2013 Usda Summer Food Program - Connecting with community

Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us today to learn more about the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, our great programs, and especially the Summer Food Service Program. We're very excited to have you with us today, and we thank you for taking your time to learn more about the fun and important programs that power our nation.My name is Tony Craddock, Jr., and I work in the Office of External and Government Affairs here at the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. After a brief overview of the Summer Food Service Program and our other food and nutrition programs, we will hear from some dynamic speakers and they will talk about their experience with the FNS Food and Nutrition programs and the Summer Food Service Program. Also Wyatt Hunter will discuss their resources that they have to connect people with the Summer Food Service Program, and after that presentation we will have an engaging roundtable discussion and Q&A session where you will be able to hear the presenters talk about their day-to-day experiences with our programs.Now we'll have some opening words from our colleague from HRSA, Jessie Buerlein.Thanks, Tony, and good afternoon everyone. My name is Jessie Buerlein and I'm with HRSA's Maternal and Child Health Bureau with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, or the MICV Program. Our program is designed to improve coordination and delivery of critical health, development, early learning and family support services to children and families across the country. The program plays a key role in the national efforts to build high quality and comprehensive early childhood systems. And we know that home visitors play a critical role in linking families to key services for which they're eligible. SNAP and the Summer Feeding Program is one of those services that can be so important to families. We hope that the information you receive today will assist you in your work with families and in linking them to this valuable program. So we just want to thank our colleagues at USDA for hosting this webinar. We'd also like to thank our speakers today for sharing their valuable experience, and just thanks to you all in the field for all of your work to serve children and families.Thanks, Tony.Thanks, Jessie.First we're going to have a brief overview of the USDA food assistance programs, and then we'll go into an overview of the Summer Food Service Program. The Food and Nutrition Service administers the nation's 15 food assistance programs. These programs have never been more critical to combating hunger at the present time, and the impact that they have had reaches over one in four Americans over the course of the year. Nutrition assistance is 100% federally funded. Program administration cost structure varies. The national headquarters is in Alexandria, Virginia, and seven regional offices are located in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, and Robbinsville, New Jersey. And they work with the state, local and community partners to increase programs that assist toward individuals' sound nutritional health in every phase of life and throughout emergency situations that leave lasting impacts to health and wellbeing.The dietary guidelines form the basis of federal nutrition policy, education, outreach, and food assistance programs. They are jointly issued and updated every five years by the Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. The dietary guidelines provide the scientific basis for the government to speak in a consistent and uniform manner. They are used by government, consumers, industry, nutrition educators, and health professionals, and they give the authoritative advice for Americans ages two and older about consuming fewer calories, making informed food choices, and being physically active and maintaining a healthy weight, reducing risk of chronic disease and promoting overall health. My Plate, the infographic at the bottom of your page, communicates key dietary messages to the public. Snap was formerly known as the Food Stamp Program. Some states may call the program by a different name. The program provides a monthly benefit for food purchase and serves one in seven Americans, assisting more people in Indian country than any other federal nutrition program. In 2009, approximately 1.4 million American Indians or Alaskan natives participated in SNAP each month. SNAP is also good for (inaudible). Every additional $5.00 of SNAP benefits spent generates $9.00 in total economic activity.Anyone can apply for SNAP. Under SNAP the benefit amount depends on income, resources such as cars, bank accounts, and family size. Upon qualification, applicants receive benefits within 30 days. The SNAP prescreening tool is available on the Food and Nutrition Service website and can be used to determine if you may be eligible to receive SNAP benefits. The prescreening tool is not an application for SNAP. An application for SNAP benefits must be made at a local SNAP office.WIC serves low income pregnant women, breast feeding and non-breast feeding postpartum mothers, infants, and children up to five years old. The program provides supplemental foods, nutrition education, referrals, and access to health and social services. The program is focused on reducing nutritional risk through early-on emphasis on healthy eating. Applicants must be categorical, residential, nutritional, and income requirements for WIC. However, requirements may be waived due to participation in other assistance programs. Each month those who qualify receive vouchers or an electronic benefit on an EBC card to purchase specific foods that are based on individualized nutritional needs identified by a health professional. The WIC program is well utilized. However, there is diminished use relative the older WIC child presenting a sight nutritional gap prior to the entrance into school and the availability of school meals. WIC also administers the WIC and Seniors Farmers Markets programs. The WIC Farmers Market Program provides WIC participants with coupons to purchase fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs from farmers at farmers markets or roadside stands that have been approved by the state agency.The National School Lunch Program provides nutritionally-balanced and low cost or free lunches to children each school day. The School Breakfast Program helps students stay alert and perform better in class by starting the day with a nutritional meal. Both programs operate similarly in the way of reimbursement and recommended dietary allowances under the dietary guidelines for Americans. These programs are typically administered by the state education agencies, which operate the programs through local school food authorities. Free and reduced price lunches are based on each family's income. Students who participate in this program may also have access to after school snacks and fresh fruits and vegetables after school. If a family participates in SNAP or WIC, the children may also qualify for free or reduced price school meals. The children from families with low incomes at or below 130% of the poverty level are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130% and 185% of the poverty level are eligible for reduced price meals. The Child and Adult Care Food Program, or CACFP, reimburses day care centers at free, reduced price or paid rates for eligible meals and snacks served to children and adults based upon the participant's eligibility under the income eligibility guidelines. Youth and after school programs can receive full meals in eligible states. Day care homes may be reimbursed based on location with homes in needy areas receiving higher rates of reimbursement than homes in non-needy areas. The Child and Adult Care Food Program also serves at-risk children 18 and under who are residents of emergency shelters or participants in after school programs. Programs must have enrichment activities on site to support the meal service. Once available on a limited basis, a recent change in the at-risk after school component extends program availability to all 50 states.