The national school lunch and school breakfast programs play a critical role in meeting the nutritional needs of millions of low-income children. But what are these children eating during the long summer vacation, or when they are spending three or more hours each weekday in an after school program?

Among all of the major child nutrition programs up for Congressional scrutiny and reauthorization this year, the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program are probably the least well known. Yet they are critically important for many children, filling in the gaps left by the better-known lunch and breakfast programs.

As Congress looks at the programs, child advocates are urging changes that would make the programs available in more low-income communities, and that would encourage more states to include evening meals.

Healthier Snacks
The Pleasant Homes Community Center in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, has been serving healthier snacks since qualifying for CACFP funding over a year ago. The Summer Food Service Program funds meals and snacks for their summer camp during the summer months. For Pleasant Homes, as for many other programs, it is partly the promise of snacks and meals that brings children to its supervised educational and recreational activities.

The federal funding has freed up resources for other activities at the center, as well as making possible more nutritionally balanced snacks.

"Before we tried to create snack as best as we could, sometimes we just had popcorn and punch. Now the kids are more attentive and focused on their homework," says, Tomeka Smith, Director of the Pleasant Homes Community Center.

The after school program also offers children tutoring and homework assistance, as well as literacy improvement activities and computer classes. Parents like the program because they know that their children are doing their homework, well cared for, and fed, during a time when many parents are still at work.

Snacks or Supper?
But sometimes a snack is just not enough. With over 5.2 million parents working evenings, nights, a rotating or split shift schedule, or on an employer-determined irregular schedule, many after school programs are operating longer hours. For example, the after school program at Pleasant Homes runs from 3pm-6pm, but sometimes goes as late as 8 p.m., depending on what special supplemental activities are taking place. Advocates would like to see child nutrition program guidelines changed to make it easier to offer children a real evening meal.

Staff at the Pleasant Homes program have found that sometimes kids try to sneak food home or keep asking for additional snacks. Right now only seven states fund after school suppers through CACFP. In most other states, including Maryland, regulations don't allow after school programs to use CACFP funding for suppers.

Summertime Hunger
Another critical "fill-in-the-gaps" nutrition program, the Summer Food Service Program, is seriously underutilized. Although approximately 15.6 million children depend on free or reduced price school meals during the school year, only about 3 million—about one in five of the school year number—participate in the Summer Food Service Program when school is out.

Designed to provide free meals and snacks to children who might otherwise go hungry during the summer, the program is considered a big administrative burden, especially for small programs. In most states, tedious cost-based accounting is required of participating programs, which entails keeping records and accounts separately for administrative and operating costs. Advocates are asking for the expansion of the Lugar Summer Food Pilot Project, which increased participation in summer feeding by streamlining reimbursement and paperwork in the thirteen states in which it was tested.

Increasing Access
Advocates would also like to see more neighborhoods become eligible for these programs. Right now, if 50 percent of children in a school district qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, then all children in the district can qualify for summer feeding at an approved distribution site. This is the same eligibility requirement used for community-based programs that serve after school snacks funded by CACFP.

However, advocates have asked Congress to change the standard so that districts where 40 percent of children qualify for free or reduced-price lunches will be eligible. This is the same standard used by some other federal programs for low-income children, like Title I education funding and the 21st Century Learning Centers after-school fund. Changing the area eligibility guidelines would be particularly helpful in rural areas, where poverty tends to be less concentrated, although still very much a reality.

"These programs are important because they alleviate families having to stretch their food," says Tomeka Smith. "Not every child leaves our program to return home to a meal."

Resources:

• View the Child Nutrition photo gallery [1]
• Visit the Connect for Kids Child Nutrition Topic Page [2]

LaFleur Stephens is an Emerson National Hunger Fellow.