Home daycare licensing / Wyoming
Home daycare licensing in Wyoming
What it takes to run a licensed home daycare in Wyoming — who regulates it, how many children you can care for, and what an inspector checks.
Who regulates home daycare in Wyoming
Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS) is the state agency responsible for licensing or registering home child care in Wyoming.
Wyoming's Family Child Care Home rule has an unusually specific counting quirk: your own children only count against your 10-child cap while they're young — once a child of yours turns 6, or has finished kindergarten, or is in first grade or higher, they simply drop out of the capacity math entirely. That's a meaningfully more generous rule than states that count a provider's children under 12 or 13, and it means a Wyoming provider's paying-client capacity actually grows as her own kids age into school.
Visit Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS) →License types and capacity
Family Child Care Home
3–10 children in the provider's own home without additional staff.
The owner's children age 6+ (or who have finished kindergarten / are in first grade or higher) are excluded from the licensed capacity count.
Family Child Care Center
Up to 15 children, in the provider's home or another building the provider doesn't live in.
Requires one additional staff member once more than 10 children are present.
Background checks
Full national fingerprint-based criminal background check plus a Wyoming Central Registry (child abuse and neglect) check and sex offender registry checks covering Wyoming and any state of residency in the past 5 years. Required for the provider, staff, volunteers, and household members 18+; repeated every 5 years.
Advantages of running a home daycare in Wyoming
- The school-age exclusion rule means a provider's paying-client capacity effectively increases as her own children get older.
- The 10-child Family Child Care Home ceiling, reachable without hiring additional staff, is competitive against neighboring low-population states.
- A clear staffing trigger (one additional staff member required only above 10 children, up to 15 in a Family Child Care Center) gives an unambiguous signal for when to hire.
Risks and things to watch
- The distinction between 'Family Child Care Home' (in your own home, up to 10, no staff) and 'Family Child Care Center' (up to 15, staff required over 10) is easy to conflate.
- Background checks reach every household member 18+, current within a 5-year cycle — a lapsed check can hold up licensing.
- Wyoming's low population means fewer local resource-and-referral peers than more populous states.
Practical tips for Wyoming providers
- Track your own children's school status closely — it's the exact trigger that frees up capacity for paying clients.
- Confirm the Wyoming Central Registry and sex-offender checks are pulled for every state of residency in the past 5 years for each household member.
- If planning to grow past 10 children, budget for the required additional staff member up front — Wyoming makes this a hard rule at 10.
See the full record set every inspector checks for what to have ready regardless of state.
Curious about licensing in other states?
Home daycare rules — capacity limits, ratios, background checks — vary a lot from state to state. You might want to check how Wyoming compares:
Keep inspection-ready records without the binder.
DaycareFlow keeps your children, attendance, and family info in one place — built for solo home daycare. Free during early access.
Get started free