The short version
If a sitter takes care of your kid on a Saturday night while you go to dinner, neither the sitter nor the platform that matched you needs a Department of Health and Welfare child-care license. The Idaho Administrative Code (IDAPA 16.06.02) carves out occasional, irregular care — defined roughly as care provided in a private home for a small number of unrelated kids, on a non-routine basis.
If a sitter sat for your kid every weekday from 8am to 5pm in the sitter's own home, with several other unrelated kids, that is a licensed daycare operation — different rules apply.
Our platform operates entirely in the first category. We are not a daycare, we are not a licensed child-care center, and we are not pretending to be either.
What Idaho code actually says
IDAPA 16.06.02 governs child-care licensing in Idaho. The licensing requirement attaches to 'child-care facilities' — defined as a person or entity providing care for compensation to a certain number of children unrelated to the operator, on a regular basis.
The key exemptions, in plain English:
- • Occasional care. If the sitter is not providing care on a regular schedule, licensing is not triggered.
- • Care in the family's home. Licensing typically attaches to a child-care facility — a place. Bringing a sitter to your home is care in the family's home, not at a facility.
- • Small numbers. The exemption thresholds depend on the number of children and the regularity of care.
What this means for sitters on our platform
Every sitter who takes a booking through us is providing occasional, in-home care to the children of a single family. They are explicitly within the exemption. Sitters are independent contractors operating in their personal capacity — not employees of a licensed facility, and not subject to the same regulatory framework that licensed daycares are.
What we do that licensing does not require
If we stopped at the legal floor, we would do nothing more than collect a few names and let you sort it out. We do not. Every sitter clears six gates before they can take a booking:
- • National criminal background check, paid by us, re-run annually.
- • National Sex Offender Public Registry check on every sitter and every primary account holder.
- • Two reference calls made by a real person on our team.
- • Reviewed two-minute video interview.
- • Signed agreements about scope of work and mandated-reporter obligations.
- • Verification of the professional credential listed on the sitter's profile.
What licensing would require that we don't do
Licensed daycares have requirements that do not fit a private-home occasional-sitter model — child-to-staff ratios for a facility, square-foot-per-child standards, dedicated playground equipment, on-site food handler permits. None of that applies when a sitter comes to your home for three hours on a Saturday night.
If you want the long version
The full rules are at IDAPA 16.06.02 — Rules Governing Standards for Child Care Licensing. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare publishes them with annotations and exemption details. If your family situation is unusual (you are running an at-home daycare yourself, you are a foster family with unusual numbers, you are operating a registered respite home), the rules may apply to you in ways the general carve-out does not cover. We are not lawyers and not a substitute for legal advice.