Florida daycare license lookup.

What the official search shows

The search lives at caressearch.myflfamilies.com and opens with a single search box above the welcome text: “Welcome to Florida’s Child Care Provider Search! Here you can search and view child care provider profiles to help you make the important decision in finding care for your child.” The same text lists what a profile holds: provider name, address, license number, provider type, capacity, days and hours of operation and services offered, and it says the three-year inspection history of each provider can be viewed. The site’s menu links to DCF’s child care licensing, information for families, laws and requirements, announcements and contacts pages, and to the Department of Education for School Readiness and VPK, which are separate programs from licensing.

Reading the inspection history and the red dot

The search page draws a line at September 1, 2026. From that date, “inspection reports with a red dot signify a Class I, II, or III licensing standard violation as identified in Rule 65C-22.010, Fla. Admin. Code.” For reports before that date, “the red dot signified a non-compliance with a licensing standard as identified in Rule 65C-22.010.” So a red dot on an older report and a red dot on a newer one are not labelled by the same rule, and the class of a newer violation is the detail to open. The search page does not define the three classes; Rule 65C-22.010 does, and DCF’s laws and requirements page is where the rule is linked. A clean three-year history is a fact about inspections, not a guarantee, and the absence of a provider from the search is not proof that it is unlicensed.

Four counties license on their own

DCF’s child care licensure page says providers “are licensed by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF)” and that “four counties have elected to regulate licensing of child-care facilities and homes. Those counties are Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas, and Sarasota.” The page also says “the Department ensures that licensing requirements are met through ongoing inspections,” without stating a frequency, and it lists the types DCF regulates, including family day care homes (licensure or registration), large family child care homes and specialized facilities for mildly ill children. The laws page organizes the rules by classification: child care facility, licensed family day care home, large family child care home and school-age facility. The checker above tells you which agency applies so you know whether to expect a county record as well as the statewide profile.

Worked example

A parent in Tampa is comparing two centers. She opens Florida’s Child Care Provider Search, types the first center’s name into the search box and opens its profile: the license number, provider type and capacity match what the director told her, the hours fit her schedule, and the three-year inspection history shows one report after September 1, 2026 with a red dot, so she opens that report to see the class of violation and what it concerned. The second center does not appear under the name on its sign. Hillsborough is a DCF county, so there is no local register to check instead; she asks the center for its license number, searches that, and if it still does not appear she contacts DCF’s child care licensing office before enrolling.

Method

The checker compares the county you choose with the four counties DCF names as local licensing agencies and names the agency; it does not search any database and stores nothing. The search page’s welcome text and red-dot notice were read in a rendered copy of the page on November 11, 2026; the licensure and laws pages were read the same day. Provider records, inspection reports and licence status belong to DCF and the local agencies, and only the official search shows them.

What this does not cover

• The search’s result screens and filters beyond the single search box seen on its landing page.
• The definitions of Class I, II and III violations, which are in Rule 65C-22.010 rather than on the search page.
• Complaint procedures: no complaint line appeared on the pages read, so none is quoted here.
• Religious-exempt and license-exempt programs, which the pages read did not describe.

Figures read from the sources below on November 11, 2026. Last updated November 11, 2026.

Sources

• Florida DCF: Florida’s Child Care Provider Search (CARES public search) (retrieved November 11, 2026)
• Florida DCF: Child Care Licensure (who licenses; the four local licensing counties) (retrieved November 11, 2026)
• Florida DCF: Child Care Laws and Requirements (statutes and F.A.C. chapters) (retrieved November 11, 2026)