A milestone today on Capitol Hill: the Senate Committee on Agriculture passed the bipartisan “Improving Child Integrity & Access Act of 2016,” the child nutrition reauthorization bill which includes important improvements to the summer meals and afterschool meals programs.
This is an important step to have achieved in our work to end childhood hunger in America.
The national summer meals program was created 40 years ago to help students get enough nutrition when school is out of session. When the program works well, it’s a lifeline. Today, however, the program just doesn’t reach a majority of kids in need; of the 22 million kids who receive a free or reduced-price school lunch, only 4 million are getting a summer meal. This legislation will help change that.
Here’s five things you need to know about the Improving Child Integrity & Access Act of 2016:
1. It Improves The Way Communities Reach Kids During The Summer
This bill contains the strongest improvements to how we feed kids during the summer in more than 40 years.
It does this through several key policies.
First, the bill includes the summer EBT program. Under this program, states would have the option to provide low-income families living in specific areas with a grocery store credit during the summer months to purchase nutritious foods, a model that has been proven to reduce the most severe forms of childhood hunger by up to one-third.
Second, the bill allows for offsite consumption of meals in hard-to reach communities or during times of public safety concerns or extreme weather. For example, when accessing a summer meal site is difficult or impossible for children, it would provide the option to deliver meals or allow children to leave a site with a meal for later.
Third, the bill includes a pilot program that gives the option for summer meals sites to offer a third meal to children, ensuring they receive three healthy meals a day during the summer months when they are most at risk of hunger.
Taken together, these provisions allow communities to overcome the most significant barriers that prevent them from reaching kids with the meals they need when they are out of school. They will help us go further, faster, in creating a nation where every hungry child gets the healthy food they need every day, regardless of their zip code or the time of year.
2. It Streamlines Important Nutrition Programs
The Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act streamlines the way the summer meals program and after-school meal programs work together, allowing communities to cut through red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy to better serve children in need throughout the year.
3.It Stops Kids From Falling Into The Gap
The Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act also helps to reach young children who often fall through the gaps in receiving the meals they need. By allowing children up to age 6 who are not enrolled in kindergarten to access the WIC program, the bill ensures the youngest and often most vulnerable children have access to the critical nutrition they need to grow up strong and ready to learn.
4.It Helps Feed Kids In Child Care
The Improving Child Nutrition Integrity and Access Act strengthens the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) by allowing child care centers and homes the option of providing an additional snack to kids who are in care for nine or more hours a day, as well as reducing paperwork and administrative burden for program providers. CACFP provides important health, nutrition, and educational services to children across the country and this provision will ensure kids are getting the healthy meals they need, every day.
5. Next Steps: Continuing to Build Support in the Senate
This is an important step in the process, but there is much more to do before this bill becomes a law. In the upcoming days and weeks, we will be hard at work to capitalize on this momentum in the full Senate as well as in the House of Representatives. This may be a tough road, especially in an election year, but the strong bipartisan support behind this bill is encouraging.
Hungry kids are counting on us. This helps ensure children get the nutrition they need, regardless of their zip code or the time of year. And that helps build a smarter, healthier, more productive generation and stronger nation.
Together, we need to keep momentum high as this bill moves through the House of Representatives and full Senate. Take action today.
