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Georgia Child Care Licensing: A Parent's Guide

A plain-English guide to how child care licensing works in Georgia — who regulates it, how to check any provider's license and public record, and where to find the official state information. Childcare Alerts indexes 4,133 licensed Georgia providers, free.

Who licenses child care in Georgia?

Georgia licenses providers through Bright from the Start (the Department of Early Care and Learning). Quality Rated is the state's voluntary one-to-three-star quality-rating system.

How to check a provider's license and record

1. Search on Childcare Alerts. Look up any Georgia provider by name, city, or ZIP — free. Each page shows what's on the public record in plain English and links to the official state file.
2. Read the record. Check the license status and any licensing actions. Not sure what a term means? See violations explained.
3. Confirm on the state's own site. Georgia DECAL Search Child Care ↗ is the system of record — always the final word.

What Childcare Alerts shows for Georgia

For Georgia, we surface the provider directory plus each provider's Quality Rated quality rating.

See the Georgia child care report for the statewide picture.

Georgia's quality rating: Quality Rated

Georgia runs a voluntary quality-rating system called Quality Rated. A higher rating reflects more of the state's program-quality standards met — but participation is voluntary, so an unrated provider is not necessarily lower quality. We show the rating on a provider's page when the state publishes it.

Before you choose care

The record is one input, not the whole story. See 10 questions to ask on a tour and what accreditation means. A provider with no action on record has not necessarily had a clean history — always open the official record.

Worried a provider is operating without a license, or seen something unsafe? Here's how to report it in Georgia.