Richmond day care insurance often covers community-based centers, faith-affiliated programs and family child care operations growing into licensed centers. Each of those sits differently with carriers, and the wrong application can produce a decline that follows the account around.
We place these programs with markets that write child care regularly, and we make the abuse and professional coverage explicit rather than buried in a package.
What day care insurance needs to include
Child care coverage is built around three exposures: an injury on your premises, an allegation involving a child, and an employment dispute with staff. General liability handles the first. Abuse and molestation coverage — with its own limit, not shared with general liability — handles the second, and it is what licensing agencies, landlords and parents increasingly ask to see.
Professional liability responds to supervision and care decisions, which is a different question from a playground injury and needs its own wording.
Abuse and molestation coverage: read the limit
Many package policies include a small sublimit, defense-inside-limits, and a claims-made trigger. For a licensed center that combination is thin. Ask for the limit in writing, ask whether defense costs erode it, and ask whether coverage continues for allegations reported after a former employee leaves.
Field trips, transportation and off-site care
Any time children leave the building, your exposure changes. If staff drive children in personal vehicles, hired and non-owned auto is essential. If you own a van, it needs a commercial auto policy with the right seating and driver class — a personal auto policy will not respond.
Staff workers' comp and employment practices
Lifting children, slips, and illness exposure drive comp claims. Turnover is high in the sector, which also makes employment practices liability worth its cost: wrongful termination and wage-and-hour allegations are common and expensive to defend even when you are right.
What we see in Richmond
Programs operating inside a church, community center or school need the host organization's insurance and their own to line up. Who is named, who is primary, and who insures the building are questions worth settling in writing before the school year starts.
Transportation is common in Richmond programs that pick up from schools, and it needs owned or non-owned auto coverage depending on whose vehicles are used.
Questions Richmond owners ask us
We operate inside a church. Do we need our own policy?
Yes. The host's policy covers the host. Your program needs its own general liability, abuse coverage, professional liability and workers' compensation, with the host typically named as additional insured.
Can a family child care home get commercial coverage?
Yes, and it should — homeowners policies exclude business operations. Licensed home-based care is written on a small commercial or specialty child care form.
What does it cost?
Small licensed centers commonly fall in the low thousands per year for liability including abuse coverage, with workers' compensation quoted separately off payroll. Enrollment, transportation and claims history drive the range.
Get a child care quote for your Richmond business
Send your license type, enrollment, and payroll and we'll start by checking your abuse and molestation limit. We are an independent brokerage based in Antioch, serving Contra Costa County and the wider Bay Area. CA License #0D90958.
Other cities we write this coverage in
See our full Human Services Insurance overview.