child care - Digital Library Collections

THE STATE OF AMERICA'S CHILDREN YEARBOOK 1998
most spectacular growth, reaching 21 percent
more children by 1997, or 1.2 million more children
on an average day. The summer food program
reached 6 percent more children, or 125,000
more on an average day.
Stability in the summer food program. The
SFSP provides lunches and other meals to children
in low-income areas during the summer, when
school-based programs are not available and family
food budgets are squeezed harder as a result. SFSP
meals are also a central component of the full-day
recreational and academic programs run by various
groups, including Freedom Schools, a program of
CDF's Black Community Crusade for Children.
Such programs keep children in poor communities
safe and engaged in positive activities during their
out-of-school months.
The 1996 welfare law reduced reimbursement
rates for meals served through SFSP. However, summer
food providers still receive 16-17 cents more
per lunch than schools and child care centers receive
for lunches they serve free to poor children
under the school lunch program. Thus far, the lower
reimbursements do not seem to have prompted significant
numbers of providers to drop out of the
program. In fact, instead of contracting as many
had feared, the program expanded in 1997. The
number of SFSP meals served rose by 8.3 million,
or 7 percent-about the same rate of growth as in
the previous year when the meal reimbursement
rates were higher. It appears that many state agencies
and nonprofit organizations, anticipating a decline
in participation as a result of the welfare law
changes, intensified their efforts and recruited more
summer food sites into the program in 1997.
Expansion funding ended for school breakfast
and summer food programs. The welfare law also
ended the provision of about $5 million a year to
states for various outreach initiatives to expand the
school breakfast program and the SFSP. Since expansion
funds were first provided in 1990, they
helped to finance tremendous growth in the school
breakfast program. In 1977 only slightly more than
20,000 schools participated; by 1987 that figure had
risen to 37,000; today nearly 70,000 schools operate
the program. Nearly three out ofevery four children
attending a school with a lunch program can also
receive breakfast at school (see figure 4.4). Access is
even greater among low-income children: more than
four-fifths attend a school with a breakfast program.
Figure 4.4 More School Meals
Growth in the school
80
breakfast program has
70
meant that almost
three-fourths of 60
Percentage of schools offering lunch
that also offer school breakfast
73%
children eligible for 50
school lunches can
now start their day
with a nutritious meal
40
30
as well. 20
1977 1982 1987 1992
1997
Source: u.s. Deportment of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Service.
60 CHI L D R EN'S D E F ESE FUN D