Children’s hunger is focus of Congressional bills

By Fred Kammer, SJ

In a July 1st release, the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) reported that, “More Than 40.4 Million Americans Participated in SNAP/Food Stamps in April 2010.”  This is the latest set of available numbers and the report includes comparison figures for each state going back five years to April of 2005.  Five years ago, 25,321,690 U.S. residents used food stamps (now named the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—SNAP).  That number has increased 59.4% to 40,373,357 residents in need of food aid today!

In the Gulf South, the numbers of people and the increases are reflected in the following table:

Residents Receiving SNAP/Food Stamps At Five-Year Interval

While Florida had the largest percentage growth in SNAP recipients (111.3%) over five years, it actually has the smallest percentage of the state’s population receiving SNAP benefits (14.0%).  Louisiana, on the other hand, had the smallest percentage increase (only 12.1%) over five years, but the percentage of its population (18.3%) receiving SNAP food assistance was second only to Mississippi (19.2%).  Louisiana’s unemployment has remained relatively low in relation to the region and the nation due to the continued influence of post-Katrina rebuilding, but the data after April will be complicated and likely worsened by the impact of the BP oil catastrophe.  See FRAC state reports.

Beginning with the Children

There has been a growing insistence on fighting childhood hunger and child obesity in this country, and there is companion legislation pending now in the U.S. House (H.R.5504) and Senate (S.3307) that addresses several different programs to improve child nutrition.  The Improving Nutrition for America’s Children Act (H.R.5504), the House Education and Labor Committee’s bipartisan bill for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, passed its House committee on July 15th and is awaiting action by the full House.  FRAC reports that the bill takes several steps forward to ensure that low-income children can participate in the child nutrition programs and receive the meals they need, including:

• Expanding the Afterschool Meal Program to all 50 states;
• Supporting improvements to direct certification for school meals;
• Providing competitive grant funds to promote the expansion of the School Breakfast Program;
• Creating new paperless options for universal school meals;
• Lowering area eligibility for Summer Food to 40 percent in rural areas;
• Authorizing $20 million for Summer Food Support Grant;
• Creating state pilots that make it easier for schools and community-based organizations to provide meals to children after school, on weekends, and during school holidays;
• Adding, in some states, an additional meal or snack for children who are in child care for over eight hours; and
• Enhancing the nutritional quality of food served in school-based and preschool settings.

More information can be accessed from FRAC at http://frac.org/leg-act-center/cnr-priorities. 

Making it Easier for Schools to Enroll Low-Income Kids for Free School Meals

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reported last month that, under a newly revised federal policy:

...all children in a household are eligible for free school meals if anyone in the household is receiving assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance program, or the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR).

Prior to this new policy, each child in a household had to provide the case number assigned to him or her by one of those programs, or be individually matched, in order to be approved for free meals. The result was that last year an estimated 2.5 million children who received SNAP benefits and could have been automatically enrolled for free meals were not.  Some of these children missed out on free meals all together, while others were enrolled but had to go through a duplicative and unnecessary applications.

This policy revision makes it easy for states and school districts to automatically enroll eligible low-income children for free school meals, which reduces paperwork for school districts and families.  CBPP has provided a full explanation of the new policy as well as suggestions on how to ensure that school districts fully leverage this new opportunity to enroll children for free school meals.

In a letter of March 23, 2010, Bishop William F. Murphy, Chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote to Senate leadership applauding “incentives to improve the direct certification of students whose families are already eligible for TANF, SNAP and other federal programs with similar income eligibility guidelines." He also was encouraged by other provisions of the anti-hunger legislation pending in Congress.