How to register an ECD centre, crèche or childminding service

Which kind of programme you run

The rules differ, so the Department asks this first.

• Centre-based: an ECD centre, crèche or educare with more than six children aged 0 to 5 who attend for more than 16 hours a week.
• Childminder: six children or fewer, attending more than 16 hours a week.
• Playgroup, toy library or mobile programme: any number of children attending less than 16 hours a week.

All three register. The law is Chapter 5 of the Children’s Act on partial care facilities and Chapter 6 on ECD programmes, and the regulator since the 2022 function shift is the Department of Basic Education through its provincial departments.

The three stages

1. Apply, and get Bronze. Complete the application on the Department’s eCares system. Upload, for every staff member including the cook, driver and gardener, an ID or passport and a Form 30 National Child Protection Register clearance, or a police clearance for a foreign national. Confirm that the programme meets the fifteen basic health and safety standards. An approved application earns a Bronze certificate valid for one year.
2. Comply, for Silver or Gold. Submit the Silver or Gold application on eCares with the documents below, then prepare for a site visit by a social worker and an environmental health practitioner who check the standards on the ground.
3. Complete. You receive a Silver certificate, which is conditional registration for three years while you close the remaining gaps, or a Gold certificate, full registration for five years, or a refusal notice listing the reasons with one to five months to fix them before a follow-up visit. Periods can differ by province.

The Silver and Gold documents

From the Department’s guide. Some are uploaded on eCares, some are kept at the programme for the social worker to see, and some are both.

• A business plan: programme overview, financial overview with fees, income and monthly expenses, management structure, the daily programme and a discipline policy based on positive guidance and no physical punishment.
• A hand-drawn site layout, the bird’s-eye sketch of the building with rough measurements in metres.
• Founding documents, where you have them: an NPO certificate and constitution, or company documents.
• Health inspection report for Silver, or a health certificate for Gold, from the municipal environmental health practitioner, and the municipal compliance notice.
• Qualifications: for Silver, an ECD qualification at NQF level 1 to 6, an appropriate accredited short course, or proof of at least three years’ experience for the supervisor or a staff member; for Gold, the same for the applicant.
• An implementation plan and an emergency plan, including evacuation.
• The forms the social worker checks on site: staff details and qualifications, menus for each age group, the emergency certificate, and the lease or facility agreement.

The municipal clearances behind it

The province relies on clearances only the municipality can give. Cape Town, which publishes the fullest description, runs them in sequence: development management for land use and building plans, fire and rescue for a fire safety clearance confirming escape routes and equipment, and environmental health for the health clearance, with the outcome sent by SMS and email. The documents you carry to the province are the approved building plan, the zoning certificate, the fire and safety certificate, the environmental health clearance and, where meals are prepared, the food premises certificate. Every municipality has the same four gates even if the counters differ.

The subsidy

Registered Silver and Gold programmes may apply for the per-child-per-day subsidy for children in need. The 2025 budget raised it from R17, where it had been frozen since 2019, to R24 per child per day, with 40 percent earmarked for nutrition, and the 2026 budget kept it at R24 while adding R12.8 billion over three years to bring roughly 300 000 more children into subsidised programmes. Bronze programmes cannot claim it, which is the practical reason to push through to Silver.

What actually goes wrong

• Staff without Form 30 clearances. The clearance is per person and includes the cook and the driver. One missing clearance stalls the whole application.
• Stopping at Bronze. Bronze lapses after a year and does not unlock the subsidy.
• No zoning for a home crèche. A house on a residential stand usually needs consent use before the municipality will issue anything else.
• A business plan with no numbers. The Department asks for fees, income and monthly expenses in writing.
• Failing the site visit on basics. The fifteen basic standards are listed on the eCares application; walk through every one of them before the social worker does.

Frequently asked questions