News Release

Day care lunch program monitors vital in successful program

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Penn State

Day care monitors employed by sponsors of family day care homes must carefully balance the demands of the job to represent the sponsoring organization, ensure that Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) regulations are met, and train the care providers. According to a study sponsored by the Applied Research Division of the National Food Service Management Institute, monitors perform job duties beyond what is expected and the monitors and organizations they work for agree nearly completely on job duties and training needs.

"The Child and Adult Care Food Program is a federally-funded nutrition assistance program designed to provide healthful meals and snacks," says Dr. Martha T. Conklin, associate professor in Penn State's School of Hotel, Restaurant and Recreation Management and a registered dietitian. "Family day care homes function as small group child care businesses operating within a home setting, providing services to six or less children with only one care giver."

Family day care homes that operate under the guidelines of the Child and Adult Care Food Program receive reimbursement for meals and snacks served, but providers must sign an agreement with an approved sponsoring organization to participate in the program. The sponsoring organizations are public or nonprofit private organizations that supply monitors to ensure compliance with the regulations.

"Parents feel that childcare providers play an important role in influencing the nutrition of their children," says Conklin. "It is important for care givers operating within the CACFP guidelines to serve meals and snacks that meet age appropriate nutritional needs of the children in their care and that they are trained to do so."

In 2000, 738 million meals were served to children in family day care homes participating in the CACFP. Monitors employed by sponsoring organizations serve a vital role as the gatekeepers for program quality in the individual homes. Their job is to train and monitor providers who serve food under CACFP guidelines.

Conklin and Deborah H. Carr, research scientist, National Food Service Management Institute, Applied Research Division at the University of Southern Mississippi, set out to determine the crucial job duties and training needs of monitors and to compare any differences of opinions as to the scope of their jobs between the monitors and the sponsoring organization directors. They reported their results in the current issue of the Journal of Child Nutrition & Management.

Using separate instruments specifically developed for sponsor monitors and sponsoring organizations, the researchers went surveys to all directors of sponsoring organizations participating in the CACFP in the United States. The three parts of both surveys consisted of a section ranking job duties for how often and how important those duties were, a section asking for identification of the top five training needs for monitors and a demographics section.

Thirty-three percent of the sponsoring organization directors and 21 percent of the monitors who received questionnaires responded.

"There was a 96 percent agreement between directors and monitors on the top 50 job duties," said Conklin of Penn State. "There was 100 percent agreement on the top five job duties."

Both groups considered communicating with providers in an ethical, respectful and caring manner as the number one function. Directors ranked complying with policies and procedures second in importance and following federal, state, and local regulations as third. The monitors reversed this order.

The researchers recommend that the first consideration for monitor training should focus on the top five training needs identified by the surveys; program regulation/requirements, dealing with problem providers, record keeping/documentation, techniques for recruiting new providers and meal pattern requirement. They also caution that the survey showed that more than 60 percent of the monitors were over 41 years of age and therefore that incorporating adult learning techniques into the training programs would improve training.

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