Sponsors have the responsibility to monitor the operations of their facilities.

Sponsor Monitoring Reviews

Each sponsor must provide adequate supervisory and operational personnel for the effective management and monitoring of the program at all of their facilities. Each sponsor must provide pre-approval visits, training, and ongoing monitoring of the facilities it oversees.

Pre-Approval Visits

Visits to each new facility to discuss program benefits and verify that the proposed food service does not exceed the capability of the facility.

Training

Key staff from all sponsored facilities must be trained on program duties and responsibilities prior to the beginning of program operations. At a minimum, such training must include instruction appropriate to the level of staff experience and duties on program meal patterns, meal counts, claims submission and review procedures, recordkeeping requirements, reimbursement system, and civil rights compliance.

Monitoring Review Visits

Each facility under the sponsor’s jurisdiction must be monitored for CACFP compliance. The sponsor must document all reviews and retain them in the sponsor location identified in the Management Plan.

Sponsors must conduct three monitoring review visits for each facility every year**:

• At least two of the three reviews must be unannounced; however, Department of Health and Senior Services-Community Food and Nutrition Assistance (DHSS-CFNA) recommends that all monitoring visits be unannounced.
• The timing of the unannounced reviews should be varied in a way that would ensure that they are unpredictable to the sponsored facility.
• At least one unannounced monitoring visit must be conducted during a meal service.
• The unannounced reviews should also vary the type of meal service that is reviewed.
• If a facility operates on weekends or holidays, one review must be conducted each year on weekends or holidays when claiming meals under these conditions.
• No more than six months may lapse between monitoring visits.
• The sponsor must review all new facilities within the first four weeks of program operation.
• All monitoring visits must be documented on the Sponsored Centers Site Visit Report – Review by Sponsor form (CACFP-404) or a form approved by DHSS-CFNA.
• The sponsor must follow up with facilities noted as having problems during monitoring visits.
• The follow-up visit must be conducted no less than one week after the initial finding, and the visit must be documented.

**Sponsors that operate the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and CACFP afterschool care meals may follow the CACFP monitoring schedule year-round. If sponsors choose to follow the CACFP monitoring schedule year-round, one of the three annual reviews must occur during the summer. The review for SFSP requirements includes the review of a meal service, and the review must be unannounced. The two reviews for CACFP requirements must occur during the school year; at least one must include the review of a meal service, and at least one must be unannounced.

Reconciliation of Meal Counts

As part of the monitoring review visits, a sponsor must examine the meal counts recorded by the sponsored facility for five consecutive days during the current and /or prior claiming period. For each day examined, the reviewer will compare meal count records to attendance records to reconcile those numbers to the number of suppers and/or snacks or other meals recorded on the meal count records to determine if meal counts were accurate. A five-day reconciliation of attendance/meal count verification is included in the Sponsored Centers Site Visit Report – Review by Sponsor form (CACFP-404).