contains exactly two rules, §747.401 and §747.403. 26 TAC §747.401 (VIEW_TAC_SUMMARY recordId 188674, queryAsDate 08/26/2026) — full verbatim text of the six-item posting list and the food-allergy either/or at (b).

Source note: adopted eff. 1 Sep 2003, 28 TexReg 1462; amended 1 Mar 2006, 31 TexReg 861; 1 Sep 2016, 41 TexReg 6250; 15 Apr 2017, 42 TexReg 1906; transferred eff. 9 Mar 2018, 43 TexReg 909. Chapter Review Date shown as 05/17/2024. 26 TAC §747.403 (recordId 220270) — the five posted telephone entries and the name/address/telephone of the local CCR office and of your own home. Source note ends "amended to be effective August 19, 2024, 49 TexReg 6233" — the most recent amendment to any Texas home posting rule. 26 TAC §747.101, §747.111, §747.113, §747.115, §747.117, §747.123 — purpose; scope ("registered or licensed by us to care for 12 or fewer children in the caregiver's own home for less than 24 hours per day"); definitions of registered and licensed child-care home; permit holder's compliance duty; definition of "activity plan" and importation of §745.21 definitions. 26 TAC §747.207 — primary caregiver responsibilities, including compliance with HRC ch. 42 and with all applicable minimum standards, and parents' unannounced visiting right. 26 TAC §747.303, §747.307, §747.309 — notification duties to Licensing and to parents; Form 2970 (safe sleeping deficiency) and Form 7266 (abuse/neglect/exploitation deficiency), five-day deadline, and the reach to every child attending at the time of notification. 26 TAC §747.501, §747.503, §747.505 — the 14 required written operational policies, including (9) parent rights and (10) instructions on accessing the minimum standards online, the Texas Abuse and Neglect Hotline and the HHSC website; delivery via a signed enrollment agreement on or before admission.

This is where Texas puts the parent-facing information that other states put on a wall. 26 TAC §747.521 (recordId 220272, adopted eff. 19 Aug 2024, 49 TexReg 6233) — the 11 parent rights, including (5)(A) receiving HHSC's inspection reports and (5)(B) information on how to access the compliance history online. 26 TAC §747.211, §747.213 — liability insurance exceptions and the written parental notice where insurance is not carried; Form 2962. 26 TAC §747.801 (recordId 212757) and §747.803 (recordId 188658) — the 15 categories of records kept and made available on request, the "optional" items (8)-(10), the three-month retention, and the sentence "You must keep at the child-care home each record that your home is required to post or keep." 26 TAC §747.3113 (recordId 188822) — "Must I post and maintain daily menus?" answered "No, however you must: (1) Maintain menus ... (4) Make menus available to Licensing and parents for review upon request." Basis for the finding that Texas homes have no menu posting. 26 TAC §747.3935 (recordId 188874) — the CPSC posting at (c) and the annual certification kept on file at (b).

NOTE: the codified text says "DFPS" at (b) and (c); HHSC's own published Chapter 747 compilation prints "HHSC" in the same two places. The Code, not the manual, is the law. 26 TAC §747.5007 (recordId 188934) and §747.5009 (recordId 188935) — the evacuation and relocation diagram must be ON FILE and must show four things; "No. You are not required to post an emergency evacuation and relocation diagram, however, if you leave a substitute in charge ... a copy of the diagram must be readily accessible to the substitute caregiver." 26 TAC §747.2102, §747.2103, §747.2104 — the written activity plan and its contents. No rule anywhere in Chapter 747 requires it to be displayed. 26 TAC §747.4307 — telephone at the home; (c) address knowledge for 911 from a cell phone; (d) the standing duty to update the posted number whenever it changes. SEARCH_TAC full-text sweep of 26 TAC Chapter 747, run 2026-08-26. Query "+post" returns exactly eight sections: §§747.401, 747.403, 747.801, 747.803, 747.2607, 747.3935, 747.4307, 747.5009. Query "post*" adds only §747.1115 and §747.2309 (post-secondary experience; crib posts) and §747.2607 (a "post office" dramatic-play example).

