The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federal entitlement program that reimburses care providers for serving nutritious meals and snacks to children and adults in their care. The CACFP is used in five care settings: family home daycare centers, group childcare centers (including Head Start sites), after-school programs, emergency shelters, and adult daycare centers.

During the fall of 2003, the Hunger Task Force conducted an assessment of the CACFP in Milwaukee County. Anecdotal evidence had suggested that the CACFP was greatly underutilized in Milwaukee County and that CACFP participation was decreasing. Full implementation of the CACFP could lead to a decrease in the poverty in Milwaukee County. A comprehensive assessment of CACFP use in Milwaukee County would inform and direct Hunger Task Force's advocacy and outreach work related to this important child nutrition program, which, when well-utilized can effectively plug gaps in our food system not covered by other federal nutrition programs.

Hunger Task Force's assessment study consisted of:

1) A survey project of CACFP participants in family home daycare and group childcare center settings. Surveys were sent to 1,255 family home daycare providers and 61 group childcare centers. 28.1 percent of family home daycare providers and 54.1 percent of group childcare center providers responded to our survey.

2) Conducting over 40 interviews with program participants and administrators from all five program settings.

3) A mapping project depicting participating CACFP family home daycare centers and group childcare centers.

Program-wide findings from this assessment project include:

**Overall, CACFP providers have positive feelings about their participation in the program. This sentiment was strongest among family home daycare providers. Participating care providers seem to have positive feelings towards CACFP participation because of the program benefits.

**The CACFP is an important financial and informational resource for all types of care providers. Program stakeholders find that the benefits of participation in the program outweigh the negatives.

**A program's participation in the CACFP helps to strengthen the quality of care provided. This is especially important for low-income children.

**Children benefit from the CACFP because they are able to receive nutritious meals and develop life-long eating habits.

**The CACFP has become expensive to operate as increasing administrative and reporting requirements have not been matched by a proportional increase in the reimbursement rate. Participating programs find the annual contract renewal process especially burdensome.

**There is a need for more outreach to educate and attract non-participating care providers to the CACFP.

**The age limit for serving meals (12 years) is a problem for after-school programs and emergency shelters serving Milwaukee County.

Based upon the findings of our assessment study, Hunger Task Force has made a variety of program simplification, outreach, policy, and administrative recommendations to improve and expand CACFP utilization in Milwaukee County. First, we believe CACFP administration can be streamlined and simplified through technological improvements. Initial investments in technological infrastructure will lead to long-term savings. Second, we think that DPI and sponsoring organizations should work with community organizations to conduct follow-up outreach with non-participating care providers. Finally, we support changes in CACFP eligibility regulations in order to allow after-school programs and emergency shelters to claim reimbursements for meals served to children through age 18. More information on our recommendations can be found in the Recommendations Section on page 49.