Child Care Center Meals

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FILLING THE CACFP GAP

The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federal child nutrition program that helps to ensure that children in child care settings get the best possible nutrition. Participating centers receive federal reimbursements based on meals served.

Eligible child care centers serve infants, toddlers, pre-school, and/or school age – up to age 12. CACFP also serves healthy meals to qualifying non-residential adults.

Hunger Impact Partners focuses on the 1,433 child care centers that are eligible to participate in CACFP but that are not currently serving meals.

The chart below shows there were 415,891 in this age group who were struggling with food insecurity in 2023.

Based on our Child Nutrition Index (CNI) data – which combines and analyzes State data from Minnesota departments of Health and Human Services – we concentrate our efforts on the nearly 90,000 children missing from WIC enrollment and the Educational Benefit records

The COVID pandemic had an adverse effect on the number of meals served. Many child care centers had to suspend operations during times when families were required to shelter in place. A few were able to use the CACFP COVID waivers to offer meals but not at the levels we saw in 2019.

We are working to build back to the 2019 levels. The chart below shows 2023 child care center meals are lagging with 2.5 million meals less than served in 2019.

When Hunger Impact Partners began working on this initiative in 2015, there were 345 childcare center sites serving CACFP meals. By 2023, there were 648 such sites. 

Hunger Impact Partners fueled this expansion by investments in infrastructure and technology, adding 58 new sites between 2022 and 2023.

Although there was an increase in the number of sites in recent years, the number of meals being served decreased for numerous reasons.

Among those, one is the decline in population for children under age 4. Another key factor was the reporting of inflated meal counts in a fraud scheme that exploited two federally funded nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our FOCUS

The work of Hunger Impact Partners focuses on the 1,433 sites eligible to participate in CACFP but are not serving meals.

Our CNI tells us that we can reach nearly 40,000 children through 441 sites by working with the 41 Community Action Agencies, 16 national franchises, and 229 community groups, or 31 percent of the 1,433 sites not participating in CACFP.

We continue to concentrate on eliminating this gap by working with our stakeholders.

With our stakeholders, we are:

  • Supporting focus group sessions with Somali, Latino and African American families and providers to better understand administration obstacles and regulatory compliance.
  • Developing strategies for raising program awareness of available enrollment process support.
  • Identifying and helping to qualify sites through proprietary data analysis.
  • Developing and supporting sponsors through an evolving partner network of hub organizations.
  • Building success stories and awareness, as well as facilitating nutrition education, meal planning and service.
  • Promoting the centers participating in meal programs by listing them on the mobile app from October 1 to June 30.

Our GOAL

Provide 2.5 million more meals by increasing enrollment of licensed child care centers

Methodology for targeting child care centers

1. We download from Minnesota Department of Human Services the database of all licensed child care centers in the State of Minnesota. This provides us with:

  • License Number
  • Physical Address (street, city, zip code)
  • Contact person
  • Licensed capacity
  • License type: Infant (only), Infant Pre-School, Preschool, School-age

2. We use the claims data we receive from the Minnesota Department of Education to determine which child care centers are participating in CACFP.

3. We use the student data from the Minnesota Department of Education to identify neighborhoods with at least 50 percent of the children receiving free- or reduced-price meals and to identify neighborhoods with high concentrations of children of color.

4. We are able then to identify the gap — centers located in neighborhoods with high need (50 percent or more Free and Reduced), high percentage children of color, and those who are not participating in CACFP CCC.

Sources
Minnesota Department of Education Data Reports and Analytics
Minnesota Department of Human Services Licensing Information Lookup
Head Start Center Locator

 

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