The Child and Adult Care Food Program, or CACFP, is the largest federal nutrition program for childcare, providing nutritious foods and beverages to over 4.5 million children nationally. Nutrition Policy Institute researchers interviewed family childcare home provider CACFP participants, their sponsors and family recipients in 2023-2024 to understand impacts of temporary increases to CACFP reimbursement rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show the higher reimbursements and elimination of tiered reimbursements positively impacted providers’ food budgets and the quality of food served to young children in their care, yet many still struggled with barriers to accessing CACFP, including administrative burdens, inadequate reimbursements despite the higher rate, and strict regulations. Families reported valuing the CACFP for providing a variety of high-quality foods. Findings suggest eliminating tiered reimbursements and increasing the CACFP reimbursement rates while reducing participation barriers can facilitate program participation. Findings were published in the journal Public Health Nutrition by Kassandra Bacon, Danielle Lee, Celeste Felix, Reka Vasicsek, and Lorrene Ritchie from NPI, in collaboration with Samantha Kay Daleiden-Marshall and Elyse Homel Vitale from the CACFP Roundtable and Susan Matias from the University of California, Berkeley. This project was funded by Grant #283-5102 from Healthy Eating Research.