(Audio break.) Local organizations distribute USDA foods to eligible recipients for household consumption or use them to prepare and serve meals in congregate settings. Recipients of food for home use must meet income eligibility criteria set by the states. States also provide the food to other types of local organizations, such as community action agencies, which distribute the food directly to needy households. A call to the National Hunger Hotline, at 1-866-348-6479, can help determine the locations of facilities that serve those in need through (inaudible). One in five children in the U.S. live in food insecure households. USDA and fns are committed to making a difference through reaching those in need with nutrition assistance and education toward healthful diets and by inviting everyone to becoming a Champion to End Hunger. These actions include volunteering, and helping to recruit volunteers at your chosen anti-hunger organization, donating money to anti-hunger causes, using professional skills in a volunteer capacity, and promoting activities that benefit those in need within communities such as organizing a food drive. The campaign includes a stakeholder's guide with ideas and a widget to spread the word to others about upcoming events to further the momentum. Additional information is available at www.endhunger.usda.gov. As referenced throughout our discussion, the FNS website has a wealth of information on nutrition assistance and education. Stay in touch with nutrition initiatives as well. The outreach tools and the partner opportunities through recently-launched Get Involved website on the FNS homepage.Now we'll transition to a brief introduction to the Summer Food Service Program. Explained in simplest terms, the Summer Food Service Program is a federally-funded but state-administered program that provides free nutritious meals to children in low income areas. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service funds the program at the federal level and state agencies pass on the reimbursements to the organizations that are called sponsors. In most states the state agency responsible for the program is the Department of Education, but it may be the Department of Agriculture or the Department of Health and Human Services in a few states. You can find your state contact on our Summer Food Service Program website, which is www.summerfood.usda.gov. Sponsors of the Summer Food Service Program are the ones who serve the free summer meals, and they may be different organizations such as local government entities, schools, parks and recreation agencies, faith-based and community organizations, and national nonprofits. All these types of organizations must enter an agreement with the state agency to administer SFSP, and they more or less do the administrative paperwork, training, food preparation, and monitoring required in the program. The sponsors handle all these responsibilities so the sites can focus on feeding children.Summer feeding sites are the places where kids come to eat their free summer meals. Sites can be a whole host of different places in the community, to include parks, libraries, schools, office buildings, or faith-based locations such as a church.So what are the program benefits? First and foremost, the Summer Food Service Program helps to make sure that children get nutritious food they need during the summer. Second, when students eat free or reduced price school lunches and breakfasts during the school year, it helps parents to stretch the family's dollars. Summer meals can do the same thing. Imagine what two or three free meals can do during the summer for a family during a given week. Many summer feeding sites offer activities for children. These activities at summer feeding sites can help children and teenagers remain physically active and mentally engaged, ready to learn when the school year begins. Some examples of site activities can include cooking classes, financial literacy workshops, guest speakers, and sports. The program allows sites and sponsors to be very creative, and our goal is for you to promote the Summer Food Service Program to families that you visit. It may be a great resource that makes the different for children during the summer.So, again, there are three main players involved in the Summer Food Service Program. They include state agencies, sponsors, and site. To participate in SFSP, sponsors must enter into an agreement with the state agency. The agency sets forth the responsibilities to the state and the sponsor. So the agency is really your go-to contact. This is because every state is different, so to get the most precise information, you need to work with your state agency. The state is also responsible for providing training and technical assistance to all sponsors. Sponsors are the bread and butter of the program. They are what we consider to be the Champions of the program. They accept all financial and administrative responsibility for the program. Second, they manage the food service. For example, a sponsor could be a food bank, a school, and they have sites located in parks, libraries, community centers, hospitals, you name it. Sponsors also train sites and their personnel and arrange for meals to be at each site, making sure that the meals meet USDA nutrition standards to provide kids with healthy food.So there are two different types of sites that we will discuss. The first is an open site. These sites serve meals to children 18 years of age or younger. If a child walks up to the site, they can get a free meal right there on the spot, no questions asked, no enrollment forms, no attendance sign-in sheet, nothing. The site must be located in a school attendance area where 50% or more of the children are eligible for free or reduced price meals. The 50% criteria is based upon school data or census data. Your state agency can provide the substantial technical assistance in making these determinations to see if your (inaudible) health center is in an area that qualifies as an open site. You can use the eligibility area map to see if your area is in the area that can be deemed an open site for any building there. The link is shown on the slide. Again, you can download this entire PowerPoint presentation with working links in the handout tab to the upper right of the presentation.The second type of site is an enrolled site. At these sites there is typically a program going on where the children have enrolled in the program, like a summer camp. Any child just can't get a meal. Only those that are enrolled to participate in the activity that's happening. At least 50% of the enrolled children at the site must be eligible for free or reduced price school meals. You can determine eligibility by looking at school or census data, or by collecting household income applications from the families of the enrolled children. Again, there are other types of sites, but enrolled and open sites are the two most common. Please work with your state agency to see what makes the most sense for your organization or program. Again, we're giving an overview of the program, but our goal is for each of you to promote these SFSP sites to families that you visit when you're making your house visits.How can you help? Promote. Promote. And, when you've done that, just promote some more. We want more kids to attend the sites that are out there. You can help promote these sites to parents and children that you encounter during home visits. Download the summer meal flyers in the handout section of the webinar, as I stated, and the flyer provides information on how to locate summer feeding sites in your community.And next we'll have a presentation from our first guest presenter, which is Jennifer Vanhoose (sp), and she's representing the Early Head Start Program. And a little bit of background on Jennifer before she gets started. She is married, and based out of Joplin, Missouri. She has been the coordinator of Early Head Start for about two years, and prior to that she was a home visitor for Early Head Start for children who are participants in Head Start and Early Head Start for a collective total of seven years. And she has served three terms on the governing board. Her academic background is in Early Childhood Education, and she enjoys baking, reading books, walking and scrapbooking. Thank you, Jennifer, for your presentation.Thank you, Tony. I just