How to check a daycare's inspection record in NYC

Every licensed group daycare in New York City is inspected by the Health Department, usually one to three times a year and often unannounced, and the full record is public. Here is where to find it, how to read it, and what actually deserves a second look.

The short answer

Type the center's name or address into the search on this site. You'll get its complete DOHMH inspection history free: every inspection date, every violation with the city's own severity level, and whether each one is still OPEN or has been CORRECTED. The same record is on the city's official Child Care Connect portal — we show it verbatim, just organized for reading, refreshed weekly, and cross-checked daily against the city's active-license roster.

First, know which agency holds the record

Three different bodies oversee childcare in the city, and the type of program decides which record exists and where it lives:

• Licensed daycare centers, which are most group programs, are permitted and inspected by the NYC Health Department (DOHMH). This is the detailed inspection history most parents are after.
• Home-based daycares, run in a residence, are licensed by New York State (OCFS), not the city. Their record shows license status and any enforcement, not city-style inspection reports.
• Free 3-K and Pre-K programs run through the Department of Education (DOE), which oversees them itself and doesn't publish daycare-style inspection reports, though many share a building with a licensed center that does have a DOHMH record.

Searching a program here pulls up the right record automatically, so you don't have to know in advance which system it falls under.

What you're looking at

• Severity. DOHMH classes each violation itself. Critical means a risk to children's health or safety; Serious and Moderate are lower tiers. The classification is the city's, not ours.
• Status. OPEN means the city still records the violation as uncorrected. CORRECTED means the center fixed it and the city verified. An old corrected violation and a months-old open one are very different findings.
• Context. Citations are common: the current citywide numbers show what's typical per borough, so a count like "4 critical violations in 3 years" can be read against the local median instead of in a vacuum.
• Repeats. The same violation appearing inspection after inspection usually means an earlier fix didn't hold. That pattern matters more than any single citation.

What should actually give you pause

A record with violations is normal. A spotless one is rare, and usually just means the center is new or was inspected recently. The findings worth a direct question:

• A critical violation still marked OPEN months after the inspection. Corrected ones from past years are routine; an unresolved critical one is not.
• The same citation repeating across inspections. One food-temperature violation is a bad day; four in a row is a kitchen that isn't being managed.
• A count well above the borough median. The statistics page shows what "typical" is where you're looking.
• No inspection in three years. Silence in the record is its own flag; ask when the program was last visited.

None of this is a verdict on a center. It's how to turn a list of citations into specific questions for a tour.

How to look up a daycare's license in NYC

To look up a center's license, start with its status here: DOHMH publishes a daily roster of actively permitted programs, and we check every center against it each morning and show an ✓ Active license badge on those that appear. A center can appear in inspection data long after it closes, so if one you're considering is flagged as not on the current roster, ask the operator about it directly, and verify with 311.

Home-based daycares are a different system

Family and group-family daycares that operate in homes are licensed by New York State (OCFS), not the city. Their records on this site show the state's license status, how long the provider has operated, the license expiration date, and any enforcement action, such as a suspension. The state's own lookup is the OCFS child care search; each provider page here shows the Facility ID to search there.

Prefer the official sites? Here's the direct route

If you'd rather go straight to the source, the primary records are all public:

1. For a licensed center, open DOHMH's Child Care Connect and search by name or address. You'll see permit status and the inspection history.
2. For a home-based provider, use the OCFS child care search and look up by name or county for license status and any enforcement.
3. Confirm the license is active by calling 311.

This site pulls both into one place and adds the daily license check and weekly refresh, but the official portals are always the primary source, and we link to them from every record.

Beyond the inspection record

The building itself has public records too: open housing and lead-paint violations, rodent inspection results, construction permits, and complaints filed about the address. And under Article 47, group centers must test their drinking water for lead every three years; the result is on each center's page here. These records concern the building and may not involve the childcare space itself, but they are worth raising on a tour.

Worth asking on your visit

• Ask about any open violation and what the corrective plan is. A responsive operator will show you.
• Ask how the center handles the specific issues in its record — if the record shows repeated food-temperature citations, ask about the kitchen.
• Ask when the water was last tested for lead, and about anything the building records raised.

Common questions

How do I look up daycare violations in NYC? Search the center by name or address on this site for its full DOHMH violation history, or use the city's Child Care Connect portal directly. Each violation shows the city's severity level and whether it is open or corrected.

Can I look up a daycare license by name? Yes. For licensed centers, search the name on Child Care Connect; for home-based providers, the NYS OCFS child care search takes a provider name or county. This site searches both at once.

How often are NYC daycares inspected? DOHMH inspects licensed group centers roughly one to three times a year, often unannounced, plus in response to complaints. Home-based providers are inspected by New York State on its own schedule.

Are home daycares inspected too? Yes, but by New York State (OCFS) rather than the city, and the public record shows license status and enforcement rather than the itemized inspection reports the city publishes for centers.

Is any of this free? The records, search, comparison, and change alerts here are free, and the underlying government data is public. We charge only for an optional deeper analysis; looking up a center's record costs nothing.

The records, search, comparison, and change alerts on this site are free. Our methodology explains exactly how each number is computed and where every record comes from. Nothing here is a rating — we show the government's record and let you judge.