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Dear Child Care Partners,
Child care and Head Start play critical roles in many aspects of children's lives including providing healthy and nutritious meals. Amid widespread school and child care program closures, many parents are wondering how they'll keep food on the table.
CLASP's latest fact sheet highlights important nutrition provisions for families with young children in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which was signed into law last week.Families First makes progress toward ensuring children continue to have healthy meals by:
- Allowing child care and early education programs that participate in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) to distribute meals while they are closed.
- Boosting funding for WIC and allowing states to waive requirements that would hinder their ability to offer assistance to families in the current crisis.
- Offering emergency food assistance to children who typically receive meals through the National School Lunch Program.
- Providing states the option to increase SNAP benefits for current recipients and waive certain administrative requirements to address temporary food needs.
The fact sheet provides more details about these provisions and recommendations for federal policymakers, state early childhood program administrators, advocates, and early care and education providers to ensure that no family goes hungry while we weather this crisis.
Despite these steps, we must do more to ensure that all children have access to healthy food. As Senate negotiations on "stimulus 3.0" legislation are ongoing today, now is a critical moment to contact your members of Congress to let them know we need major expansions to SNAP—including:
- Additional funding;
- An increase in minimum benefits;
- And the suspension of administrative requirements that make it harder for people to get and keep SNAP.
We are also asking for $50 billion to help sustain the child care system during this crisis and offer emergency child care to essential workers. Stay up to date with CLASP's work related to coronavirus response here.
Thank you for all that you're doing for children and families and please stay safe.
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