Congress Lowers Barriers to CACFP by Reducing Paperwork and Extending Eligibility Determinations
Through excellent paperwork reduction provisions and an extension of the duration of area eligibility the 2004 Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act offers some much needed relief from CACFP paperwork burdens. These positive changes include raising the audit disregard, allowing permanent agreements, creating a USDA led paperwork reduction effort and extending the duration of area eligibility from three to five years. These will help to reduce barriers to participation and administration for child care providers, families with child in care, CACFP sponsoring organizations and State CACFP agencies.
Highlights of the Provision
Extends Duration of Tier 1 Eligibility
The new law helps to simplify CACFP participation for family child care
providers and sponsoring organizations by extending family child care
Tier 1 area eligibility from three to five years. Tier 1 eligibility qualifies
the family child care home to receive the low-income reimbursement rates
which are higher. Click here for a USDA memo about this provision. Click
here for a USDA memo about this provision.
Permanent Agreement
Permanent agreements will be allowed in all states between State agencies
and institutions, and between sponsoring organizations and family or group
day care home providers. This can streamline program operations and reduce
paperwork and record keeping for State agencies and sponsoring organizations
and child care providers. (The "agreement" specifies the rights and responsibilities
of each party. The "agreement" is a separate document from the program
"application", which must be renewed at intervals generally between one
and three years.) Click here for a USDA memo about this provision. Click
here for a USDA memo about this provision.
Raise Audit Disregard
The CACFP audit disregard will be raised to make it consistent with the National School Lunch Program disregard (from $100 to $600). Considering the large amount of money that is often involved in a CACFP audit period the current disregard of $100 is an extremely small percentage of the overall claims and it has not been adjusted since1985. The increase in the disregard to $600 will allow State agencies to allow a reasonable margin of error in auditing which will:
- decrease unnecessary paperwork and costs related to the collection of small sums of money and
- facilitate Program administration for State agencies that administer both the NSLP and CACFP.
Paperwork Reduction
This USDA led paperwork reduction effort will examine the feasibility
of reducing paperwork related to regulations and record keeping requirements
for family child care homes, child care centers, State CACFP agencies
and sponsoring organizations participating in CACFP. This will allow CACFP
program operations to be streamlined and made more efficient in a number
of important ways.
Click here for a list of all the Child Nutrition Reauthorization CACFP provisions.
Click here to return to FRAC's Child Nutrition Reauthorization Implementation website.
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Factsheets on Child Nutrition Programs
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Prepared by the Food Research & Action Center, 1875 Connecticut
Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20009; 202-986-2200; www.frac.org