CACFP Manual for Emergency Shelters

Sponsoring organizations (SOs) oversee the operations of two or more facilities. SOs have additional responsibilities.

Sponsoring Organization Reviews

Sponsoring Organization Additional Review Requirements

A sponsoring organization (SO) is a Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) contractor responsible for two or more facilities. Each SO must provide adequate supervisory and operational personnel for the effective management and monitoring of the program at all facilities it sponsors. Each SO must provide pre-approval visits, training, and ongoing monitoring to the facilities they oversee.

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 SO’s jurisdiction must be monitored for CACFP compliance. The SO must document all reviews and retain them in the sponsor location identified in the Management Plan. These monitoring recordkeeping requirements do not apply to independent facilities.

SOs 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 in the evening and/or on weekends or holidays, one review must be conducted each year on weekends, holidays, or during the supper meal when claiming meals under these conditions.
• No more than six months may lapse between monitoring visits.
• The SO 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 that have been 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.

Reconciliation Of Meal Counts

As part of the monitoring review visits, an SO 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 both attendance and enrollment records to reconcile those numbers to the number of breakfasts, lunches, suppers, and/or snacks recorded on the meal count records to determine if meal counts were accurate. A five-day reconciliation of attendance/enrollment/meal count verification is included in the Sponsored Centers Site Visit Report – Review by Sponsor form (CACFP-404).

Sponsoring Organization’s Household Contact Requirement

Household contacts, sometimes referred to as parent audits or parent contacts, are required to be made by SOs when a child care center under a SO’s jurisdiction is suspected of CACFP mismanagement.

The SO will use the survey form developed by DHSS-CFNA or develop a form of their choosing to collect information from parents. The survey method, mail, phone, or email, chosen by the SO to contact parents is up to the SO to determine. It is strongly recommended that parents be informed of the procedure to be used to contact them when the parent completes the child’s enrollment form.

Parents should be strongly encouraged to support SO efforts to contact them, as the outcome of the contacts can impact the quality of care provided to their child. Centers shall be required to cooperate in the event of a parent audit. If a parent informs a center that he/she has been contacted by the SO or state or federal officials, the center must encourage the parent to cooperate fully. Any effort on the part of a child care center to interfere in any way with a household contact would be the basis for a declaration of serious deficiency.

To assure a good response to a household contact, the SO shall survey parents as follows:

• 10 or fewer children enrolled: 100% of parents surveyed.
• 11 to 30 children enrolled: 75% of parents surveyed.
• 31 to 50 children enrolled: 50% of parents surveyed.
• 51 to 100 children enrolled: 25% of parents surveyed.
• 101 or more children enrolled: 20% of parents surveyed.

Efforts made to contact a parent by any means, including phone, must be documented.

SOs shall strive for a 50% response rate on household contacts, particularly for centers with 20 or fewer children enrolled. If a 50% response rate is not achieved for centers with 20 or fewer children enrolled, the SO must conduct additional follow-up with parents to obtain the necessary responses. Response rates for centers with larger enrollments may be less than 50%; however, a minimum of eight parent responses is required.