Queries "display", "conspicuous" and "+gang" each return ZERO sections in Chapter 747. This sweep is the basis for every exhaustiveness claim in these elements. SEARCH_TAC sweep of 26 TAC Chapter 745 — query "+post" returns §§745.479, 745.489, 745.8417, 745.8483, 745.8487, 745.8641, 745.8656; queries "display" and "sign" return nothing relevant to day-care postings. §745.479 is the only additional posting duty for a home found outside Chapter 747. SEARCH_TAC sweep of 26 TAC Chapter 742 (Listed Family Homes) — query "+post" returns ZERO sections. A listed family home posts nothing. 26 TAC §745.479 — "Yes. Upon receiving the written notice of your permit's renewal, you must post the notice at your operation." Adopted eff. 1 Dec 2017, 41 TexReg 6082; transferred eff. 15 Jul 2019, 44 TexReg 2963. 26 TAC §745.341, §745.8409, §745.8411, §745.8417, §745.8445, §745.8447 — permit types; unannounced-inspection frequency (annual for licensed/certified and for registered homes with TWC subsidy children, biennial for other registered homes); the operation's duty to admit and not delay; what CCR posts to Search Texas Child Care after an anonymous report; contents of the outcome notification; what to do when notified of a deficiency. 26 TAC §746.401, §746.403, §746.405, §746.2209, §746.4135, §746.501 — the child-care CENTER counterparts, read in full for contrast. §746.401 lists ELEVEN posted items including the evacuation diagram (4), the activity plan (5), the daily menu (6) and the Licensing Parent Notification Poster (7); §746.2209 requires the activity plan to be posted; §746.501(b) discharges the gang-free zone duty by operational policy, written distribution OR verbal orientation — never by posting.

Texas Human Resources Code ch. 42, full chapter text as served by the Texas Legislature's statutes system on 2026-08-26 via https://tcss.legis.texas.gov/resources/HR/htm/HR.42.htm (the statutes.capitol.texas.gov front end is now an Angular application; this is the document endpoint its own bundle calls). Sections read in full: §42.002 definitions; §42.048(d) license display; §42.052(b),(c),(d),(e),(f-1),(f-2),(f-3),(i) certification/registration/listing display and renewal evaluation; §42.0423 children's product safety; §42.055 SIGN POSTING including the Class C misdemeanor at (d); §42.0551 POSTING OF EMPLOYEE LIST; §42.064 gang-free zones; §42.068 No Trespassing notices for residential treatment centers. SEARCH_TEXAS_REGISTER, Title 26 Chapter 747, run 2026-08-26 — twenty active entries. Instalments of a plain-language rewrite appear at issues 07/10/2026, 07/31/2026 and 08/28/2026. Individual entries read in full: recordId 465699 (proposed §747.209 Liability Insurance Requirements, TRD-202603520, filed with the SoS 14 Aug 2026, earliest adoption 27 Sep 2026, lowering the coverage floor from $300,000 to "at least $100,000 for each occurrence of negligence"); recordId 465703 (proposed §747.603 Children's Records, TRD-202603522, same filing); recordId 464216 (proposed NEW §747.311 Disclosed Revocations and Parental Notice Requirements, TRD-202602926, filed 15 Jul 2026, earliest adoption 30 Aug 2026). The proposals also change the chapter heading to "MINIMUM STANDARDS FOR CHILD CARE [CHILD-CARE] HOMES".

Neither §747.401 nor §747.403 appears in any 2026 instalment. SEARCH_TEXAS_REGISTER, Title 26 Chapter 745 — parallel plain-language rewrite instalments at 04/24/2026, 07/10/2026, 07/17/2026 and 08/28/2026. §745.479 does not appear among them. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/providers/child-care-regulation/child-day-care-regulation-forms — HHSC's Child Day Care Regulation Forms index as served 2026-08-26. Establishes that "Keeping Children Safe" and the "Parent Notification Poster" are published free in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, and names Form 2885 (Children's Products Certification) and Form 2962 (Verification of Liability Insurance). https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/24-hr-res/keeping-children-safe-color.pdf — the Keeping Children Safe poster itself, December 2023, stock number 21D0606. Its panels map onto HRC §42.055(a)(1)-(3) and (a-1): abuse reporting with 800-252-5400, shaken baby, SIDS, childhood diabetes under "Keep Children Healthy", and "Unsafe Children's Products ... cpsc.gov". https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/doing-business-with-hhs/provider-portal/protective-services/ccl/24-hr-res/parent-notification-poster.pdf — the ATTENTION PARENTS poster, revised 12/2023, Non-Form J-800-2957, whose own footer reads "Parent Notification Poster for Center-Based Care".