want to start by giving a brief overview of Early Head Start and just kind of introduce you to our program if you're not familiar with it. We are a home visiting program. We serve families prenatal to age three. We cover four counties in the southwest Missouri area. We have one grant in our umbrella agency of Economic Security Corporation, and we serve 146 participants with that grant. And with MICV we serve 26 participants. And all the families that we serve under our MICV grant are tornado affected. We had a tornado May twenty-second of 2011, and we still have families that are recovering from that.We also offer a child care option. We actually have three classrooms that are strictly ran by Head Start, and then we have four other partners. One is a family child care setting and then we have three that are child care centers, full daycare providers.Next slide.Our prenatal participants receive two one-hour visits a month, and our children childcare option also receives two one-hour visits a month. And then our home-based participants actually receive an hour-and-a-half every week and with a minimum of 44 visits a year. We also have group socials available twice a month to our families.Next slide.During a home visit we cover many areas. We have federal performance standards which we follow, and under nutrition some of the things that we would do, we can do hands-on nutrition experiences with our families, teach them how to cook, teach them how to prepare a shopping list and shop on a budget. Under health, which also includes oral health and safety, we cover many things. We offer fluoride varnish treatments quarterly to all of our child participants. We talk about immunizations. We talk about well child care. We talk about any health or concern that the family might be having, and if they need help getting in touch with services to meet their needs in an area, we would help with referrals and get them in touch with those they need to be in touch with. We cover mental health. We actually have -- I neglected to mention under nutrition -- I'm sorry -- we have a registered dietician that consults for us, and under health we have two nurses that work with our program that are also consultants. For mental health we have two therapists that work with us that we can refer our families to. Education and literacy, we discussed education as far as the children's education, but we also discussed education and literacy as far as the parents go and their goals. Employment, we help refer for employment and help increase skills to have better employment for our families. The main goal of -- one of the main goals of Head Start and Early Head Start is to help families get out of poverty, and so these are different areas in which we try to help them/Child development, we have activities that are provided in all areas of learning domains during our activities and our lessons on our home visits, we have child development goals and family goals that we set with the families, and we review them frequently and make sure that they don't need any further help or assistance in achieving those goals. And especially on family goals we have a resource list if they need referrals to other resources in our area.Next slide.Our referral process to SNAP, when a participant enrolls in Early Head Start we do a family strengths assessment, and that family strengths assessment has about 100 questions on it, actually. We do it in a couple of different parts to try to make it a little less overwhelming for our families. But we assess all areas that you could think of for the family, and that's when we can assess nutritional needs and financial needs if they're struggling to have the means to provide food for their families. If we discover that that is the case, then all of our home visitors have, like I mentioned earlier, we have Resource Finder at each of our sites, with all the contact information to our local family support divisions for being able to refer. And we can do written referral or verbal referral. We also have the ability to transport our parents, if need be. As a home visitor, I did that multiple times, transported to the Family Support Division to be able to help our parents get enrolled in programs such as SNAP and Medicaid.Also we have a assessment interview that we do at the beginning of enrollment, which is our health and nutrition assessment interview, and it's a form that the home visitors fill out with the families in an interview style. And on that they are asked if they are WIC or SNAP participants, and if they are not, then we ask if they would like a referral or like to learn more about those programs.Next slide.Some of the positive experiences that our families report to us, most families report that the process of applying for SNAP is fairly simple. I want to share this direct quote. When I was asked to participate in this webinar, I sent out an email to all of our frontline staff asking for positive feedback and also asking for barriers and concerns that families have reported to them, and one of the family support specialists wrote back and said, "I do know that many of my families would have an extremely difficult, if not impossible, time to find the resources to properly feed their family if they did not receive assistance. The SNAP program is very beneficial and needed by families that work hard and just need a little help getting over the hump concerning their food budget." And I do hear that quite often that our families would really, really have issues and really struggle if they did not have the SNAP program. On a personal note, our family has been on the SNAP program for -- earlier when our children were quite a bit younger and my husband was working and I was a stay-at-home parent, we were on the SNAP program for about four years straight. And then there have been a couple of times where my husband has been laid off and we've been able to utilize the SNAP program in order to get us through that hard time. And that's been a blessing to our family for sure. Families have also reported that the amount of disbursement that they receive meets their family's needs. For the most part everybody, you know, once they're on and they're using it, they appreciate having it and appreciate being able to utilize the program.I would like to advance to the next slide to talk about some of the various concerns that we've had also, though.In the last year the State of Missouri has changed their process of applying for SNAP. You still go to a local office, like Tony mentioned earlier, to apply. It's usually not so much the applying process, it's the re-applying process when you have to recertify and report changes that we are seeing some concerns and issues. You can no longer call your local family support division and ask to speak to your case worker. If you call, they will give you an 800 number to Jefferson City and you call up there and oftentimes you're on hold for a long time, and you're waiting for somebody to try to answer questions for you, or you have to leave a message and then you don't get called back, and so that's one of the issues that we've had. In our two southern counties, in McDonald County there is not a local Family Support Division office, and I've been recently told that Newton County is closing theirs also, in Neosho, Missouri, and so this will really make it difficult for those families to be able to apply. Even those that are in that county right now, if you're in McDonald County, you have to get your information -- you leave your information at an empty office there in McDonald County in like a drop box and you have to hope that it gets picked up by Newton County in time to get it to the Newton County office before any changes or issues have occurred with your eligibility. And so that has been a real concern for our southern counties. Just that timing process.Language is also a barrier for some of the families that we serve. We do serve several Spanish-speaking families, and so when you have to call in to Jefferson City, you don't always -- you're not always just calling directly to another Spanish-speaking person. And so our home visitors often help our families make those calls to be able to get in touch with the right people and to get in touch with an interpreter. So, again, you