Child and Adult Care Food Program
Households complete and submit Income Eligibility electronic forms: Care providers offering meals under the Child and Adult Care Food Program annually collect and store Income Eligibility forms which they use to calculate household income and household size to determine meal benefit eligibility. Proper record keeping and accurate eligibility determination are necessary to receive full reimbursement.
An adult from each household completes an Income Eligibility electronic form on a secure, access controlled, website using a home computer or tablet. Each adult selects a username and password enabling him/her to complete the form in several sessions, submit updates when information changes, or resubmit the form annually without reentering any information.
Your authorized administrator receives an email notification as each electronic form is submitted and downloads on-demand electronic form reports containing all information for all households, ensuring your information is up to date at all times. No new software is installed on your computers. You only need a Microsoft® Word, Excel, and any browser.
Electronic forms include all information fields required by your state. Income amount validation and drop-down lists for how often income is received eliminate most income reporting errors.
Automatic eligibility recommendation and form expiration tracking: Spreadsheet tools automatically calculate household annual income and size and recommend eligibility (free, reduced, denied) based on USDA guidelines. Tools detect common income reporting errors and tally foster children. 60 days before annual renewal, signature status turns yellow and displays days to expiration. Status turns red for expired forms.
Validate annual income calculations and eligibility: Select any household and all income eligibility information appears, facilitating validation. Occasionally households enter incomplete income reports. As in this example, they may enter an income amount ($64) and neglect to include how often income is received (weekly). These few remaining errors are flagged in yellow. Reported income is corrected by updating the Income Eligibility form.
Automatically create state forms: If you need to send copies of your income eligibility forms to your state food program office you can automatically create one or hundreds in seconds without transcribing any information from the electronic form.
Click here to see a sample in the USDA meal benefit eligibility template.
Administrator portal: Submitted forms are always available on the secure, access controlled Administrator Portal for operations and program audits with no concerns about misfiling, illegible handwriting, or removal of paper forms from folders.
Take a test drive: USDA encourages the use of electronic forms for Food Programs. We customize Income Eligibility forms for each state. Click the link below to take a live form test drive based on USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program prototype income eligibility form.
Click here to test drive USDA's Meal Benefit Eligibility form for child care We will not use your email address for any purpose other than enabling you to test drive our forms.
We can also provide adult care income eligibility forms or National School Lunch Program income eligibility forms.