University of Illinois Urbana‑Champaign

Child Care

IECAM provides data on four types of child care: licensed day care centers, license-exempt day care centers, licensed family child care homes, and child care centers and homes providing school-age care.
child sliding at afterschool program
Centers and homes are licensed by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). DCFS uses the term “day care center” instead of “child care center.” DCFS provides the following definition:

“Day care center” means any child care facility which regularly provides day care for less than 24 hours per day for more than 8 children in a family home or more than 3 children in a facility other than a family home, including senior citizen buildings.

Child care centers serve families and children from 6 weeks old up to age 13.

License-exempt day care centers care for children in nonpublic schools recognized by the Illinois State Board of Education or “facilities operated in connection with a shopping center or service, religious services, or other similar activity, where transient children are cared for temporarily while parents or custodians of the children are occupied on the premises and readily available.”

A licensed family child care home may care for up to eight children (including their own) or up to 12 children with an assistant.

School-age care data includes licensed and license-exempt centers and family child care homes that take care of children age 6 through age 12 before and after school. It does not include weekend sessions or centers or homes that only serve children during the summer.

Source of definition: Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS)

Total licensed capacity across sessions

Source of data: Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (INCCRRA)

Child care data is available on the Data Hub by state, county, Birth to Five Illinois region, Chicago community area, and school district (elementary and unit districts combined) for fiscal years 2019 to the most recent available year.

Child care centers and homes report capacity by individual sessions. The individual sessions roughly correspond to a full day and two half days (morning and afternoon). IECAM does not provide data for evening, overnight, and weekend sessions.

Total capacities are reported by three different age groups: 6 weeks through 23 months, age 2, and age 3 through kindergartners. Total licensed capacity for a child care center or home is NOT the same as the sum of the capacities of those three individual age ranges, although it might coincidentally be the same in a few cases. Differences result from the following conditions:

  • Although centers and homes have separate capacities for individual age ranges, they may fill these capacities as they see fit, as long as the total does not exceed their total licensed capacity. For example, if a center has a capacity of 10 in one age group and 20 in another, they may care for 15 in one group as long as they don’t take in more than 15 in the other group. However, there are varying limits on the number of children 6 weeks through 23 months that a center or home can serve.
  • Centers may serve children in full-day or half-day sessions. Say a site has a total licensed capacity of 20. In this case, it may serve 20 children in a full-day session or it may serve, for example, 20 2-year-old children in a morning session and 20 4-year-old children in an afternoon session. In this case, it will have two age-range capacities of 20 (sum of 40 children) but a total licensed capacity of 20.
  • Child care centers do not necessarily report all of their sessions, and thus all of their age-range capacities, to INCCRRA.
  • On the Data Hub, IECAM reports only half-day and full-day sessions, which are typically used to determine daytime capacity.
INCCRRA notes that data for some sessions and centers may not be included. Therefore, the total capacity reported may not be identical to the true total capacity for a geographic region.

Additional Resources