Finding 401836 (2023-002)

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Requirement
E
Questioned Costs
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Year
2023
Accepted
2024-06-25

AI Summary

  • Core Issue: The Sponsoring Organization failed to monitor sponsored facilities as required, with only 20% receiving the necessary reviews.
  • Impacted Requirements: CACFP Policy 04-2006 mandates at least three onsite reviews per year, including two unannounced visits.
  • Recommended Follow-Up: Implement timely review procedures and hire additional qualified staff to meet monitoring requirements.

Finding Text

Finding: The Sponsoring Organization did not monitor each of its sponsored facilities according to Program requirements. CACFP Policy 04-2006 requires that family day care home providers must be reviewed onsite at least three times per year. Two of the three annual reviews must be unannounced, and must be conducted during the home’s regular hours of day care operation. No more than six months may pass between reviews. Only 20% of the providers selected for testing received the required number of reviews. As a result of this finding, errors within the CACFP program could be occurring and go undetected, and providers may be reimbursed for meals that do not meet program standards. Recommendation: The Sponsoring Organization should implement policies and procedures to ensure all required reviews are performed on a timely basis. In addition, due to the increase in the number of family day care homes the Sponsoring Organization added to their program during the year, the Sponsoring Organization should add additional qualified staff to the monitoring program to ensure all required reviews can be performed.

Corrective Action Plan

Management of the Organization concurs with the audit finding. The Organization signed on several new providers within this fiscal year due to several other sponsoring organizations withdrawing from the CACFP program. As a result, the Organization was not able to perform all the required reviews. This had been discussed with the representative of Indiana Department of Education, Office of School and Community Nutrition (IDOE), the State oversight agency for the CACFP program, who is aware of the issue. In fact, the IDOE requested its own waiver on CACFP reviews performed for the program year October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2023 due to continued labor shortages and lack of both software developers and software companies when there has been an abundance of system changes for the program year. The Organization has already hired an additional staff as a CACFP Specialist who will monitor facilities on a full-time basis. Both the CACFP manager and CACFP Specialist have created a calendar to coordinate with the software used by the provider homes and the Organization to get all monitoring completed.

Categories

Subrecipient Monitoring

Other Findings in this Audit

Programs in Audit

ALN Program Name Expenditures
10.558 Child and Adult Care Food Program $1.27M
16.831 Children of Incarcerated Parents $90,249