How to Find Daycare Violations & Inspection Reports
Daycare inspection and violation records are public in every state, and free to search. They live in your state's child-care licensing database — not on review sites, and not on the school's own page. Here's where to look, and how to tell a serious finding from routine paperwork.
Find your state's record
For context: what we find when we check
We pull these records ourselves for the schools we list. Of 40 schools verified against California's official database, 31 have nothing on the record at all — no serious deficiency, no minor one, no substantiated complaint. 2 carry a serious (Type A) deficiency.
That is the number most parents are missing: a clean record is the normal case. It means you should not panic at the idea of checking — and that when something is there, it is genuinely worth a question.
How to read a child-care licensing record
Finding the record is the easy part. Most parents stall on what it means. Four things matter:
- Licence status. "Licensed" means the facility is currently authorised to operate. Anything else — probation, suspended, closed, pending — is worth asking about directly.
- Serious vs minor deficiencies. States grade citations. California calls them Type A (a direct risk to a child's health or safety) and Type B (everything else — paperwork, posting, minor facility issues). Florida uses Class I/II/III; other states use their own scale. A Type A is the one to ask about. A single Type B usually isn't a red flag — well-run schools collect them.
- Substantiated vs unsubstantiated complaints. Anyone can file a complaint. Substantiated means the state investigated and found it true. Unsubstantiated complaints are common and mean very little on their own; a substantiated one is a real finding.
- Recency and pattern. One citation five years ago is different from three in the last year. Look at the trend, not the total.
What the state will not tell you: almost no state publishes the narrative of the allegation online — only counts and outcomes. To read what actually happened, request the full report from the licensing agency using the control or case number shown on the record. That's a normal public-records request, and you're entitled to make it.
What review sites won't tell you
Yelp, Google and parent forums capture how a school feels to families who chose it. They do not capture whether the state has cited it for a health-and-safety violation, whether a complaint was substantiated, or whether its licence is in good standing. Those are separate records, held by a different body, and a five-star average is fully compatible with an open citation. Check both.
What to ask the school
A licensing record is a conversation starter, not a verdict. If you see something, ask — a good director will answer plainly:
- "I saw a citation from [date] on your licensing record. What happened, and what changed afterwards?"
- "What's your current licensed capacity, and how many children are enrolled right now?"
- "What are your actual staff-to-child ratios in my child's room today?" — state law sets a minimum; many schools run better than it, and almost none publish the number.
- "When was your last licensing visit, and may I see the report?"
A defensive answer to any of these tells you more than the citation did.
Related: daycare licence lookup by state · questions to ask on a daycare tour · how to choose a daycare.