Senate Bill 225 (Ellie's Law) and Texas Child Care

What SB 225 Changed

Senate Bill 225 — known as Ellie's Law — took effect September 1, 2021, and fundamentally changed how HHSC tracks child care providers in Texas. Before this law, compliance histories and violation citations were linked to the physical address of the facility. A provider who accumulated serious deficiencies could close one location, open at a new address, and start with a clean public record. Parents searching the HHSC database would see no history for the new address.

SB 225 closed that loophole. It requires HHSC to associate licenses, registrations, and listings with the responsible operator's name and to preserve specified records involving involuntary suspension or revocation or a refusal to renew in its searchable database. If you close a facility in San Antonio and open one in Dallas, moving does not erase the relevant compliance history.

The Five-Year Lookback Window

Before SB 225, HHSC reviewed only the preceding two years of compliance history when evaluating permit renewals. The law expanded that window to five years.

This matters at renewal time. During the five-year evaluation, HHSC reviews whether you have a pattern of repeated violations — not just isolated incidents. A single corrected deficiency is different from a pattern of the same issue recurring over multiple inspection cycles. If your file shows the same issue flagged in Year 1, Year 3, and Year 4 — say, consistently failing to maintain safe sleep standards or exceeding capacity limits — the pattern can lead HHSC to impose additional conditions or requirements, or refuse renewal.

For new providers, this means your first five years of operation build a record of relevant compliance history that can follow the operator's name. Treating deficiency citations as one-time paperwork to clear, rather than operational problems to actually fix, creates compounding risk at every renewal cycle.

Tummy Time Supervision Standards

SB 225 also required the HHSC executive commissioner to establish specific visual and auditory supervision standards for infants placed on their stomachs while awake. This addressed a gap in prior minimum standards: "tummy time" is a recognized developmental practice recommended by pediatricians, but the previous rules didn't specify how closely a caregiver needed to monitor an infant during prone positioning.

Under the standards that HHSC adopted pursuant to SB 225, when an infant is positioned for tummy time, the caregiver must be able to see and hear the infant, reposition the infant as necessary for comfort and safety, and move the infant immediately to a crib and place the infant on their back if the infant falls asleep.

These standards apply across all permit types — listed family homes, registered child care homes, and licensed child care homes. They are active and enforceable now, not pending implementation.

Why This Matters for New Providers

If you're starting a home daycare in Texas, SB 225 shapes your compliance posture from day one. Three practical implications:

Your record is permanent and portable. Your relevant licensing and enforcement history can follow your name under SB 225, so operating cleanly at one address does not erase relevant history from another. Operating cleanly from the start isn't just about passing the next inspection; it's about building a five-year record that makes renewals and future expansions straightforward.

Parents will look you up. The HHSC searchable database is public. Parents researching your operation can use it to review the records HHSC publishes, including relevant compliance history. A clean record is a competitive advantage over providers carrying visible deficiency histories.

Infant care protocols need documentation. If you plan to care for infants, your written policies need to specifically address tummy time supervision — who supervises, how the caregiver will see and hear the infant, how the caregiver will respond if the infant falls asleep, and where it happens. Be ready to show how your operation follows the applicable standards during an HHSC inspection.

The Texas Home Daycare Licensing Guide covers SB 225 compliance in context — how it affects your application, your record-keeping, and your renewal timeline — alongside the rest of the regulatory sequence.

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