know, difficult process.One thing that I neglected to put on here that I just remembered, one of the things that our home visitors have reported is that one of the issues can be not all of our families have phones, and one of the processes for completing the SNAP application is that you have to do a phone interview. And so it can be difficult to be reached if you do not have a phone. And typically you get a letter and the letter says we're calling you at this time to do your interview. Well, if you're at work, if you are otherwise not available, then what do you do. And so that's one of the barriers and concerns that our families have expressed.Another issue that has come up for us is parents who have a felony on their record have been told that they cannot receive benefits for their children. I know when I was home visitor I had a family on my caseload that she had a felony and she was able to receive for her child, so I don't know if the process with that has changed. I'm not sure.Next slide, Tony.Kind of refer to this as the gray area. I got a lot of reports back about families that have issues where they're either a stay-at-home parent or they're working part time and then they go to full time, and that changes their income which eliminates their SNAP. And it's kind of that gray area where you're yay, you got a raise, but you're not going to get that check with that new amount on it for a couple of weeks but yet you lose your SNAP benefits because you have to report within ten days of an income change. And so, you know, parents and staff have expressed that it would be helpful to have a transition period off of the SNAP program instead of going from you have $400.00 a month to you have nothing. That's been very difficult for some of our families. My family personally has experienced that also, and it is hard. You have to really prepare and think about that.A couple of other things that were expressed to me, and I apologize I did not get them in the slide presentation, was it would be helpful if there were more classes available either through our Family Support Division or through the USDA local offices to have classes offered for budgeting your SNAP benefits and shopping on a budget and those different kinds of things and shopping nutritiously with your SNAP benefits. So those are some of the things that have been expressed of concerns and barriers, but, again, we do have a lot of positive things happening. Can you advance to my conclusion slide, please?In general, our families really are grateful to be SNAP participants and find it very helpful. There are areas of concern that need to be addressed in order to serve our families better, and I hope that through this webinar we can come up with maybe some plans. And then one of the mottos of Early Head Start and Head Start is when children are healthy, they are ready to learn, and I really do feel that the SNAP program does benefit the health of our children, the children that we serve, and our home visitors really do strive to help them with those areas of concern that we would love to see more education with in our area, in our community, so we do, as Early Head Start, promote using their SNAP benefits well and choosing healthy, nutritious choices for their families. And I'm just really glad that we have the SNAP program available to us to be able to help promote health and nutrition in the families that we serve.Thank you for your time today.Thanks so much for that presentation, Jennifer, that was great. Before we proceed to the next guest presenter, there was a topic mentioned in Jennifer's presentation that I want to address briefly while we're on the subject. I have with me Laura Griffin, who's a subject matter expert on SNAP, and she's going to specifically address the issue that Jennifer alluded to regarding parents with felonies on their record and how it relates to their children receiving SNAP benefits.Thank you, Tony, and thank you, Jennifer. It's a pleasure to hear that your clients are having good experiences with SNAP and that you, yourself, and your family have benefitted from the program. I just wanted to share some information that I think will be helpful in you working forward with your clients. It is true that there is a provision in the law that permanently disqualifies people from SNAP participation if they have been convicted of a state or federal felony involving controlled substances. State legislatures can opt out of this ban. Unfortunately your state, Missouri, has not done so. There are 21 states that have no ban on drug felons participating in SNAP and 19 states that have modified the ban. Unfortunately, as I said, Missouri maintains that ban, but the thing is that it only disqualifies that person with the felony on their record and the family should still be able to get -- the children in that family should still be able to get SNAP benefits if they qualify even though that person's income might be counted and that person wouldn't be part of the household, but the kids and any other members of the household should still be able to get benefits if they qualify.May I ask a quick question about that? Is there an age restriction on that? If the child is under the age of one, will they not receive that benefit?No, there is no age restriction in SNAP like for an infant or anything like that. No, that's -- that -- I've not heard of anything like that.I'm just thinking of a specific example that a home visitor shared with me, so we will definitely follow up with that parent and encourage her to dig deeper on that.Right. If anyone every thinks there's been a mistake in their case, they have a right to ask for what's called a Fair Hearing, and their case will be reviewed by a higher level official to make sure that all of the process has been applied accurately and completely, and so that's also something to tell your client that if they feel there's been a mistake made, they should ask for a Fair Hearing.I would also like to quickly address one other thing that you're struggling with in Missouri, and that's this sort of like you mentioned gray area. While we don't have any specific transition period off of SNAP, the program is designed for the benefit to be based on income and expenses, and there is a deduction for earned income, so when SNAP households have increased earnings, the benefits do go down more modestly and gradually rather than abruptly. It doesn't go down as much as the full dollar that you're earning from the income. So we hope that there is structure within the program that encourages work so that money earned from work makes one better off than if they were to stay on SNAP. We encourage work. We want people to seek work and become self-sustainable and we have an employment and training program that does help many of our clients get that.And thirdly I wanted to mention that we do have SNAP Ed, SNAP Nutrition Education component of the program, and I didn't bring information about what's specifically offered in Missouri, but all states do have nutrition education components, and there's information on our website about the agencies that offer those services and it would be something to check out and perhaps something for your clients and other folks listening on the phone.Thank you, Laura, for that answer. Hopefully that clarifies any issues that anybody may have had on the line as far as interpreting that topic, so thank you very much.Next we're going to proceed to our second guest presenter, who is Stacy Mills, from the Port Gamble -- I'm not going to pronounce the name because I don't want to mispronounce it -- tribe.S'klallam.Say that again please?S'klallam.Okay. S'klallam Tribe. Representing the Children and Family Services. A little background on Stacy. She began working there as a TANF case manager and has since been promoted to management. Family Assistance is under the Children and Family Services Community Services Division and has given her wonderful opportunities to learn and administer several programs to her local community. So, Stacy, you can take it away.Thank you, Tony.The Port Gamble S'klallam Tribe Children and Family Services Department has been in partnership with the State of Washington for many years, especially in the areas of social services and health services. We're a