Finding Text
2023-003 – ELIGIBILITY
Federal Program: Child and Adult Care Food Program
Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Assistance Listing Number: 10.558
Grant Award Number and Year: 1/1/2023 – 12/31/2023. No award number available.
Criteria:
According to 7 CFR § 226.2, any individual residing in an emergency shelter may receive meals under the CACFP if he/she is a child (defined as persons aged 18 and under), or if he/she is an adult with a mental or physical handicap. In addition to this requirement, the emergency shelter must serve a majority of its CACFP claimed meals to children. On April 9, 2021, the USDA issued memo CACFP 08-2021 which, due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, allowed emergency shelters to claim 19–24-year-olds as children (thus waiving the disability requirement for young adults under 25). On February 15, 2023, the USDA issued memo CACFP 03-2023 announcing that the waiver under CACFP 08-2021 was expected to end on May 11, 2023. As such, subsequent to May 11, 2023, Saint John's should have ceased counting 19–24-year-olds as children in its CACFP meal counts.
Condition:
We noted during eligibility testing over the Child and Adult Care Food Program that Saint John's was counting adults age 19-24 as children in its CACFP meal counts for the full 2023 year.
Questioned Costs:
No questioned costs.
Cause:
It appears that personnel at Saint John's responsible for overseeing the CACFP program were not aware that the COVID-19 waiver was ending or were aware but did not relay that information to staff members performing meal counts.
Effect:
The possible effect is that Saint John's claimed more meals than were allowable for the period of 2023 after May 11th. Based on the client's records, we were not able to definitively quantify the effect on meals reported.
Recommendation:
We recommend that Saint John's assess its policies and procedures related to the CACFP program. This should include assessing its procedures for monitoring changes in the program requirements and communicating those changes with relevant staff. Additionally, this could include assessing its procedures around updating CACFP meal count sheets periodically and checking for individuals who age-out, or otherwise change status, and updating count sheets accordingly.
Organization’s Corrective Action Plan:
Refer to Organization’s Corrective Action Plan below.