How DaycareNearMe gets its data
Sources, coverage, definitions, limits, and how to tell us about an error.
Sources
Each launched state's data comes from that state's official child care licensing agency.
- California: the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), Community Care Licensing Division (CCLD): its public facility licensing list, and the per-facility inspection and complaint reports published through the CCLD transparency API. Official provider search · CDSS child care licensing and regulations
DaycareNearMe is independent and is not affiliated with any state agency, including CDSS or CCLD.
What we cover
Launched state: California. Numbers below are computed live when this page is generated (cached up to 24 hours).
- California: 13,331 listed providers (13,331 child care centers, 0 home-based).
- Providers with no citations found in the reports we processed: 2 of 13,331.
Family child care homes are not yet included. The directory currently lists centers only.
Recent citations and the record grade
Cards and provider headers count citations in available assessed reports from the past 365 calendar days, including corrected citations. “At least” means the available record is incomplete. An older citation does not become a recent citation.
The record grade is our proposed site classification, not a licensing agency grade or a statement of current safety. It uses the highest published severity of source-backed citations and substantiated findings in that window. Exact source text supports each published classification. California’s official Type A/B classes are kept separately; Delaware has no official severity classes.
| Highest published severity | Record grade |
|---|---|
| No findings or Level 1 · Minor | A |
| Level 2 · Moderate | B |
| Level 3 · Serious | C |
| Level 4 · Critical | D |
| Level 5 · Extreme | F |
A grade requires adequate assessed coverage across the window and complete published classifications. Missing, unreadable, or unclassified evidence makes the grade unavailable. Level 4/5 and sensitive classifications require human review before publication. While source concerns await human review, the displayed grade is unavailable. Outdated grade data is not displayed.
Recorded corrections and repeated categories are shown separately and do not change the grade. Correction speed does not affect it. Recency selects the 365-day window; it does not add points to the grade. A correction does not erase a finding. Parent review stars are separate from this grade.
Complaints, including those not substantiated, are counted separately below the grade. A complaint means someone reported a concern to the state; it is not a citation. Not substantiated means the state did not find enough evidence. Those allegations never count as citations, findings, or grade inputs. The detail page links the state record and explains the outcome, including when no outcome is recorded. Sensitive allegation descriptions stay hidden until human review; counts remain visible.
“No citations in assessed history” is a separate historical filter: it requires a usable assessment within two years and no contrary or incomplete evidence in the available record. It is not the card’s 12-month filter. Read the dated reports and the original state record before making a decision. Report an error.
Historical record labels
- Citations on record
- The state record or a processed report shows at least one citation.
- Citation data not yet assessed
- We have not processed a usable recent report for this provider. It says nothing good or bad about the provider.
- No citations in assessed reports
- We processed a recent report (within the last 730 days) and found no citations in the reports we processed. It is not a statement about the provider’s overall record.
- No recent assessment
- The only report we processed found no citations, but it is older than 730 days, so we no longer show it as current.
A missing record is not a clean record. If we have no report for a provider, check the official state record before drawing any conclusion.
How summaries are made
Plain-language summaries and the structured fields beside them (visit dates, citations) are produced by AI-assisted extraction from the official report text, and the output is checked against a strict schema before it is stored. Summaries can be wrong or incomplete; the official report is the authority. The original report text is available to signed-in users on the report page.
"Analyzed" means we have read a report's full text and extracted its dates and citations. Reports are analyzed in batches after we fetch them, so until a provider's reports have been analyzed we show only the citation codes from the state's summary record, without dates, severity or resolution status.
Freshness
We refresh data periodically, not on a fixed schedule, so a page can lag the state’s own record. Check the official CCLD record for the latest status of any provider. We do not currently publish a single last-updated date for the whole dataset.
Corrections
If something on DaycareNearMe is wrong, tell us. Open the provider page and choose “Report outdated info”, or choose “Report an error” beside a report or finding and include what you believe is wrong, and any evidence (for example, a link to the official record).
- Errors in the state’s own records must be corrected with the state licensing agency. We fix our own errors: summaries, mappings, and display.
- AI assistants sometimes summarize our pages incorrectly. If you see an AI answer attributing something to DaycareNearMe that our page doesn’t say, tell us.
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