Texas youth camp background check requirements

The statute defines a youth camp loosely, but the rule narrows it to eight conditions that must ALL be met — including at least two specialised outdoor activities per session, four or more consecutive days, four or more hours a day, operating only during school vacation periods, and no more than 120 days a year. Many programmes that look like camps fall outside it, most often because they run outside school vacation or offer only one outdoor activity. Run the DSHS qualification package before assuming you need a licence.

• Tex. Health & Safety Code § 141.002(5)
• 25 TAC § 265.11(30)
• DSHS licence qualification package

Day camps are inside the definition and are licensed, at lower fees than residential. Religious activities are named expressly in the statute, so there is no general church exemption — only an extremely narrow waiver requiring seven conditions including 30+ years of operation, a single camp of seven days or fewer, and a county of population 4,000 to 4,350. Higher-education campus programmes are separately exempt.

• Tex. Health & Safety Code §§ 141.002, 141.0021, 141.0025

The screening mandate sits in the rule, not the statute. All adult staff and adult volunteers, plus any other adult who will have unsupervised contact with campers, need two checks before that contact begins: a criminal background check against a criminal history database based on the person’s residences, and a sex-offender registration check. Both are ANNUAL. Fingerprint-based FBI checks are not required — a real divergence from Florida. J-1 international staff are expressly covered. Records must be produced to DSHS within two business days and retained two years past the person’s last day.

• 25 TAC § 265.12(f), (k)

A camp shall not employ or permit unsupervised contact for convictions or deferred adjudications under Penal Code Title 5 (offences against the person, excluding a Class C assault), Title 6 (offences against the family), robbery, public indecency, stalking, criminal solicitation of a minor, or failure to report aggravated sexual assault of a child. A second, discretionary tier covers other felonies and certain misdemeanours in the past ten years — and if you hire anyway, two or more executive staff must sign a written suitability evaluation for the file.

• 25 TAC § 265.12(g), (h)

You may not employ or accept the volunteer service of anyone in a position involving contact with campers unless they completed an approved sexual abuse and child molestation training and examination within the preceding two years, or complete yours during their first workweek under supervision. The rule sets a minimum of one hour, at least 25 exam questions and a 70% pass mark. Only DSHS-approved courses count, and only those with a YC prefix — CPM-prefixed courses are for campus programmes, not camps.

• Tex. Health & Safety Code § 141.0095
• 25 TAC § 265.12(i)
• DSHS approved training list

Ages 4 to 5 require 1:5; ages 6 to 8, 1:6; ages 9 to 14, 1:8; ages 15 to 17, 1:10. These sit alongside the general rule of one adult supervisor per ten children, 1:25 for sedentary all-camp activities, with the director excluded from the count at camps over 50 campers. One warning: several AI-generated summaries circulating online give 1:8 for ages 4 to 6 and 1:10 for 7 to 12. Those figures are wrong. The adopted rule text is above.

• 25 TAC §§ 265.32, 265.12(b)

A residential camp initial licence moved from $750 to between $2,150 and $21,000 depending on annual camper numbers; a day camp initial licence from $250 to between $950 and $4,000. Renewals rose comparably. Budget at the new figures, not the old ones. The 2026 season application window ran 2 February to 31 March, so diary next season’s window now.

• 25 TAC § 265.28(c)