What DECAL FAST is, and why Georgia parents should know about it
On 9 July 2026 Georgia quietly put the licensing file of every child care program in the state online. Almost nobody is using it yet. It is the single most useful tool a parent choosing childcare in this state now has.
DECAL FAST — Family Access to Services & Tools — lives at families.decal.ga.gov. It is run by the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning, the agency that licenses and inspects every program in the state. It is free, it needs no account, and it works on a phone.
What you can actually see
Search by program name, county or ZIP code and you get a card for every licensed program, showing:
- The license number and what kind of license it is — Child Care Learning Center, Family Child Care Learning Home, or a school system program.
- Licensed: Yes, and the current program status — open, closed, or otherwise.
- Quality Rated stars, if the program has been rated. Many have not been.
- Whether the program is enrolled in CAPS, Georgia’s childcare subsidy.
- Address, phone number and daily hours as the state has them on file.
Click through to the details and you reach the inspection history and complaint record. Reading those well is a skill of its own, so we wrote a separate guide to it.
The filters are the useful part
You can narrow by provider type, by schedule — full time, part time, evening and night care, weekends — and by services including meals provided, transportation, summer camp and CAPS enrollment. If you need evening care or transport, that filter will save you a dozen phone calls.
There is a Spanish-language version, and an assistant called CALi that will walk you through it.
One thing that will trip you up
Home-based programs are listed under the provider’s legal name, not the business name. Search DECAL FAST for “Acorn & Oak” and you will get nothing. We are listed as Hughes, Perla — license FR-68211. The same is true of most family child care homes in Columbia County, so if a program you like seems to be missing, search the owner’s surname or the ZIP code instead of the name on the sign.
Our file
Here is ours, so you do not have to go looking: families.decal.ga.gov/provider/68211. Family Child Care Learning Home, license FR-68211, Martinez, status open.
When the center opens in December it will have its own Child Care Learning Center license, and we will publish that number here and in the footer of every page on this site the day it is issued.
Why we are telling you about a tool that can be used against us
Because a parent who checks and finds nothing alarming trusts what they found far more than anything we could write about ourselves. And because the programs that would rather you did not look are exactly the ones worth looking at.
Check us, then come and see us
Read the file first. Then book a tour and ask about anything in it.
Book a Tour