Louisiana Daycare Fingerprinting Requirements and IDEMIA Process

The fingerprinting appointment is one of the earliest and most anxiety-inducing steps in starting a Louisiana home daycare. Everyone in your household aged 18 and older must be fingerprinted — not just you, but your spouse, your adult children, and anyone else living under your roof. Miss one person and your entire registration stalls.

Who Needs to Be Fingerprinted

Louisiana requires a Child Care Criminal Background Check (CCCBC) for every individual who will have unsupervised access to children in care. For a Family Child Care home, that means:

• The primary provider
• Any support staff or substitute caregivers
• Every household member aged 18 or older, even if they have no role in the daycare
• Anyone aged 17 who turns 18 during the certification period

A parent or guardian signature is required for applicants under 18. Each person submits their own CCCBC application and schedules their own fingerprinting appointment — there is no group submission option.

How to Schedule Through IDEMIA

IDEMIA (through their IdentoGO service) handles fingerprint collection for the Louisiana CCCBC. Here is the process:

1. Register on the CCCBC portal at cccbcldoe.la.gov. Each person creates their own account.
2. Pay the LDOE processing fee through the portal. The fee varies by applicant type but expect to pay approximately $15 for the LDOE portion.
3. Pre-enroll with IDEMIA using the Louisiana daycare service code 27N4H8. When scheduling your appointment, you will need this code to ensure your prints route to the correct state agency.
4. Attend the fingerprinting appointment at an IDEMIA/IdentoGO enrollment center. Bring your government-issued photo ID and your CCCBC portal confirmation.

IDEMIA charges a separate fingerprint rolling fee on top of the LDOE processing fee. The combined cost typically ranges from $15 to $115 per person depending on whether you need an FBI federal check in addition to the Louisiana State Police check. Former Louisiana residents living out of state pay a $26 LSP Right to Review fee.

Processing Times and What to Expect

Electronic fingerprint results can return in as little as a few hours, but the full CCCBC determination — which includes a review of criminal history, sex offender registries, and child abuse databases — can take up to three weeks. During peak application periods (typically late spring before the school year), processing stretches even longer.

You cannot legally care for children or accept CCAP subsidies until every required person in your household has a cleared CCCBC determination. This is why the fingerprinting step should happen early in your registration sequence — waiting too long to schedule creates a bottleneck that delays everything downstream.

What Happens If Someone Is Flagged

If an applicant or household member receives a "Notice of Ineligibility," they have exactly 45 calendar days from issuance to submit a formal appeal to LDOE. During the appeal process, that individual cannot work in or reside in the childcare environment, which creates a serious logistical problem for providers whose spouse or adult child is flagged.

Not every criminal record triggers ineligibility. The CCCBC evaluates specific offense categories — violent crimes, sex offenses, and drug felonies carry the highest risk of disqualification. Minor, non-violent misdemeanors from years ago may not affect your eligibility at all, but you will not know until the determination comes back.

Keeping Your Background Check Current

CCCBC clearances are not permanent. Anytime a new adult moves into your home — a new partner, an adult child returning from college, an elderly parent — they must complete the full fingerprinting and background check process before they can be present during childcare hours. Report household composition changes to [email protected] before the change occurs, not after.

The Louisiana Home Daycare Licensing Guide includes a household tracker worksheet that helps you manage CCCBC status for every adult in your home, with expiration reminders and resubmission deadlines so nothing falls through the cracks.

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