Stealing milk and food from the mouths of babes

Whether the day-care center operators in California who withheld essential nutrition from the children in their care did so out of ignorance, stupidity or criminality matters little to the well-being of the children. What does matter is that monitoring systems be improved so that it doesn't take a U.S. Department of Agriculture investigation to ferret out wrongdoing. Tragically, the parents whose children attend the many substandard care centers in this nation have few alternatives to choose from -- either because of price or proximity.
The 13 day-care centers, described in a Scripps-Howard report in last Wednesday's Vindicator, were identified by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the IG's Operation Kiddie Care, a major investigation of the Child and Adult Care Food Program undertaken for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.
The inspector general found that the CACFP is highly vulnerable to abuse because the primary controls for combatting fraud and abuse have been given to the sponsors of the programs. In fact some of the sponsors were, in the words of the report, "using program funds for their personal enrichment and thereby reducing the funds available to provide an effective food service program to children in day care."
No small potatoes: And while the suspect day-care centers were providing too-small milk and meal portions to the children, their funding was, by no means, small potatoes.
In the first round of the IG's investigation 37 sponsors had been receiving approximately $76.3 million annually in federal funds for food and administrative costs.
In California, during 1998, the California Department of Education, which administers the program for the FNS, contracted directly with 652 organizations which ran the program at 3,850 child care centers that they owned and operated. Of the 652, there were 417 nonprofit organizations which received approximately $33 million among them.
But as the inspector general found, nonprofit groups -- even those which were faith-based -- were not immune from greed and incompetence: a cautionary lesson that should be heeded by those who tout faith-based charities as a cure-all for the social ills of the nation.
Of the 15 small centers selected for the investigation, none had kept track of the number of children who were actually receiving meals. For example, one center put in a claim for 17 breakfasts on Martin Luther King Day, a holiday on which the center was closed.
Malnutrition: Frequently, meals did not contain required nutritional components. At the Broderick Christian Center, for instance, instead of the required 1/2 to 3/4 cup of milk that each child should have received, three cups of milk were poured over oatmeal and served to 15 children, only 1/5 cup per child.
In his recommendations, the inspector general emphasized the need for state agencies to do a better job of monitoring the centers for compliance with federal requirements and of educating their staffs in administration and nutrition.
But therein lies a major problem for states like Ohio where budget cutbacks are making it less likely that recipients of state and federal dollars will have adequate oversight. States must be willing to spend what it takes to ensure that needy children aren't cheated by greedy adults.