small tribe. We're one of 29 federally-recognized tribes in Washington state with approximately 1,200 members, with about 700 living on the reservation. We're located in a fairly rural area. We don't have access to public transportation, and the nearest service office for public assistance benefits is approximately 40 miles away, just to give you a little bit of background.The Children and Family Services Department consists of many different departments, and you see listed third there Family Assistance, which is my department. This just gives you background, kind of, of everything else involved in our department. We work very closely together to collaborate with all of our clients. Our home visiting grant is done under our Family Preservation Services Department, down towards the bottom there.Our administration, this kind of just lists out how we operate, and I just wanted to point out it's been really critical having our own departmental attorney has been very helpful. He's been great to help us craft our agreements with local, state and federal agencies. And this just details our Family Preservation services we offer, therapists, they're licensed mental health therapists, and case management specialists.Our Together for Children grant is under Family Preservation and also includes our Maternal Health Home Visitation Grant and includes a certified nurse as well as a community member that's a case specialist. And just a little bit more information there. We do offer our own prenatal and birthing classes and also do a visitation schedule as set up through the grant. It's a nurse partnership curriculum.The Family Assistance Program assists tribal families with tribal TANF and connects community members to a variety of social services. Within my department we also house the energy assistance and several other things. I'll go into some of them a little bit more specifically.We also have our own foster care and Indian Child Welfare Department, or some of you may recognize or be more familiar with Child Protective Custody, however our mission is to keep families together and preserve a safety net for our children and improve the quality of life for our families and prevent and protect them from child abuse and neglect.Our TANF services include a monthly cash benefit. I'm not sure if all of you are familiar with TANF. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It may be called something different in your local area. We provide a monthly cash benefit. We also determine food stamp, or in Washington State called Basic Foods, but the SNAP program, and medical eligibility. And also I wanted to note that Washington State does offer a five-month transitional program for food assistance when clients' TANF case terminates due to earned income increase. So one of the things Jennifer mentioned was an issue in Missouri. I am thankful that in Washington we do have the opportunity for my clients, when they earn income over the income standard for TANF, they have five months at the maximum benefit allotment to receive for their family to help them out in that transition period once they're off TANF. We offer employment support benefits to assist with things needed for employment, and referrals to barrier removal activities.I do also manage our tribal food bank here, which is open to anyone in need of food within our greater community, even outside of the reservation. We also have emergency food vouchers available to tribal members when fund sources are available. We receive funds through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, through USDA administered by our Washington State Department of Agriculture.The Simplified Summer Food Program is also a program I supervise, and we had done it a long time ago and last year I restarted it. And we sponsor a program direct and operate one approved site in a tribal community kitchen. And we are area qualified, so as Tony was discussing before, for the area qualification, we are an open site so any child can receive a free meal that comes to our site. And after many years of not doing a service, and like I said starting back up again last year, we served over 1,200 meals within the months of July and August. I'm really excited and hopeful this year we can expand on that. We have already made a plan to partner with our area public school summer school program to collaborate with them to provide -- they're going to provide the transportation for their enrolled students to come up to our site during that six weeks of that program. We also collaborate with other tribal programs, too. We have a summer youth crew program that employs teens in the area to give them work experience, and they were able to come participate in the food program lunch service last year, and it was wonderful to get our teens a good, healthy meal during their work day.We also have an elders program that also offers a USDA-approved lunch meal five days a week to seniors. And do some other things with seniors including crafting, assisting with benefits or referrals, senior functions, and, oh, there's trips.We also have a youth program that provides youth with information skills to help make informed and positive lifestyle choices and provide opportunities for them to participate in local and area cultural activities and expanding the knowledge of S'klallam culture and traditions. There is a plan to integrate childcare tutoring recreation for grade school children. We service children of all ages over there, five to senior in high school.Children and Family Services, or CFS, and the health clinic also work together very closely. And when I was talking about our TANF department determining SNAP and Medicaid eligibility, it's done through a partnership with the Children and Family Services department, the health clinic department, and the State of Washington. It's a pilot program that we've been doing for three years, and as far as I know we're the only one like it in the nation, the first and only. And what we are is state-trained employees, basically, to determine eligibility for SNAP and Medicaid, but we are tribal employees and folks can come to this local office. And like I mentioned we are quite a ways from other services, so it's been a great benefit to our tribal families out here to have access. And they also experience the same issues as Jennifer's clients with that a lot of them don't have phones or don't have transportation, and even though a lot of stuff has gone online, that's not helpful for most of our clients as they most likely don't have internet in their homes. So that's been a wonderful opportunity to have that pilot project here and it's going well for us, and we've passed all the audits in the first and second years with very good accuracy rates.Children and Family Services also refers clients to the health clinic office for the WIC program, and works very closely with our Maternal Health Program. They've been integral in making sure that all of our families, TANF families, the home visiting grant families, and everyone that's eligible gets referred over to the WIC services that we have here locally. So that's been a great help to our young families and our y young children.And part of -- kind of lastly -- this is in summation -- Port Gamble S'klallam Tribe does have a very supportive tribal Chairman and Council and has worked hard to form and maintain government-to-government agreements with both the State of Washington and directly with the federal government to provide many services to its members. Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, while it is a very small tribe, has worked very hard to maintain these relationships, and it's been just a really positive thing for our whole community overall. And also breaking down the barriers as far as how the government or the state government may play into the lives of our families. They can now see the programs that are offered working on a local level, and so way less intimidated and just are more comfortable over all receiving these services within their own local community. So it's a really positive experience that we have going out here, and it's really a great thing to be a part of.And that's pretty much all I have for my presentation.Thank you, Stacy. That was really great.And in our section that's coming up next, the open discussion, I definitely look forward to asking you some questions and seeing the kinds of answers you have about the relationship that your tribe has with the agencies and how SFSP went for you as well.Great. Thank you.Our final presenter before we get into the open discussion and Q&A section is Christine Binder from WhyHunger. She is the Outreach Coordinator for the National Hunger Clearinghouse at WhyHunger. And she builds strategic relationships with anti-hunger organizations, develops the Clearinghouse technical support and capacity-building services, and publicizes the work of innovators in the anti-hunger field. She also connects individuals to local emergency food resources through the National Hunger Hotline, and Christine holds a Master's degree in Public Health Nutrition, spending her free time cooking food from her local farmers market. Thank you, Christine.Thank you. I'm so happy to talk to everyone today. The first slide I have here, I just want to tell you a little bit about WhyHunger. We were founded in 1975 by the late musician Harry Chapin. We are a grass roots support organization and a capacity building organization, which means that we're not direct service providers, but what we do is assist direct service providers, whether they're government programs or emergency food providers, to help them with their services to reach the public and do a great job.NHC, the National Hunger Clearinghouse, is one of our programs here, and the National Hunger Hotline is one of the things that we do here at the National Hunger Clearinghouse.So on the left-hand side here you see our general National Hunger Hotline poster, and then on the right-hand side you'll see the Summer Food Service Program poster for this summer. So what we do on the Hotline is refer people who are in need of emergency food assistance to food pantries, various government nutrition programs. The hotline has been in existence for 15 years and it's funded in part by the /USDA. We are kind of your one-stop-shop for finding food assistance. We have live operators and it's a free and confidential service. We operate from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, that's Monday through Friday, and year round. And if somebody does happen to call on an evening or weekend, we do answer all the messages that they leave. And it's also an adaptable hotline, so for example, when the East Coast was hit by Hurricane Sandy, we got a lot of calls from people who were trying to find food, and we were able to pull together resources and let them know exactly who to talk to about getting D-SNAP or finding a pantry or a feeding site that was in operation after the storm.We also collect data so we know who our callers are. Not exactly who they are, but a general sense of male-female, senior citizens, Spanish-speakers, etc., where they come from, what referrals we give them, and where they learn about our hotline.So we're doing a real big push this summer, and we have the last two summers as well, to refer people to summer feeding sites. And from the summer of 2011 to the summer of 2012 we actually saw a 260% increase in calls over the summer specifically due to that program. And then I also wanted to let you know that we are a bilingual hotline. We have bilingual operators. And so here are some posters as well in Spanish, and you should be able to download some of these in the downloads in the handouts section, so we highly recommend that people do some outreach for the Summer Food Service Program and put these up wherever they can. Clinics are a great place. They're trusted, and so people find information there and give us a call. Other places good for SFSP, schools, grocery stores, places of worship, wherever you can think to put up a poster, do it.Anyways, you can also download outreach materials at whyhunger.org/outreach. At the very end of my presentation I'll actually have a summary slide with some links for you, so don't worry. You don't have to scribble it down right away. We also have web banners and PSAs that organizations can use to publicize the Hotline. See what else I have here. Okay.We also have a database located at whyhunger.org/findfood, and we're actually updating it and it now includes mapping which makes it a really powerful tool. People can find both some emergency food locations here, though actually I recommend if you're looking for emergency food to call the Hotline because we have a wider -- we have more -- if somebody calls the hotline basically we can give them better referrals, but for summer feeding, we're actually working really hard this year to try and get as many summer feeding sites as possible into the database. So on the left-hand side you'll see information for the National Hunger Hotline, and then in the middle, the search function, and then this is the map that I was talking about before, so folks can put in their zip code, their address, basically find the closest summer feeding sites to them. The database is not populated quite yet because people are still signing up to be summer feeding sites, but we will have all that info this summer, so you are welcome to use findfood or feel free to give us a call as well.Last year we actually quadrupled the number of records we had from the year before for summer feeding sites, so last year we had over 18,000 sites in the database.So let's see what else I have here.And also, if you are a summer feeding site, if you are acting as a summer feeding site, it's important that everyone registers their site with us so we have that info and we can distribute that to the public.We also have a monthly e-newsletter called The Clearinghouse Connection. We have over 3,500 subscribers, and in our e-newsletter you'll see information on all sorts of USDA FNS nutrition programs including SFSP. We also target emergency food providers as our audience for here. We put a lot of resources, best practices, news, information on funding in here. And there's a real emphasis on nutrition and health and food access and food justice and system-based approaches to addressing hunger and poverty. You can email us at nhc@whyhunger.org to sign up. You can also email any questions that you have to that email address as well.We also have a capacity building guide here called Cooking Up Community. It's a nutrition education guide. We wrote it mostly for emergency food providers, food programs, but it's something that anyone can use and so it's a free downloadable resource.And then here I'm just getting to our summary page where you have the numbers for the National Hunger Hotline. You can call 866-3HUNGRY or 877-8HOMBRE. You can find our outreach materials, either for summer feeding or year round, on our outreach page, and also if you are acting as a summer feeding site, then you can register in our database, and any volunteer opportunities for summer feeding sites can also be registered at serve.gov, and that's a great way to find volunteers for your organization.Thank you so much for listening.Thank you, Christine.And now we're going to transition into what's supposed to be the fun part of our webinar, which is the roundtable discussion. So now we're going to allow the presenters to speak about their experiences with SFSP. It's geared toward SFSP, but they will also talk about their experiences with the Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs with USDA as well if necessary. And while they're talking, I'll also encourage you to enter any questions that you may have into the Q&A tab on Live Meeting at the top, and we'll try to address those as best as we can before the end of the session in about 20 minutes.So my first question is going to be targeted toward Jennifer, and that is, what would you recommend to a new home visitor, you know, somebody that's visiting a family promoting -- trying to connect them with resources? How would you suggest that they promote SFSP given what you've heard so far in the presentation today and from your past experience? What approach would you take that you think would be most effective?Well, in our area the Summer Food Program typically happens through our school district, and so I would definitely get them in touch with the school district that they're in and then give them those phone numbers and those