Worcester County, MD Home Business: Home Daycare (2026)

Worcester County, Maryland handles family child care through its home occupation section, § ZS 1-339, which applies in unincorporated Worcester County. Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill and Pocomoke City have their own zoning codes. The County Code defines a day-care home as a dwelling unit or manufactured or mobile home in which daytime adult supervision is provided for up to eight children, not members of the caregiver's family, under the age of sixteen, and in which the caregiver regularly resides. A large day-care home is the same kind of dwelling with nine to twelve such children. Both definitions sit in § ZS 1-103.

Subsection (a)(8) says the operation of a day-care home is a home occupation and is not subject to the six-hundred-square-foot gross floor area limitation in the section or to any off-street parking requirements. Subsection (a)(9) gives a large day-care home the same exemptions, but it names only three districts where the use counts as a home occupation: the A-1 and A-2 Agricultural Districts and the E-1 Estate District.

Staffing has its own rule. Under (a)(2), everyone engaged in a home occupation must reside on the premises except for one outside employee. Day-care homes and large day-care homes can have a maximum of two outside employees who do not reside on the premises. That change was added by Bill No. 14-1, amended 2-18-2014.

The exemptions are specific. The text frees day-care homes from the six-hundred-square-foot limit and from off-street parking, and it does not waive the rest of the home occupation list. Because subsection (a) binds all home occupations, the other standards still read on their face: no visible change in the outside appearance of the building or premises except for one sign under § ZS 1-324, no noise, vibration, glare, light trespass, fumes, odors or electrical interference objectionable to neighboring uses, and no substantial vehicular or pedestrian traffic.

A day-care center is a separate use. The code defines it apart from a day-care home, and the district regulations give day-care centers their own minimum lot requirements.