Winter Park, FL Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Winter Park does not write its own child care licensing rules on this topic. The governing text is state law, Fla. Stat. § 402.313, which applies to every family child care home in the city. Subsection (1) sets 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 requiring family child care homes to be licensed. A home that is not subject to license must register annually with the department and hand over its name and address, the operator's name, the number of children served, and proof of a written plan naming at least one other competent adult who can substitute for the operator in an emergency, including that person's name, address, and telephone number. The registration also requires proof of screening and background checks, proof that immunization records are kept current, proof of the required continuing education units or clock hours, and proof of the 30-hour course. Under (1)(b), a home that is not required to be licensed can still volunteer to be licensed.

Training is the heart of the section. Subsection (4) bars an operator from caring for children until the approved 30-clock-hour introductory course is finished and the competency examination is passed. That examination covers state and local child care rules, health, safety, and nutrition, identifying and reporting child abuse and neglect, child development, and observation of developmental behaviors. Every year after that, subsection (5) requires 1 continuing education unit or 10 clock hours of equivalent training. Subsection (6) adds a one-time 0.5 continuing education unit in early literacy and language development for children from birth to 5 years of age, and the year it is completed it counts toward the annual requirement as 5 clock hours.

Screening reaches past the operator. Under subsection (3), any household member over the age of 12, and any person over 12 living in the home, falls under the screening rules in ss. 402.305(2) and 402.3055. Those between 12 and 18 are not fingerprinted but are screened for delinquency records. Each year the operator completes the department's health and safety home inspection self-evaluation checklist, signs it, and gives it to parents as certification (subsection 7). Registered homes appear in a directory the department publishes annually (subsection 2). Subsection (12) also protects a licensed home on its utility bill: the utility must charge residential rates, never commercial ones.