Licensed, registered and unlicensed care, and where the legal line sits

There is a common belief that unlicensed child care in British Columbia is a grey area, tolerated but frowned upon. It is not a grey area. The rule is a specific number, it is written down, and once you know it a great many confusing conversations become simple.

The number is three.

The threshold

Care becomes licensable when a person looks after three or more children who are not related to them by blood or marriage. Below three, no licence is required. At three, a Community Care Facility Licence is required, along with everything that comes with it.

So an unlicensed caregiver may care for a maximum of two unrelated children at once, or one sibling group. Their own children do not count toward that limit.

This is why "she only takes a few kids" is not a reassuring answer. A caregiver with four unrelated children in the house is not operating a small informal daycare. They are operating a facility that requires a licence and does not have one, which means no inspection, no ratio requirement, no space requirement, no record keeping requirement, and no complaint route that leads anywhere useful.

The three tiers

British Columbia has three levels, and they are easy to mix up because two of them share a name.

• Licensed. Inspected by a regional health authority, bound by the full Child Care Licensing Regulation.
• Registered licence-not-required. A home-based caregiver who has voluntarily passed a criminal record check, a home and safety check and first aid training through a Child Care Resource and Referral Centre, but is not inspected by a health authority.
• Unregistered licence-not-required. No licence, no registration, no mandatory criminal record check, still limited to two unrelated children or one sibling group.

Licensed

A Community Care Facility Licence issued by a regional health authority. Fraser Health issues them in Port Coquitlam. The licensee is bound by the Child Care Licensing Regulation: group sizes and staffing ratios from Schedule E, at least 3.7 square metres of indoor space and 6 square metres of outdoor play area per child, criminal record checks on every employee, monthly fire drills, first aid coverage at all times, written policies, daily attendance records, and a duty to report serious incidents to a medical health officer within 24 hours.

Licensing officers inspect. Reports are published. A licence can carry conditions, be suspended, or be cancelled.

Registered licence-not-required

This is the tier most people have never heard of, and the name does it no favours. A registered licence-not-required provider is a home-based caregiver who has voluntarily gone through a registration process with a Child Care Resource and Referral Centre. That process includes a criminal record check, a home and safety check, first aid certification and some training.

What registration does not do is raise the child limit. A registered provider may still care for only two unrelated children. It also does not bring health authority inspection: the checks come from the Resource and Referral Centre, not from Fraser Health, and the Child Care Licensing Regulation does not apply.

What it does bring is a higher rate of the Affordable Child Care Benefit for families who use them, and a level of vetting a parent can ask to see.

Unregistered licence-not-required

No licence, no registration, no inspection, no mandatory criminal record check. Still limited to two unrelated children or one sibling group. Entirely lawful within that limit.

The three tiers side by side

	Licensed	Registered licence-not-required	Unregistered
Maximum unrelated children	Set by the licence and Schedule E	2, or one sibling group	2, or one sibling group
Inspected by a health authority	Yes	No	No
Bound by the Child Care Licensing Regulation	Yes	No	No
Criminal record check required	Yes, on every employee	Yes, at registration	Not required
Written records and policies required	Yes	No	No
Public inspection reports	Yes	No	No
Formal complaint route	Fraser Health licensing	The Resource and Referral Centre	None specific to child care
Affordable Child Care Benefit	Highest rate	Middle rate	Lowest rate
Fee Reduction Initiative and $10 a Day	Eligible	Not eligible	Not eligible

What registration actually involves

Registration is handled by Child Care Resource and Referral Centres, which are community organisations funded to support both providers and families. The Tri-Cities is served by one of them, and they also keep referral lists a parent can ask to use.

A provider registering goes through a criminal record check, a check of the home and its safety, first aid certification, and some required training. Registration is renewed rather than granted once, so it lapses if the provider stops meeting the conditions.

Two things it is not. It is not a licence, so nothing in the Child Care Licensing Regulation applies: no minimum floor space, no outdoor play area requirement, no attendance records, no duty to report incidents to a medical health officer. And it is not carried out by Fraser Health, so no licensing officer visits and no inspection report is published.

What the tiers mean for money

The funding difference is large and often decides the question for families.

The Affordable Child Care Benefit pays at three different rates depending on the tier. Reading the Province's published rate table on 25 August 2026, for a child under 19 months the maximum monthly benefit is $1,250 in licensed group care, $600 in registered licence-not-required care, and $438 in unregistered care. For a child from 19 to 36 months the figures are $1,060, $600 and $404.

The other two programs are licensed-only. The Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative pays participating licensed providers to lower their fees, and unlicensed caregivers cannot enrol. $10 a Day ChildCareBC applies only to approved licensed sites.

So the effective cost gap between a licensed centre and an unlicensed caregiver is usually much smaller than the sticker prices suggest, and sometimes runs the other way. Our guide to what child care costs works through how the three programs stack.

What each tier gives you if something goes wrong

This is the part worth thinking about before you need it.

With a licensed centre, there is a licensing officer assigned to the facility, a complaint process, an investigation power, and a published record. If a complaint is substantiated, a summary appears in Fraser Health's online database where any future parent can read it. The centre has a legal duty to notify a medical health officer within 24 hours of a serious incident.

With a registered provider, there is a Child Care Resource and Referral Centre that can be told, and a registration that can be withdrawn.

With an unregistered caregiver, there is no oversight body. Serious matters go to the police or to the Ministry of Children and Family Development, the same as they would for any other setting.

Choosing between them honestly

A licence is a floor, not a verdict. Plenty of registered and unregistered caregivers give warm, attentive, excellent care, and a small home with one adult and two children offers something a 25-child room cannot: total consistency of who is with your child.

The trade-offs are real in both directions. A single caregiver has no colleague to cover illness or holiday, so care stops when they stop. A licensed centre has staff turnover, and your child may not have the same educator all year. A licensed centre has been inspected; a home has not.

What the licence changes is what you can check before you decide. With a licensed centre you can read the inspection history, confirm the care types and capacity on a public list, and know the ratio that applies in the room. With an unlicensed caregiver you are relying entirely on the conversation, the reference and your own judgement.

Neither is wrong. Knowing which one you are doing is the point.

How to verify what you are being told

Search the health authority's public list of licensed facilities. For Port Coquitlam that is Fraser Health's Fraser North list, and this site's licensed childcare finder searches the same underlying provincial dataset by name, street or postal code.

If a caregiver is not on it, that is not automatically a problem, because most home caregivers are correctly unlicensed. Ask three plain questions instead: how many children who are not yours are here at the same time, are you registered with a Child Care Resource and Referral Centre, and can I see your criminal record check and first aid certificate.

If the answer to the first question is three or more, that is the one to take seriously. A caregiver operating above the limit has usually not thought about it rather than deliberately hidden it, but the consequence is the same either way: none of the protections described on this page apply, and if a problem arises there is no body whose job it is to look into it.

If you believe a caregiver is operating above the two-child limit, the Community Care Facilities Licensing program at the relevant health authority is who investigates. In Port Coquitlam that is Fraser Health. They handle reports about unlicensed operations as well as complaints about facilities that already hold a licence.

Next, ratios and group sizes shows the staffing table that applies in every licensed room in the province.