resources and just also when I received the posters, those have gone out to all of our Head Start sites and so families are receiving them through our Head Start and Early Head Start sites currently but just helping them have those resources and putting them in touch with the right people. Is that what you were looking for, Tony?Yes, it was exactly what I was looking for. And also while we're talking, there was a question earlier that came in that I want to address before -- I don't want to lose track of it, and it asks, do you know of the SFSP is a resource in the referral binder? Does the binder have state specific information or is it more general?We have state specific information and community specific information. Like the binder in McDonald County does not look like the binder in Jasper County as far as there are different resources in each area, and so we make our binders area specific so that the families can reach those resources as close to their home as possible. I don't know that the poster for the Summer Food Program has been put in our binders or not, but I know that there is contact information for the family support divisions in each area so that they can do an application for SNAP.Okay. Thank you. My next question is for Port Gamble, and it's about SFSP, if you can speak to your experience, you know, the duality of being both site and sponsor, how that experience was from a training standpoint, from a service standpoint.So out here at Port Gamble where we're located, our local school district does not sponsor a SFSP program, so if we wanted to have a site we kinda -- it left us to our own devices and, you know, Port Gamble being as innovative as it is, that's actually kind of what we prefer anyway. And the experience overall was actually pretty great because I was able to understand the program, know exactly what it entailed, managed my own claims to determine and make certain that we were getting reimbursed properly for the meals, but also have a really hands-on approach with the actual food service itself, and I was actually able to attend the program all year. I went over there during my lunch break, and because we're such a small community I know most all of the children because I also have school-age children, so we're active in the community. I know most of the kids that were coming for the program, so it was a really great experience. Being able to get the opportunity to be the sponsor as well as the site, you really get two different sides of it. The sponsorship is kind of the, you know, I hate to say it but, you know, the boring and hard work part of it, and actually being the site, doing the site coordination was very fulfilling with the -- on the ground work with the kids themselves. So it was really great.Now how many staff members were involved in the training as well as the daily operation of the program?Since it was my first year and we were so small and not certain, I received a lot of negative feedback from some coworkers and other departments within the tribal agency that they had experienced at years past, and I just didn't really get a lot of buy in. And it concerned me a little bit from the get-go, so I really was up against a lot. I really was on my own. My salary, fortunately, is covered through other programs and grants I manage and am employed under already, so I was fortunate in that I did not have to hire or expend much on staff admin services. I did have a community member that volunteered to come in, and I ended up being able to give him a small stipend of like $600.00 for the whole eight-week program that I gave him in the end once I determined what our budget looked like. And another full time cook that came in as well. And we had one summer youth crew worker that helped us occasionally, and she was actually paid out of another budget through the Career and Education Department here, so that was very helpful. I didn't have to cover her salary. So it was really a core crew of three of us. I had another -- my supervisor was the monitor for the site. As you know, you can't be the monitor and the supervisor both. So this year I'm kind of reworking things now that we've all -- I took one additional person to the training, and he is going to be our supervisor and I'm going to be the monitor because now he knows the program and is able to really run it on his own. So we're very small. We didn't actually employ anyone full time or really pay a salary besides just some stipends and then my salary which was already covered under tribal programs.Okay. Thank you. Next, I guess Jennifer you can kind of speak to this, and Christine, you may want to hop in as well. One of the issues that we're currently trying to address with the summer feeding program is the transportation issue and accessibility getting children from the house to the site. And particularly in urban communities, you know, one of the theories is that maybe children aren't leaving the home because they're instructed by the parents not to, when the parents go to work they're sort of in-house for the day. Have you found this theory to be true based on some of your experiences during home visits, and I guess Christine, what kind of outreach or new innovative measures is WhyHunger trying to do to eliminate those transportation barriers or the barriers from getting the children from Point A to Point B?Go ahead, Christine.Ha, ha. Well, the one thing that I'll say is that there are a lot of other organizations out there doing really incredible work regarding transportation barriers. We're not directly -- we're a national organization and so we don't have boots on the ground, but we do look at a lot of the great work that other organizations are doing.You see a lot of people who are starting to do mobile feeding sites where they'll retrofit a bus or have a sort of truck that comes and does that sort of work where they distribute the food to the kids at multiple sites along a path, and that's one solution that in my experience people have had a pretty good response to that. Trying to think of other ones. And there are various rules on congregate feeding that you'll have to talk to the folks on the state level about, but basically if there is an ability to not have that requirement, then it makes it a little bit easier for these sorts of mobile sites.The other thing I would say is that a recent Share Our Strengths survey showed that the most important thing for parents who are interested in having their kids attend a summer feeding site is that it be in a safe and trusted place where they know that their kids are safe. More than anything. More than the activities. More than the quality of the food. It's just really important for a parent to know that their kids are somewhere where they're being taken care of, so I think that for those who are either sponsoring or hosting summer feeding sites, I think that building that sort of trust with parents is really, really important.Tony, if I could hop back in for a moment. This is Stacy. In regards to the transportation issue, we definitely experienced that, and it really was a hindrance in our numbers. For part of the summer we did not have any transportation available, and due to the limited funding as it reimbursed a very minimal amount for the meals, it has to cover the whole program, it's very hard to get kids into our community kitchen here. We are rural, like I said. We don't have public transportation. I was able to, for a couple of weeks, send a couple of vans within our department out to the local community to bring kids in, and that helped tremendously. But without the transportation piece, it's very difficult to get kids into our program.I was just going to add the bulk of our summer food programs in our areas happen at the schools during summer school. And a lot of our areas do not have the summer food program past summer school. Most of the school districts in our areas still transport for summer school, so, fortunately, they are able to receive two solid meals a day while they're at summer school, but in the months of July and August, a lot of our families lose that resource and don't have anything in our area.Thank you. Now can Port Gamble, or Stacy, can you speak to the importance of preparations in the program. The recurring theme