Childcare Provider Leads — Licensed Daycare Contact Lists + Compliance Scoring

Build contact-complete lead lists of licensed childcare providers straight from official state licensing data — including the two fields most provider datasets never give you: direct phone number AND email address (Texas HHSC Child Care Licensing publishes both).

Every lead is enriched with a compliance score from the state's non-compliance (deficiency) records: 2-year deficiency count, a risk-weighted score, the most recent deficiency dates, and a high_risk_flag — so you can segment outreach by quality, not just geography.

Who this is for

• Childcare SaaS & management platforms (billing, enrollment, parent-communication apps) — build county-by-county outreach lists with emails, not just addresses.
• EdTech & curriculum vendors — target licensed centers by capacity and ages served (Infant / Toddler / Pre-K / School).
• CACFP food-program sponsors — find providers accepting subsidies and newly licensed operations to sponsor.
• Insurance brokers & risk underwriters — use deficiency counts and the high-risk flag to segment or pre-screen.
• Suppliers (furniture, playgrounds, food service, safety equipment) — filter to larger centers with minCapacity.
• Researchers & journalists — compliance-scored roster of licensed operations, refreshed from the state's ~daily feed.

Example input

{
  "state": "TX",
  "county": "Harris",
  "operationType": "Licensed Center",
  "agesServed": "Infant",
  "minCapacity": 50,
  "maxResults": 500,
  "includeCompliance": true
}

Modes

• roster (default): the current filtered provider list.
• new_operations: keeps a baseline of seen operation IDs in the key-value store; the first run saves the baseline, and every later run emits only newly licensed operations. Schedule it weekly for a fresh new-provider lead alert.

Output fields

One record per provider: state, operation_id, operation_number, operation_name, operation_type, address, city, county, zip, phone, email, website, capacity, ages_served, programs_provided, accepts_subsidies, issuance_date, deficiency_count_2y, deficiency_weighted_score_2y, recent_deficiency_dates (up to 3), high_risk_flag, is_new_operation, source_url.

email is populated for many — not all — Texas operations; it is null when the provider has no email on file with the state.

Compliance scoring (editorial heuristic — read this)

The compliance join pulls each provider's non-compliance records from the official TX HHSC deficiency dataset and rolls them up over a trailing 2-year window:

• Window: the source dataset has no inspection-date column, so the 2-year window keys off corrected_date (the date the deficiency was corrected). Uncorrected/undated records are excluded from the window.
• Weights (our editorial choice, not the state's): High = 5, Medium High = 3, Medium = 2, Medium Low = 1, Low = 0.5.
• high_risk_flag = weighted 2-year score ≥ highRiskThreshold (default 10). This is a screening heuristic to prioritize/deprioritize outreach — it is not an official state designation and should not be used as one.

Coverage (honest note)

v1 covers Texas only — the TX HHSC dataset is uniquely valuable because it includes provider phone and email. Florida (DCF) and California (CCLD) are scaffolded in the source config for v1.1; CA's licensing download page is a browser-gated JavaScript shell with no keyless machine endpoint, so it is excluded until a stable source is verified.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor works as an MCP tool for AI agents (via mcp.apify.com): clean input schema, described output fields, and one flat record per provider make it easy for Claude, Cursor, or any agent to chain "find licensed daycare centers in X county with emails, low deficiencies, capacity ≥ 50" into larger lead-gen workflows.

FAQ

How do I get a list of licensed daycare centers in Texas with email addresses? Run with state: "TX", your county, and operationType: "Licensed Center" — records include phone and, where on file, email.

Can I find newly licensed childcare providers? Yes — set mode: "new_operations" and schedule the actor; after the baseline run it emits only operations it hasn't seen before.

How current is the data? The TX HHSC datasets on data.texas.gov are refreshed approximately daily.

Does a deficiency mean a provider is bad? No. Deficiencies range from paperwork issues to serious violations; the weighted score and recent_deficiency_dates help you judge severity and recency. Always verify with the state's official search before making decisions about a specific provider.

Do I need an API key? No — the actor uses keyless public open-data endpoints.

Pricing

Pay per result: you are charged only for the provider records actually returned.