How to Start an In-Home Daycare in Missouri: A Step-by-Step Guide

Starting an in-home daycare in Missouri is one of the most accessible ways to enter the childcare field. You already have the space. You already love working with kids. The barrier to entry is much lower than opening a center — but “lower” is not the same as “low.” Missouri runs a real licensing process through the Office of Childhood at DESE, with real paperwork and real ongoing compliance work that many new providers underestimate.

This guide walks through the steps to start a licensed family child care home in Missouri, from your first orientation to opening day — and what comes after.

Use the interactive checklist below to track your progress as you work through each step. Your progress is saved in your browser, so you can come back to it later.

What is a family child care home in Missouri?

Missouri defines a family child care home as “a licensed facility where care is provided for no more than 10 children for any part of the 24-hour day” in a provider’s home or home-like setting. The defining traits:

• Care is provided in the provider’s home or a home-like setting
• Capacity is capped at 10 children at any time during a 24-hour day
• A single individual provider can only operate one home at a time — unless the business is owned by a legal entity such as an LLC
• Care can be provided for any portion of the day, including overnight

Family child care homes are regulated under 5 CSR 25-400, Missouri’s licensing rules for family homes.

Step 1: Decide if licensing is right for you

Before you fill out a single form, get clear on what you’re signing up for. Operating a licensed family child care home in Missouri means:

• Your home becomes a regulated facility, subject to inspection by Child Care Compliance staff
• You must meet Missouri’s specific health, safety, sanitation, and supervision rules
• You’ll keep records on every enrolled child — health histories, immunizations, emergency contacts, attendance
• You’ll complete annual training hours and renew your license on Missouri’s schedule
• Your household members will need background checks

Missouri requires a free Child Care Licensing Orientation as the first step for every prospective provider. It’s offered two ways:

• In-person at a Child Care Compliance (CCC) office — useful for networking and direct interaction with licensing staff. Contact your nearest CCC office to schedule.
• Online as a self-paced session of about an hour.

The orientation is your first decision point — it’s designed to help you decide whether becoming a licensed Missouri provider actually fits your goals before you invest more time.

Step 2: Review the Missouri licensing checklist

After orientation, DESE points you to the interactive “Steps to Becoming Licensed for Family Child Care Homes” document. It’s not a static PDF — it includes hyperlinks to every required form, sample templates, and checkboxes you work through as you complete each requirement.

Read the entire checklist before you start. Two reasons:

1. Some steps have long lead times. FBI fingerprint background checks can take 4–6 weeks. Inspections may need to be scheduled weeks out.
2. Some steps are sequential. You can’t schedule a final inspection before you’ve finalized your home setup, and you can’t finalize your home setup without knowing what 5 CSR 25-400 requires.

Step 3: Prepare your home

Your home is now a regulated facility. The Missouri rules in 5 CSR 25-400 cover:

• Square footage per child in indoor play areas
• Outdoor play space — fenced, with appropriate surfacing under equipment
• Sleeping arrangements for infants and toddlers (separate cribs, safe sleep practices)
• Sanitation — diapering areas, food prep, handwashing stations, cleaning protocols
• Safety — outlet covers, gates, secured medications, working smoke and CO detectors, fire extinguishers, emergency exits
• Pets — vaccination records and separation rules during care hours
• Pools, ponds, and water features — typically require fencing or removal

DESE publishes sample home diagrams and sanitation guidelines for family homes as part of its provider resources. Use them. They show you exactly what a Missouri inspector expects to see.

Step 4: Complete background checks

In Missouri, you and every adult household member will need to clear a background check before a license can be issued. This typically includes:

• Missouri State Highway Patrol criminal records check
• Missouri child abuse and neglect registry check
• Missouri sex offender registry check
• FBI fingerprint-based check

Start this process on day one. It’s the single most common scheduling killer for new providers. Missouri will not issue a license until every required person is cleared.

Step 5: Build your written policies

Licensed Missouri providers operate under a written set of policies that families sign onto at enrollment. DESE provides sample policies and organizational structure documents you can adapt rather than writing from scratch. At minimum, you’ll need:

• Enrollment policy — required forms, fees, deposits
• Tuition and payment policy — rates, late fees, vacation, sick days
• Hours of operation and holiday schedule
• Discipline policy — what’s allowed and what isn’t (corporal punishment is prohibited in licensed care)
• Illness and medication policy — when children must stay home, how medications are administered
• Emergency and evacuation procedures — fire, severe weather, lockdown
• Discharge policy — under what conditions a child may be unenrolled

These aren’t paperwork for paperwork’s sake. They protect you in disputes, and they’re the document your Child Care Compliance specialist will ask to see.

Step 6: Schedule inspections

To be licensed in Missouri, you may need approval from:

• DESE’s Section for Child Care Regulation (your assigned Child Care Compliance specialist)
• The local fire marshal
• The local building or zoning department
• The local health department (especially if serving meals)

Some regions allow these in parallel; others insist on a sequence. Ask your CCC specialist up front. Sequential inspections can add weeks if anything fails the first pass.

Step 7: Submit your application and open

With your home prepared, paperwork complete, background checks cleared, and inspections passed, you submit your application to DESE. Once approved, your license is issued and you can begin enrolling children.

The license is not the finish line. It’s the start of an annual cycle: training hours, ongoing record-keeping, license renewal, and continual updates as Missouri’s rules change.

Who to call in Missouri

DESE’s Office of Childhood is the central point of contact for prospective and current family child care home providers:

• 205 Jefferson St., Jefferson City, MO 65101
• 573-751-4212
• District office locations: dese.mo.gov/childhood/child-care

Your district office is where you’ll schedule orientation, get assigned a Child Care Compliance specialist, and submit most of your paperwork.

What new Missouri in-home providers underestimate

A few patterns we see again and again from Missouri operators who’ve just opened:

Record-keeping volume. Each enrolled child generates a packet of documents — health histories, immunization records, emergency contacts, signed policies, daily attendance, incident reports. Multiply that by 8 or 10 children and the paperwork is more than most providers expect.

Annual training hours. Missouri requires a set number of training hours every year. They aren’t waivable, and they aren’t rolled over. Tracking what you’ve completed — and when your CPR or first aid certifications expire — becomes its own job.

Billing and collections. Many in-home providers run their billing on Venmo and a paper notebook. It works until a parent disputes a charge, until tax season, or until you apply for a small business loan and need actual financials.

Waitlist management. A successful in-home program in Missouri will have more interest than spots. If you’re tracking interested families on sticky notes, you’ll lose them — or worse, lose track of who you promised what.

How Kinderly helps you run your Missouri in-home daycare

Once you’re licensed, the operational work is what determines whether you have a calm program or a chaotic one. Kinderly is built for that phase:

• Kinderly Enroll — collect enrollment packets, health histories, immunization records, and signed policies digitally. Every family’s records live in one place and are retrievable instantly during a Child Care Compliance visit.
• Kinderly Manage — track daily attendance, manage billing and tuition, store your training hours and certifications, and run the reports DESE may request.
• Kinderly Grow — manage your waitlist and inquiries from interested Missouri families, build a simple website, and offer virtual tours so prospective parents can see your space without filling your living room with strangers.

For a Missouri in-home program, the difference between binders-and-spreadsheets and a single integrated system is the difference between spending evenings on paperwork and spending them with your own family. See how Kinderly’s products work together for a full picture, or get in touch and we’ll walk you through what setup looks like for a family child care home your size.

Source: Missouri DESE Office of Childhood, Start a Family Child Care Home. For a side-by-side look at how Missouri’s rules compare to other states, see our state-by-state daycare licensing guide.