Decisive evidence that this poster is a Chapter 746 duty and not a Chapter 747 one. It also gives the compliance-history address as www.txchildcaresearch.org. https://www.hhs.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/chapter-747-homes.pdf — HHSC's compiled "Minimum Standards for Licensed and Registered Child-Care Homes", cover dated September 2024, footer "Revised: December 2025". Used ONLY as a finding aid to locate candidate sections and to read the agency's Technical Assistance notes and deficiency weights; every rule quoted in these elements was then re-read verbatim from the Secretary of State's rules-in-effect database. The compilation carries at least one silent divergence from the Code (DFPS/HHSC at §747.3935) and prints §747.3113's list as (1)-(3) after an unnumbered lead item where the Code numbers it (1)-(4). CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief asks for elements on the emergency evacuation diagram, the daily schedule, and a gang-free zone notice. NONE of the three is a Texas child-care home posting. §747.5009 says "No" to the diagram in terms; the activity plan (Texas's name for the daily schedule) has no posting rule in Chapter 747 while centres have one at §746.2209; and §42.064 reaches only day-care centres and requires distribution, not display, with §746.501(b) offering three non-posting methods.

All three are recorded as negatives, in elements 12, 13 and 14. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief asks for "immunization and food-program notices". Neither is a Texas home posting. Immunization appears at §747.613 as a records duty and at §747.801(8) as an OPTIONAL file item; the Texas Department of Agriculture CACFP report appears at §747.801(9), also optional. Menus are maintained and produced on request under §747.3113, never posted. CORRECTION TO THE BRIEF: the brief asks for "the child abuse hotline" as a posting and it is one, twice over — as the number 1-800-252-5400 under §747.403(a)(3) and as the Keeping Children Safe sign under §747.401(a)(3) and HRC §42.055. But the brief's framing of "the most recent inspection/compliance history and the notice telling parents where to find it online" is only half right: the most recent inspection letter IS posted under §747.401(a)(2), while the compliance-history-online information is a §747.521(5)(B) delivery right, not a posting. ADDITION BEYOND THE BRIEF: the employee-list posting (§747.401(a)(5), HRC §42.0551) with its 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper requirement, the CPSC unsafe-products notice (§747.3935(c)) sitting outside the Required Postings division, and the permit-renewal notice posting (§745.479) sitting outside Chapter 747 entirely.

Elements 06, 08 and 09. UNVERIFIED: whether HHSC has reissued the Keeping Children Safe poster since the December 2023 / 21D0606 edition served today, and whether an older edition on a wall is treated as a deficiency under §747.401(a)(3). No CCR policy statement on poster editions was located. UNVERIFIED: the exhaustiveness of the SEARCH_TEXAS_REGISTER results. Both the Chapter 745 and Chapter 747 queries returned "total=20", which is the portal's page size; there may be further entries beyond the first page that were not paged through. The claim that no 2026 instalment touches §747.401 or §747.403 rests additionally on a rule-number-range query (747.300-747.500) which returned no proposal against those two sections. UNVERIFIED: whether HHSC publishes an inspection instrument enumerating the posting items a CCR inspector scores. The deficiency weights quoted in element 01 (Medium / Medium-Low) come from HHSC's compiled Chapter 747 PDF, not from the Texas Administrative Code, and no separate inspection checklist was located. UNVERIFIED: whether a Texas child-care home participating in the USDA Child and Adult Care Food Program is separately required by federal rule to display the USDA "And Justice for All" nondiscrimination poster.

No federal text was opened for this task, and no Texas rule imposes it; it is deliberately absent from the elements rather than asserted. UNVERIFIED: the exact physical form of "the letter or form from the most recent Licensing inspection or investigation" (§747.401(a)(2)). §745.8445(a) prescribes its contents but no HHSC form number for it appears on the Child Day Care Regulation Forms index, and no specimen 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.