Optimal publishes Child and Adult Care Food Program Assessment of Sponsor Tiering Determination for 2015
Date: February 21, 2017
Location: College Park, MD
Optimal Solutions recently released the Annual Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Sponsor Tiering Determination Assessment as part of its contract through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) that was awarded in 2015.
The CACFP plays a vital role in FNS’s efforts to ensure that all children and adults have access to nutritious food to improve and maintain their nutritional status and health. Through reimbursing for meals and snacks, CACFP helps improve the quality, affordability, and accessibility of day care for low-income families.
The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 and the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 require all federal agencies to identify programs and activities that may be susceptible to erroneous payments and to estimate and report annually to the U.S. Congress the value of such erroneous payments. To meet these requirements, FNS has conducted assessments of CACFP since 2005 to estimate the number of Family Day Care Homes (FDCHs) misclassified by sponsoring agencies into the wrong reimbursement tier. This is the eleventh assessment of CACFP and covers the program year 2015 from August 2014 through July 2015.
Meals served in CACFP FDCHs are reimbursed according to a two-tiered system in which each tier has a different reimbursement rate. FDCHs are eligible for reimbursement at higher Tier I rates for all eligible meals if they satisfy either geographic eligibility (based on Census or school data) or provider income/program eligibility. Meals reimbursed at Tier I rates that should have been reimbursed at Tier II rates result in overpayment, and meals reimbursed at Tier II rates that should have been reimbursed at Tier I rates result in underpayments.
Findings of the study are available on USDA FNS’s website. For more information regarding the report, please visit https://www.fns.usda.gov/child-and-adult-care-food-program-cacfp-assessment-sponsor-tiering-determinations-2015.