Licensed Childcare

The Child Care Licensing Division

The Child Care Licensing Divsion's (CCLD) primary function is to ensure health and safety of children within child care settings. CCLD serves families as a form of consumer protection when selecting child care for their children. A licensed child care program in Oregon ensures a set of standards are met that are foundational to the wellbeing of children in care. CCLD approaches compliance with health and safety standards through education, technical assistance, and providing resources and maintains a strong customer service lens to ensure license holders have all the information they need to be successful.

The Child Care Licensing Division works with many types of child care programs, including three types of licenses. While all three licenses have health and safety requirements, they are very different licenses. In most cases, both Registered Family and Certified Family Child Care licenses are in residential homes, and Certified Center licenses are in commercial buildings. There are two types of Certified Centers. A child care center (CC) is defined by CCLD as a child care facility that is certified to provide care and education of children, generally in a commercial or nonresidential setting, that is not a certified family child care home. On the other hand, a school-age center (SC) means a child care center that provides care only for school-age children eligible to be enrolled in kindergarten or above in the next school year, and which does not include night care, in a nonresidential setting.

Each type of license operates under a different set of Oregon Administrative Rules (OARs).