The following question was submitted to John Roska, an attorney/writer whose weekly newspaper column, "The Law Q&A," runs in the Champaign News Gazette.

Question

I want to do child care in my home. When do I need to get a license? 

Answer

Numbers are the key to child care licenses. Specifically, the number of kids you care for, and their ages. Those numbers take some getting used to, since they get a little complicated, and not all kids count toward the numbers that are involved. I’ll use this and next week’s column to try to explain how day care licensing works.

First of all, a “child” for licensing purposes is someone 11 years old or younger. Kids 12 and over don’t count toward any of the licensing numbers. So when I say “kid” or “kids,” I mean someone 11 or younger.

Second, you never need a license to care for your own kids, or to care for kids from a single family. The Department of Children and Family Services—the agency that does child care licensing—says you don’t need a license to care for kids you’re related to. DCFS seems to be going a bit beyond the letter of the law there, but that’s what their handouts say.

That means that as long as they’re your kids, related to you, or from one family, you can take care of more kids than the biggest day care center in the state, and don’t need a license.

You only need a license if you care for kids from more than one family. Then, the magic number is 4: if you care for 4 kids, you need a license. When you’ve got kids from more than one family, your own kids and related kids, count toward that threshold of 4.

For example, if you want to care for your own 2 kids, and one kid from Neighbor A and one kid from Neighbor B, you need a license. The total of 4 kids puts you over the threshold. Same thing if you want to care for 2 grandkids, and 2 other kids from 2 different families. You need a license.

Once you get a license, it lets you care for up to 8 kids. You need an assistant to care for more than 8 kids.

Now, it gets a little tricky. When you’re licensed, the 8 kids can only be certain ages. If you’ve got 8 kids, you can’t have more than 6 under 5 years old. And you can’t have more than 3 under 2. If you’ve got 3 kids under 2 years old, you can’t have a total of more than 5 under 5.