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CACFP Requirements

Once enrolled in the CACFP, you must comply with the following requirements:

• You must post the current week’s worth of menus in your child care facility.
• You must keep daily attendance records and daily records of meals served in your facility complete with parent signatures.
• You can claim two meals and one snack, or one meal and two snacks per child, per day.
• The children in your care must be fed the correct nutritional meal patterns (or types of foods) and the food served must comply with the USDA guidelines for What’s in a Meal?.
• The meals you serve must be at no separate or additional charge to the parents, in fact you may not charge the parents in the name of the CACFP for any reason.
• You must serve all children in your program, regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability.
• You must attend four hours of CACFP approved training per year: two hours of required face-to-face training on Program Management, and two hours of an elective nutrition training. All four hours of training are free and count towards your annual licesning requirement.

For updated and additional regulations, visit the USDA website.

Monitoring Reviews

Participants of the CACFP will receive three monitoring reviews per year. The first two reviews will be unannounced: the first will check for compliance with USDA guidelines, and the second will check for safety and sanitation compliance and will include a fun, hands-on activity with the children. The third visit is scheduled and will evaluate your menus. It is required that a meal be seen at two of the reviews, and also that two of the visits be unannounced. That is why sticking to your mealtime schedule is so important! Therefore, if you and the children are away from the child care during your first or second visit on a scheduled trip somewhere, the third review will be unannounced.