here with SFSP is, the better you prepare, the better the program runs. (Inaudible.)Yeah, absolutely. Last year I actually happened to have my supervisor come to me and said we want to start this up again, and I checked into it and it just happened to be that the training was two days later and I kind of got thrown into it. Luckily for me, because we do have a child care center here on the reservation. They also operate their child care center programs they were talking about earlier through the Food and Nutrition Program, and so I'm somewhat familiar as well as I happen to have grown up in a household that ran a daycare. My mom was a past participant in the USDA program. So I kind of have a little bit of background knowledge, but absolutely preparation is key because just being thrown into like that, even with the experience I had had, it was tough. It was tough getting going, and it was really hard because you're kind of operating on a guess. You don't know how many kids are going to come. You don't know how much food you may need on any given day, and you don't want to -- especially in our tribal community here, we really never want to have to turn away a child for a meal, so it was crucial that we planned very well and really accommodated everyone we could under the budget constraints we had. And preplanning our meals, it was helpful that we were provided with some sample menus and different things, but it was hard. It was definitely hard. It took planning, it took more time than actually, you know the food service itself. We did a one-hour food service five days a week, so we spent five hours a week with food service, and we spent approximately 25 to 30 hours on planning and prep.And what kind of activities did you have onsite for the children?Here on the reservation within our other -- again under Children and Family Services we have a youth department. They offer community activities throughout the summer months. It varies. And their building is right next to our tribal kitchen, so it was pretty great, and their youth coordinators were great to actually bring kids over to get lunch before they started activities and really help us out for that. They did anything from tie dying shirts to sports recreation teams to different educational programs. They do a -- kind of a, I guess, for students moving up to the next school, the transition process, you now, going to middle school or going to high school, they offer some courses in kind of just the life skills and what to expect in that transition time for those kids not aged frame, so they get together and do groups based on their age divisions. So there's all kind of different activities going right here that were already going that I actually didn't have to coordinate because we already have them through our youth program, so that was great. We also have a Head Start Program, Early Childhood Education Program, that runs, again, their own program, but they partner with our youth services (inaudible) our Career and Education Department, and they do offer, between those three departments, put together funding to offer some different programming for kids in the summertime to keep them in a safe, clean activity with no drugs or alcohol and just a good community environment for the kids. And so that's all, thankfully, right here local to where our Summer Food Service Program is operated out of.Great. And did you feel like the SFSP -- this is for you, again, Stacy -- tied into any of like the food or healthy eating or obesity initiatives that you may have already been promoting on on the reservation?Yeah, absolutely. We also have a local medical clinic and dental clinic here, and I'm glad you brought that up. I really forgot about as well. The dental clinic approached me and asked if they could partner with us, and I said sure. So they especially have a hard time getting older teens to come in for dental checkups. And their clinic hygienist was actually able to come into the kitchen and set up in a little corner and was doing referrals and outreach right there and had dental clinic goody bags she was giving away, they did drawings, and they applied fluoride direct to the kids' teeth after lunch service once a week for the last three weeks, I believe it was, of the service. So it fit really nicely in with overall dental care as well as the programs the clinic offers promoting a healthy eating overall, not just for kids, but it worked right into that. We have some programs geared towards healthy families and healthy living, and as our program picked up, those programs were definitely, I think, noticing that families who otherwise didn't have access to healthy meals during the summer for their kids, who normally depend on the school lunch programs, they definitely noticed an improvement in some of the kids' eating patterns. So it tied in really nicely and we were able to collaborate really nicely with some area programs. I'm very fortunate to have those kinds of programs here. We also do work with other outside agencies in our local area, and for this whole community we have a program that sends home food to needy families just like a Backpack Home program that they do during the school year on Fridays, and then also during summer school for the few weeks, they send them home twice a week. We partnered with that program as well and were able to not only do the summer food lunch service, but provided through that program with area food banks and the Great Kiwanis Clubs and Rotary Clubs some take-home meals for dinner and snack that they provided two days a week. So it was an opportunity to give the family not just the take-home meals alone to use for lunch and have them two days a week, but they got a hot lunch five days a week plus the additional meals they could take home and prepare for dinners or snacks or what have you.Okay. Thank you for that. You are really doing some great cutting edge stuff out there.First of all we have to.If you get an influx of inquiries, you can blame it on me. So we're about to close out the webinar, but before we close it out, we're going to have our trusted subject matter expert Laura Griffin with a quick spiel about SNAP. Since both Stacy and Jennifer mentioned that you have clients that you work with who don't have phones and find a phone interview difficult to coordinate, I wanted to assure you that the client does have a right to request a face-to-face interview, an in-person interview, if that works better for them. While many states are moving toward the phone interview, that doesn't mean that a face-to-face, an in-person interview is off the table. It is something they can ask for, and should ask for if that works better for them. So I just wanted to share that with you in case it's helpful in working with your clients. Thank you.It is. Thank you.Yeah, that's actually why Port Gamble started the pilot project because, again, we're a good 40 miles outside of our nearest office, and that just is not feasible for folks, and even folks accessing services that we aren't able to serve here, we often will give them rides to that office. That's very difficult as well.Thank you.So it looks like we're approaching the end of the webinar. I want to thank again our presenters, Jennifer, Stacy and Christine. You all did a great job and I'm sure that everyone who listened in was very enlightened by your information and will move forward and promote it. And, again, to the HRSA folks listening in, your job is relatively easy. We just want you to promote, promote, and promote the Summer Food Service Program. We hope that you will download the flyers, the Summer Food Service Program promotional flyers, you know, maybe get it into your binders when you visit those sites, visit those homes, and let people know how great of a resource the Summer Food Service Program is. And, again, I want to reiterate that today's session will be posted online in about a week or two. We just have to take a little time to add the captioning, but you will be able to access it from our website, the SFSP website, www.summerfood.usda.gov. So thank you for your time this afternoon. We hope that this webinar was very resourceful and that, you know, that you will be Champions of the Summer Food Service Program. So thank you and have a great afternoon.