About our data

Childcare Alerts surfaces public records about licensed child care providers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Colorado, Washington, Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Nebraska, Vermont, and New Jersey, and (in Minnesota) notifies you when new licensing actions post. Here's exactly where the data comes from and how current it is.

How often we update

Our system refreshes on a schedule every weekday night. Each run re-imports the center roster, checks Minnesota's daily licensing-actions feed, and sends alerts to subscribers who follow an affected center.

Where the data comes from

• Minnesota center roster — the state's open dataset on the Minnesota Geospatial Commons (originated by MN DHS). This provides each center's identity and location.
• Minnesota licensing actions — Minnesota DHS's public "Recently Released Licensing Documents" notifications (correction orders, fine orders, conditional licenses, suspensions, revocations, and substantiated maltreatment memoranda).
• Wisconsin directory & quality — Wisconsin's open child care dataset (data.dhsgis.wi.gov): each provider's location, YoungStar quality rating, ages served, and licensed capacity.
• Wisconsin enforcement — the Wisconsin DCF weekly public report of license revocations, plus a partial set of routine correction orders from Wisconsin's public noncompliance documents.
• South Dakota directory & enforcement — the South Dakota DSS Office of Licensing & Accreditation public provider portal (olapublic.sd.gov): each provider's identity and location, and the compliance plans, corrective-action plans, and stipulations from its public profile.
• Texas roster & deficiencies — Texas HHSC Child Care Regulation open data (data.texas.gov): each operation's identity, location, and its graded inspection deficiency counts (by risk level) and corrective / adverse-action flags.
• Pennsylvania directory, quality & sanctions — the Pennsylvania DHS open child care provider listing (data.pa.gov): each provider's identity and location, its Keystone STARS quality rating, and a flag for any provider the state marks as under a negative licensing sanction.

Important caveats

• The official government record always controls. We link to it on every center page; if anything differs, the state's record is authoritative.
• Data can lag. Government sources may be delayed, corrected, or updated after the fact, and our copy can trail the official source. We show when we last refreshed.
• Absence of a record is not a guarantee of safety. No posted action does not mean a center is problem-free — it may simply mean nothing has been posted.
• We don't vet centers. Childcare Alerts does not inspect, investigate, rate, or certify any center. We surface and link to public records so you can find them more easily.

New here? See a sample alert, a sample center record, or learn how to read a licensing record.