Most parents assume a licensed daycare is inspected against something, and leave it there. It is worth knowing what the something is, because it is far more specific than anyone expects and it is entirely public.
The Minimum Standards are several hundred numbered rules covering how many adults must be in a room, what may be within a child’s reach, who may be employed and what they must be trained in first. Each one carries a severity weight. The state inspects against them, cites what it finds, and publishes the result under the center’s own name for five years.
Which means that if your child was hurt, a good deal of what a claim needs has already been written down by somebody with no stake in the outcome — and you can read it tonight, for nothing, before you speak to anybody at all.
Free case review
A conversation with an attorney about what happened, at no cost and with no obligation.
No fee unless you recover
Agreed in writing before we start. Case expenses come out of the recovery, not out of your pocket.
The file is public
Five years of inspections and deficiencies for any licensed Texas center, free, tonight, under its own name.
Three Rulebooks
Which standards apply depends on where you left them
A center, an after-school program and a home daycare are regulated under three separate chapters, with different ratios and different requirements.
- 01
Chapter 746 — child-care centers
The rulebook for a licensed center: a building, thirteen or more children, staff who are not related to them. Most Dallas daycares are here.
- 02
Chapter 744 — school-age programs
Before-school, after-school and summer programs for children five and over. Different ratios, different space rules, and often a different operator from the daycare next door.
- 03
Chapter 747 — child-care homes
Care given in the caregiver’s own home, licensed or registered. Smaller, and the standards are correspondingly different — not absent.
The Mechanism
Every rule is weighted, and every breach is recorded
This is the part that makes a compliance record worth reading. Texas does not treat a missing form and an unsupervised toddler as the same failure, and it says so beside each rule.
Every standard carries a weight
Texas does not treat all the rules as equal. Each minimum standard is marked High, Medium-High, Medium, Medium-Low or Low according to how much risk breaking it creates for a child, and the weight is printed in the rulebook beside the rule itself.
A breach is recorded as a deficiency
When Child Care Regulation inspects and finds a standard not being met, it cites a deficiency against the operation by rule number, notifies the center in writing, and posts it on the center’s public record.
A pattern gets a corrective action
Where the problems are repeated or serious, the center goes onto a corrective action plan, and where that fails, to adverse action against the permit.
What it means for a claim
A cited deficiency does not decide a lawsuit by itself, and Texas does not treat every regulatory breach as automatically negligent.
Coverage
The six areas the standards spend most of their length on
And, roughly in this order, the six that produce the injuries families ring us about. The first three have pages of their own.
- 01How many adults, and how closeRatios, group sizes, and what “supervision” is defined to mean
- 02The building, the yard, the equipmentHazards that must be out of reach, and the playground rules
- 03Who is allowed to work thereBackground checks, qualifications and the training ladder
- 04Records and reportingThe incident report, the sign-in sheets, and how long any of it survives
- 05Health, food and medicationImmunisation records, food allergy plans, hand-washing, who may give medicine
- 06Release, transport and field tripsWho a child may be released to, and the tighter ratios that apply off the premises
Do This Tonight
How to read a center’s public file
It takes about ten minutes, it costs nothing, and it does not commit you to anything. It is also the one piece of evidence in a daycare case that nobody can destroy.
- 01
Search the center by name
Go to childcare.hhs.texas.gov and search by name, city or licence number. Every licensed and registered operation in Texas is there, and you need no account and no reason.
- 02
Open the inspection and compliance history
This is the part worth your evening. It lists inspections over the last five years, the deficiencies cited at each, the standard number for every one, and whether the operation is on a corrective action.
- 03
Look up the standard numbers you find
A deficiency is cited by rule number, and the rule is public. §746.1601 is the ratio, §746.1205 is supervision, §746.3701 is hazards within reach.
- 04
Read for repetition, not for volume
A large center inspected often will collect more citations than a small one inspected rarely. The number on its own says less than the pattern does.
- 05
Print it, or save the page, before you do anything else
The record is public but it is not frozen. Save what you find, with the date, so that the version you read is the version you can produce later.
Questions
Minimum standards FAQs
What parents ask once they have read a file and found something in it.
What happens if a daycare fails an inspection?
It depends entirely on what was found. A deficiency is cited against the standard by number and published on the center’s record; repeated or serious problems put the operation on a corrective action plan, and from there the state can move to adverse action against the permit itself, up to revocation.
Does a cited deficiency mean I automatically win?
No, and be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise. A deficiency is the state’s finding that a standard was not being met.
Can I bring a claim if my child was not seriously hurt?
Sometimes, and it depends on the harm rather than on the fracture. Texas recognises mental anguish as a compensable injury in its own right, which matters most where the wrong was abuse or a child left somewhere they should not have been.
How long do I have?
Two clocks. Your child’s own claim is suspended while they are a minor and generally runs until two years after their eighteenth birthday.
