The Child and Adult Care Food Program: Evaluation of State Agency Websites
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Report Publish Date: June 2022
This evaluation report examines the relationship between state agency websites’ quality and user-friendliness and childcare provider participation in the USDA’s Child and Adult Care Food Program, or CACFP.
Primary Takeaways
The researchers did not find a strong connection between the quality of a state agency’s CACFP websites and the level of CACFP participation in that state.
Overview and Objectives
CACFP is a federal food assistance program that reimburses childcare facilities for nutritious food they serve to children in their care. The program is associated with improved diet for children and can help families save money on food. But many childcare providers who are eligible to participate in the program do not.
State agencies administer the program. The authors wanted to know whether states with better, more user-friendly CACFP websites also have higher participation in CACFP.
Hypothesis or Approach
The authors used a tool created by Harvard University researchers to develop a scorebook that they used to assess information, application materials, memos, trainings, and nutrition resources on the agency's websites, as well as their layout. The authors expected to find a link between website scores and participation rates.
How This Influences Change
While the researchers didn’t find a link between CACFP website quality and states’ participation rates, additional research might unearth factors that do increase participation.
Research: Go Deeper
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federally funded food assistance program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) benefiting children at risk for food insecurity and poor diet. CACFP reimburses participating childcare facilities for free, reduced-price, or paid rates depending on the enrolled children’s family income. To be reimbursed, CACFP-participating programs must serve food that meets nutrition standards that encourage a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, whole grains and limited added sugar and saturated fats. CACFP participation has been associated with higher nutrition quality of meals and improved children’s dietary intake. It can also help families by saving up to $33.15 (in FY2021/2022) in weekly food costs per child and provides financial support from reimbursements and free nutrition training to participating sites. Despite its advantages, CACFP is not used by many eligible childcare providers, and little is known about their motivation to participate in CACFP.
At the University of Connecticut, we conducted a national study to assess participation in CACFP across states, with the goal of improving access to CACFP for children in need. We collected CACFP participation data to identify participation rates, patterns, and predictors of CACFP access. State agency CACFP website quality is potentially one important factor influencing CACFP access in each state. Ease-of-use, availability, and clarity of online resources are likely very important for new and existing CACFP programs, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior research at Harvard University studied user-friendliness of licensing state agencies “by assessing availability and quality of resources for healthy childcare settings.” Their tool informed the development of our CACFP website assessment scorebook, described below. We anticipated a positive association between state agency CACFP website scores and state CACFP participation rates collected in our research for licensed childcare centers.
University of Connecticut, June 2022
Research Team
This study and report was conducted and created by the following people.
- McCann M
- Prager J
- Andreyava T
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