Early Childhood Education and Family Services Portal

NewMexicoKids Resource and Referral

Find Child Care & Resources

To find child care in New Mexico, please visit the ECECD Child Care Finder at childcare.ececd.nm.gov/search or, to receive a free custom referral from a Family Specialist, call the Early Childhood Services Center at the University of New Mexico at 1 (505) 277 - 7900 in the Albuquerque area or by calling 1 (800) 691 - 9067 for outside the Albuquerque area.

Verify that a home-based provider is registered!

New Mexico Families who are looking for home-based child care can use this tool to verify if a childcare provider is registered with the State of New Mexico.

Mario's Search

The State of New Mexico wants to ensure that families have all of the relevant information they need to make an informed decision when choosing care for their children, including access to criminal background information. Any in-home child care provider licensed or registered by the state has at minimum undergone a Child Care Health and Safety Orientation, CPR/First Aid training, a background check for every adult living in the home, and an inspection. Please use the following look-up tool to make sure that the in-home care provider you are considering is licensed or registered with the New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department. You can also use the state and national databases at the bottom of the page to check the criminal background of any provider you are considering. To learn about the Mandatory COVID Response Training, visit the NMELS.

Mario Archuleta was barely three years old when, on October 11, 2002, his child care provider purposely scalded his hands with hot water after a toileting accident. Mario spent two weeks at the UNMH burn trauma unit. Doctors removed skin from his thighs to graft to his hands during a five-hour operation. He spent a year in rehabilitation. His child care provider pled guilty to second degree child abuse and neglect and was sentenced to nine years in the penitentiary.

To help other families avoid the pain and trauma that their family experienced, Mario’s parents asked that the State of New Mexico establish a database of registered child care home providers who have obtained background check eligibility, under the relevant background check regulations. They also asked that parents have access to other state and national databases to check on their provider’s background. You can access these databases below.

For more information on selecting child care providers, read the Parent’s Guide to Selecting Quality Child Care.

To search for child care for your child, please visit visit the ECECD Child Care Finder at childcare.ececd.nm.gov/search.

To apply for Child Care Assistance to help pay for child care, please visit Am I Eligible.

Note to Families: If the in-home care provider who you are considering for your family does NOT appear in this database, please call 1-800-691-9067 for more information about child care in your area.

Note to Providers: If you are licensed or registered with ECECD and your name is not listed in the database, please call 1-800-691-9067 so we can make an update. If you would like to become a licensed or registered in-home provider, please click here.

1 NewMexicoKids.org and the University of New Mexico Early Childhood Services Center does not store private information you enter into our site. We do not store complete address information when you search. We do store city, county, and zip code information to better improve our services. We do track how many searches our system receives in a given time period and we may store device information like IP address for spam protection, analytics, and verification.
2 A Background Check for a direct provider of care in a Registered (Non-Licensed) Home consists of a review of available state criminal histories. Beginning in 2001, the background check also includes a screen of ECECD’s child/adult abuse/neglect database; these are reviewed to determine whether disqualifying information exists. Background check eligibility is determined by and in accordance with criteria set forth and promulgated at Title 8, Chapter 8, Part 3 of the New Mexico Administrative Code, Governing Background Checks and Employment History Verification.
3 The databases listed here do not guarantee that a provider who has obtained a background check will not commit an abusive act in the future. Parents should always observe prior to enrolling their child and should occasionally drop in unannounced to monitor the daily operations of the program.