Colorado Licensed Child Care Facilities with Quality Ratings and Capacities

Colorado's non-24 hour licensed child care facilities are listed in this dataset, updated monthly by the Colorado Department of Early Childhood. It includes license numbers, provider names, service types, addresses, and quality ratings from the Colorado Shines program. The data also details licensed capacities by age group and CCCAP authorization status.

Use Cases

• Map child care facility locations and density using STREET ADDRESS, CITY, and COUNTY columns.
• Analyze the distribution of QUALITY RATING levels across different PROVIDER SERVICE TYPE categories.
• Assess licensed capacity for specific age groups using columns like LICENSED CENTER INFANT CAPACITY and LICENSED SCHOOL AGE CAPACITY.
• Identify facilities authorized for the Colorado Child Care Assistance Program (CCCAP) using CCCAP AUTHORIZATION STATUS and CCCAP FISCAL AGREEMENT STATUS.

Strengths

• Updated monthly, with a last recorded update on 2026-04-01.
• Includes detailed capacity breakdowns across 7 distinct age/group categories.
• Contains quality rating information with both EFFECTIVE DATE and EXPIRATION DATE for temporal analysis.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC), published on data.colorado.gov.

Collection Method

Likely compiled from state child care licensing applications and regulatory updates.

Freshness

Updated monthly.

Geography

State of Colorado, United States.