Share Our Strength Urges Passage of “Improving Child Nutrition Integrity & Access Act of 2016”

Washington, D.C. – Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry will consider the “Improving Child Nutrition Integrity & Access Act of 2016.” Share Our Strength urges the Committee to pass this bill and for the full Senate to quickly take up the legislation.

Under the bipartisan leadership of Chairman Pat Roberts and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow, the legislation advances the child nutrition reauthorization process in 2016. It is a great step forward for hungry children, containing the strongest improvements to the summer meals program in more than 40 years. It also significantly strengthens other child nutrition programs that effectively combat childhood hunger in America.

One in 5 children in the United States today struggle with hunger. The summer meals program is designed to reach kids with necessary nutrition when they aren’t in school, but the program needs to be strengthened in order to reach more of the kids who need help. (Currently, only about 14% of kids in need are successfully connecting to the program to receive meals during the summer months.)

Among its strengths, the “Improving Child Nutrition Integrity & Access Act of 2016” will give communities and states more options to effectively feed children in need.  The bill does this by:

• Streamlining the way the summer meals program and after-school meal programs work together, allowing communities to cut through unnecessary bureaucracy and serve children in need throughout the year.
• Authorizing the Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (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.
• Allowing 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.
• Providing 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.

The legislation also includes improvements to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), allowing new options to reach young and vulnerable children, who often fall through the gaps, with the critical nutrition they need.

“Taken together, these provisions provide communities with the flexibility to overcome the most significant barriers that prevent them from reaching kids with the meals they need,” says Lucy Melcher, Associate Director of Advocacy for No Kid Hungry. “This bipartisan achievement helps to ensure hungry children get the healthy food they need to grow up strong, regardless of their zip code or the time of year.”

For more information on the proposed bipartisan reforms to the summer meals program, watch this video from No Kid Hungry.

To talk to Lucy Melcher or other experts about childhood hunger in America, contact Christy Felling at 202-649-4340 or cfelling@strength.org.