Data Definitions

Licensed Child Care Center: A facility licensed by the Office of Early Childhood that offers full- or part-time care for more than twelve related or unrelated children. Child Care Centers also include Group Child Care Homes that provide care for 7 to 12 children. Child Care Centers are operated in commercial rather than residential facilities, distinct from Family Child Care Homes (see below). Does not include Nursery School (part-day enrichment programs) and other partial-day programs

Exempt Child Care Centers:  Child care programs administered by a public school system, municipality and/or private school. These programs are exempt from licensing requirements in the state of Connecticut. Does not include Nursery School (part-day enrichment programs) and other partial-day programs

Family Child Care Home: Child Care program licensed to care for up to 9 children in the program owner’s home.

Legally Authorized Capacity:  Number of child care slots that a center, group daycare, or family child care home is licensed by the Office of Early Childhood to provide. Also includes slots offered by license-exempt center-based programs (see above, “Exempt Child Care Centers”).

Actual Capacity: The sum of reported openings and reported enrollment, or total slots for child care actually offered by a given child care program. Actual capacity is less than or equal to Legally Authorized Capacity.

% Actual vs Authorized Capacity: The percentage of legally authorized child care slots actually offered by a given program as a percentage of the legally authorized capacity.

Enrollment: The number of child care slots actually offered by a program into which a child is enrolled.

Openings: Child Care slot(s) available for enrollment for a child/ren of the corresponding age(s).

Openings %: Openings as a percentage of actual capacity.

Age Groups and Age Range:

  • Infant/Toddler:0 to 35 months in Center-based programs, 0-17 months in Family Child Care programs
  • Preschool:3 years to 5 years in Center-based programs, 18 months to 5 years in Family Child Care programs
  • School Age:5 years to 12 years in Center-based programs and in Family Child Care programs
  • Nursery School: Part Day Enrichment program for 3 years to 5 years

 

Data Collection

Data for the 2024 Child Care snapshot is based largely on data collected through 211 Child Care’s annual survey of Connecticut child care providers. 63% of the state’s programs provided enrollment and openings information in response to the 2023-2024 survey, administered from September 1, 2023 to January 2024 via telephone and electronic survey and data providers reported directly into the in 211 Child Care Data System. Survey data was used together with reported enrollments gathered through Office of Early Childhood licensing inspection visits to a subset of providers. Actual reported capacity distribution, enrollment and openings information was used to develop projections of capacity distribution, enrollment and openings for programs that did not respond to the survey.

Data Capacity Calculations

We used actual age-specific capacity when programs reported this data in response to the 2024 survey. For programs that did not respond to the survey, we used the assumptions below to generate age-specific and facility-specific capacity estimates.

 

Data Approximations

211 Child Care used a methodology developed in partnership with DataHaven to project enrollment and openings data for programs that did not respond to the 2024 survey. This methodology was based on reported enrollment/openings by care type, age group and setting size.

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