Policy Memo 198
DOH-CACFP: Number 198 (01/18), Supersedes Number 172 (03/14) and Number 172H (04/14)]
TO: CACFP Sponsors of Centers and Day Care Homes
FROM: Dwight LaDu, State Director, Child and Adult Care Food Program
SUBJECT: Civil Rights Training
Purpose and Scope
The purpose of this policy memo is to provide a summary of Sponsor responsibilities regarding Civil Rights requirements and updated instructions for accessing available training tools.
Background
Civil Rights regulations are intended to ensure that benefits of the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) are made available to all eligible people. This includes making every effort in recruitment and enrollment procedures to allow equal participation by all eligible and potentially-eligible persons, regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability.
A Sponsor's responsibility is to ensure equal access to the program, collect racial and ethnic data, provide reasonable accommodations, provide language assistance and know the process for handling complaints.
Requirements
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) FNS Instruction 113-1 (Appendix B) mandates that organizations participating in CACFP provide Civil Rights training.
The training must be provided annually to:
- Sponsor-level staff (directors, owners, administrators)
- Frontline staff (teachers, providers, monitors, assistants, food service staff, bookkeepers)
Sponsors must maintain documentation to show all staff have received Civil Rights training. Sponsors are responsible for documenting who completed the training and whether it was completed individually or in a group.
Staff who complete the training individually should print a "Certificate of Attendance" at the end of the training and give it to the Sponsor to document their attendance.
When training is provided in a group setting, a sign-in sheet must be maintained on file with the following information:
- Date
- Topic
- Staff names
- Location
Accessing Civil Rights Training Materials
The New York State CACFP has made Civil Rights training materials available to all Sponsor staff. They can be accessed on the CACFP NY Training Website.
Sponsor-level staff will need individual accounts to access the training. Accounts may be requested by completing and emailing the CACFP-193 (CACFP NY Training Website User Account Form).
There are two different versions of the Civil Rights training:
- Sponsor-level training: is available in English and is approximately 14-minutes long. It can only be accessed by Sponsor staff with CACFP NY Training Website accounts. Completion is tracked by the website.
- Frontline staff training: is available in English and Spanish, and is approximately 8-minutes long. These trainings can be accessed in two different ways:
- By Sponsor staff with CACFP NY Training Website accounts. Sponsor staff can project the training presentation to a group and maintain sign-in sheets as noted under Requirements above.
- Individually by frontline staff without CACFP NY Training Website accounts. This is done by Sponsor staff sharing the link to the presentation to frontline staff. The links are as follows:
If you have questions, please call your CACFP nutritionist at 1-800-942-3858.
