Sponsoring organizations of the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) are required to monitor program operations at the sites under their sponsorship to ensure that CACFP regulations are followed. These reviews of food service operations assess compliance with the meal pattern, recordkeeping, and other program requirements. While conducting monitoring visits, it is important that you know the CACFP requirements so that you can accurately identify any problems and recommend effective solutions. Each site or organization under your sponsorship is required to have a documented visit a minimum of three times per year.
The Responsibilities of a Site Monitor Include:
- Planning and preparing for a site visit
- Assessing whether the site has corrected problems from previous reviews
- Ensuring that the site has all required documentation and records
- Reconciling any discrepancies in meal counts, attendance, or enrollment records
- Ensuring compliance with health and safety requirements and meal service guidelines
- Assigning corrective actions for any problems encountered
- Conducting training and providing technical assistance to correct any issues
- Revisiting and conducting follow up visits as necessary
According to 7 CFR 226.16(d)(4), The USDA requires:
- All new sites to have both a pre-approval visit and monitoring visit within the first four weeks of program operations
- An onsite review at least three times per year, two of the three visits must be unannounced
- No more than six months can pass between monitoring visits
- The timing of visits must be varied and may not follow a consistent, predictable pattern (please see USDA Memo CACFP 16-2011 for more details)
My Food Program Can Record and Track Your Site Monitoring Visits.
There are two ways to enter visits:
By using My Food Program to record and track your visits, you are also able to run a variety of helpful reports.
This report displays all site closures for a specific date range and is useful when scheduling site visits.
This report lists providers or centers that are due for a monitoring visits (it has been 4 months since their last review visit).
This report displays each visit by date for a site.
This report lists all serious deficiencies for a specific time period.
If you are interested in using electronic visits, please contact us to set up your account.
For state specific guidance and resources as well as required monitoring forms, please contact your state agency. You may also reference the CACFP Handbooks.