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The Child and Adult Care Food Program
A Building Block For The Future

The Child and Adult Care Food Program is a key source of support for child care in family child care homes, child care centers and Head Start Programs. The program provides reimbursement for food and meal preparation cost, ongoing training in the nutritional needs of children and food safety, and onsite assistance in meeting the program's strong nutritional requirements.

The program is administered at the national level by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At the state level the State Department of Education or Child Nutrition administers the program to child care centers and through local sponsoring organizations to family child care providers. Across the country, nearly 40,000 child care centers and 175,000 family child care providers working with 1,150 sponsors use the Child and Adult Care Food Program to provide high quality nutrition and learning experiences for two and one half million children.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program is a well-documented success:

The Families and Work Institute's Study of Children in Family Child Care and Relative Care, cited participation in the Child Care Food Program as one of the major factors influencing quality care, reporting that 87 percent of the family child care homes considered to be providing good quality child care participated in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

The National Center for Children in Poverty's report, In The Neighborhood: Programs that Strengthen Family Day Care for Low-Income Families, cited the Child and Adult Care Food Program as one of the important supports for long-term success in building strong family child care for low-income families.

The U.S. General Accounting Office's report, Promoting Quality in Family Child Care, cited the effectiveness of the program: "Because of its unique combination of resources, training, and oversight, experts believe the food program is one of the most effective vehicles for reaching family child care providers and enhancing the care they provide."

The Center for Community Change's guidebook, Linking Human Services and Economic Development, notes that "on a practical level, sponsorship of the Child and Adult Care Food Program is one of the most important services a support program could offer."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Evaluation of the Child and Adult Care Food Program found that children in the Child and Adult Care Food Program received meals that were nutritionally superior to those served to children in child care settings without the Child and Adult Care Food Program.

The Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a study, Dietary Intake of Children In Urban Day Care Centers, comparing the intake of children at a center using CACFP versus a nonparticipating center and found that children at the CACFP center had significantly higher intakes of many key nutrients, including protein, minerals, and vitamins, and consumed significantly more servings of milk and vegetables, with fewer servings of fats and sweets, than the children at the non- participating center. Children from the participating center also had fewer days of illness than children from the non-participating center.

The Child and Adult Care Food Program is a key building block because of its importance in maintaining and creating quality affordable child care, which allows children to develop fully, prepares them to enter school "ready-to-learn" and assists low-income parents in maintaining employment.

For more information contact Geri Henchy at ghenchy@frac.org.