About IllinoisDaycares.com

IllinoisDaycares.com is a searchable, filterable, shareable map of licensed daycare providers across Illinois, built from public Illinois Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) Sunshine licensing data. I made it to make it easier for my wife and I to find daycares in our neighborhood, and I hope you find it useful as well.

The state registry is great for lookups but doesn’t offer mapping—so we couldn’t easily see what was nearby when we were searching. This site is independent (not affiliated with DCFS) and is meant to help families explore providers by location, facility type, and other fields from the source listings.

Data sources

Loading export date…

• Provider listings originate from the state’s public tools, including the DCFS Sunshine provider lookup. A script in this repository refreshes a statewide export (ZIP partial match on the digit 6, which matches Illinois ZIP codes), normalizes it to CSV, then geocodes addresses for the map.
• Street-level coordinates are resolved with the U.S. Census Bureau Geocoder where possible. Addresses that do not match are placed near the center of the ZIP code with a small deterministic offset so nearby points remain distinguishable.

Map layers

Base maps may include © OpenStreetMap, © CARTO, Esri, and OpenTopoMap contributors (see on-map attributions). “Satellite + streets” overlays imagery with roads and labels for context.

Privacy (map)

Favorites and saved search names you store in the map are kept only in your browser (localStorage). Share links you copy can include your search filters and, if you placed a pin, approximate coordinates and label in the URL.

Disclaimer

This site is not affiliated with DCFS or any provider. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Pins and distances are for exploration only and are not legal, medical, or enrollment advice. Always verify licenses and visit programs in person before making care decisions.

Open source

Source code is available under the MIT License. See the repository README for how to run the data build locally and deploy to GitHub Pages.