Starting a care business in Kansas

Child care licensing moved from KDHE to KOEC on July 1, 2026, and licenses KDHE issued before the move stay valid until they expire. Kansas has no registration tier for home child care. You need a family child care home license once you cross any one of three limits: 35 or more hours a week, more than four unrelated children, or more than two infants, and a child who is not yet walking counts as an infant. A 2025 law ended the rule that you must live in the home, and KOEC's application now covers commercial buildings. Programs for 13 or more children need a child care center license, and preschools with sessions of three hours or less have a separate license under the same regulation book. One site can hold only one type of child care license.

Kansas charges nothing for the child care license itself. Application fees ended on July 1, 2025, and the statute now bars an annual license fee. The state cost is $48 for each required fingerprint check, and local health departments or contractors that survey for KOEC may add their own fee. The building matters more than the fee: the State Fire Marshal treats a program as an I-4 child care occupancy, with stricter fire and life safety rules, once it serves any child under 3, runs sessions over three hours, or serves meals or has naps.

On the adult side, one licensure act covers assisted living, residential health care, Home Plus, boarding care and adult day care as classifications of the same adult care home license, and the machinery is shared. KDADS issues a license only with State Fire Marshal approval. The fee is $100 plus $30 for each resident of stated capacity, paid with the application and again with every annual report in the KOTA web system, and the license is canceled automatically if the report is not filed. Every home must be run by a registered operator (an approved course and test, then a $65 two-year registration) or a licensed adult care home administrator, and an assisted living facility with more than 60 residents needs the administrator.

Which classification fits depends on size and building. A Home Plus has no minimum size, so one unrelated adult who needs personal care already counts. The Revisor's statute text caps it at 12 residents; House Bill 2520, approved April 6, 2026, raises the cap to 16 once it is published in the statute book, so confirm with KDADS which cap applies before you plan. Assisted living starts at six residents and requires apartments with a kitchen and private bath. The same size with individual living units and no kitchens is a residential health care facility under the same rules and packet. A boarding care home, for up to 10 residents who can walk and manage their own care and affairs, is also a KDADS license; this site has no separate guide for it, so ask KDADS for its rules. Adult day care has no minimum number of participants, and an assisted living facility can take day participants without a second license if it has 60 square feet of common space for each resident and participant. KDADS put new applicants for the Frail Elderly waiver, which helps pay for these settings, on a waitlist on July 6, 2026.

Kansas has no companion or homemaker registration. Any agency paid to help clients at home with daily living needs a KDHE home health agency license, and advertising the services before you are licensed already counts. The supportive care services license ($250 initial fee under 100 clients) rules out nursing, home health aides and Medicaid waiver work. The skilled services license ($500 or $750) covers everything, and KDADS requires it for all waiver programs. Both levels limit service to 200 miles from the parent office. New agencies cannot enroll in Medicare while a nationwide federal moratorium that began on May 13, 2026 is in force. KDHE proposed in September 2025 to replace the two levels with three licenses, but no hearing notice or adopted rule had appeared by October 12, 2026. The guides found no certificate-of-need requirement in the Kansas home health or adult care home statutes, though no official statement saying so was found.