Invest in Children. Congress must make substantial new investments in child nutrition programs. A $10 billion investment (an additional $1billion per year) would enable authorizing committees to make critical improvements in these programs. Additionally, Congress must continue to fully fund WIC during the annual appropriations process to allow the program to serve all eligible women, infants, and children.
Improve Access. Families are unable to access benefits for eligible children if a program does not operate in their community. Congress should increase the number of breakfast, summer, and afterschool sites and explore alternative models to connect hungry children with food during the summer:
- Explore alternative models for reaching children without access to summer food sites, such as increasing children's SNAP/food stamp benefits in the summer or providing WIC-style vouchers for the purchase of nutritious foods.
- Provide outreach, technical assistance, and start-up funding to potential sponsors to help them establish breakfast, summer, and afterschool sites in underserved communities.
- Provide transportation assistance to help children access out-of-school feeding programs like summer and afterschool.
- Expand the CACFP supper pilot nationwide so at-risk afterschool programs can provide supper to children whose parents work late into the evening.
Increase Participation. Not all eligible children enroll in the programs, whether because of burdensome application procedures, social stigma, or other barriers to participation. Congress should simplify enrollment procedures and encourage school districts to find creative solutions to participation barriers:
- Expand cross-program direct certification to include Medicaid so children in that program are automatically connected with school meal programs. Encourage states to maximize the use of direct certification to more seamlessly enroll SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid children in school meals.
- Increase the certification period for children in the WIC program to one year to reduce the number of office visits and make it easier for parents to keep their children enrolled in the program.
- Help high-poverty schools provide universal free breakfast and eliminate reduced-price fees.
- Support the use of creative solutions – such as grab-and-go breakfasts, mobile SFSP, and satellite WIC clinics – to overcome participation barriers.
- Improve outreach so eligible families are aware of what programs and benefits are available to them.
Encourage Progress Toward Ending Child Hunger. President Obama set the ambitious goal of ending child hunger by 2015. With significant, targeted federal investments, this goal is achievable, but it requires a commitment from the states. Congress should encourage states and school districts to be active partners in the 2015 goal by setting targets, providing incentives, and rewarding progress:
- Encourage states and communities to maximize their use of child nutrition programs by providing rewards for increasing program sites and participation, especially in high-poverty areas, and offering incentives for overcoming participation barriers for low-income students.
- Provide grants to states and communities to conduct an assessment of child hunger and implement a plan for ending child hunger. Require periodic progress reports and reward demonstrated progress.
Improve Benefit Adequacy. Our first priority is ensuring that children have enough to eat, but nutritious whole grains and fresh produce are essential to giving children a healthy start. Congress ought to provide children not just with enough food, but the right food:
- Base nutrition standards for WIC food packages and school meals on scientific data from the Institute of Medicine and USDA's Dietary Guidelines.
- Reward schools that improve the nutritional quality of meals with higher reimbursement rates.
