Jupiter, FL Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Jupiter does not write its own child care home rules in this area. Fla. Stat. § 402.313 sets the framework, and the Town is not named anywhere in it. The section sorts every family child care home into one of two tracks. A home must be licensed if it is already licensed under an existing county licensing ordinance, or if the board of county commissioners passes a resolution that family child care homes be licensed. Jupiter sits in Palm Beach County, so the county board is the body that decides the track. A home outside a county licensing regime registers annually with the department instead, and a home on the registration track can still volunteer to be licensed.

Annual registration requires eight items: the name and address of the home, the name of the operator, the number of children served, proof of a written plan naming at least one other competent adult who can substitute for the operator in an emergency (with that person's name, address, and telephone number), proof of screening and background checks, proof of passing the 30-hour training course, proof that immunization records are kept current, and proof of completed continuing education units or clock hours.

The 30-hour course ends in a competency examination and covers state and local child care rules, health, safety and nutrition, identifying and reporting child abuse and neglect, child development, observation of developmental behaviors, and early literacy and language development for children from birth to 5 years. Subsection (4) requires operators to pass it before caring for children. After that, subsection (5) requires 1 continuing education unit, or 10 clock hours, every year. Subsection (6) adds a one-time 0.5 continuing education unit in early literacy, which counts toward that year's 0.5 unit or 5 clock hours of annual training.

Screening reaches past the operator. Under subsection (3), every member of the operator's family over 12, and every person over 12 living in the home, is covered. Household members between 12 and 18 skip fingerprinting but are screened for delinquency records. Each year the operator completes a health and safety self-evaluation checklist, signs it, and hands it to parents as certification. Subsection (12) bars commercial utility rates for a licensed home, which must be billed at residential rates.