Families’ Rights in Choosing Child Care

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In California, parents have the right to make the best child care choices for their family. Parents have many options:

licensed family child care homes;
licensed child care centers, including publicly-funded programs such as Head Start and California State Preschool; or
caregivers who are license exempt.

Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (CCR&Rs) give parents the information they need to make the best choices about their children’s care. Find the CCR&R in your community.

Oliver’s Law

Oliver’s Law gives California parents the right to get the licensing history of any licensed child care program. Oliver was a young boy who died from head injuries while in a licensed family child care home. His mother did not know that she could have looked at the provider’s licensing history. The provider had received complaints in the past. If she had known, she would not have placed her child with this provider.

Oliver’s Law requires all CCR&Rs to give this information to parents with every child care referral:

State law requires licensed child day care facilities to make accessible to the public a copy of any licensing report pertaining to the facility that documents a facility visit or a substantiated complaint investigation. In addition, a more complete file regarding a child care licensee may be available at an office of the State Department of Social Services Community Care Licensing Division. You have the right to access any public information in these files.

To access a child care program’s licensing information, you can:

ask the family child care home provider or the center director for their licensing records. By law, they must show you this information for the past three years.
call Community Care Licensing (CCL) at 1-844-LET-US-NO.
make an appointment to look at the licensing information at your local regional office.
search the on-line CCL Facility Search.