CACFP — the Child and Adult Care Food Program — reimburses family child care homes for the meals they serve the children in care, but a home cannot join on its own: federal rules require day care homes participating in the program to operate under a sponsoring organization.
Once in, you claim up to two meals and one snack (or one meal and two snacks) per child per day, keep the records behind those claims, and your reimbursement is organized under a Tier I or Tier II classification, at rates set annually by USDA.
Can home daycares get CACFP?
Yes — day care homes are one of the program's participating settings.
The regulations define a "day care home" as a licensed or approved family or group day care home operating under the auspices of a sponsoring organization, and they are explicit that homes cannot join CACFP independently (7 CFR 226.2, 226.18(b)).
Two phrases in that definition carry the eligibility. Family or group means the rule follows the home-based setting — both a family child care home and a group day care home are covered by it. Licensed or approved is the status your home needs before the definition fits it.
Licensing of family child care homes runs through your state child care licensing agency; the sources read for this page do not establish who grants approval to a home that is not licensed, so confirm that route with your sponsor or the state agency that administers CACFP where you live.
Centers work differently: the operate-under-a-sponsor requirement is written for day care homes (7 CFR 226.18(b)), and the center provisions — the center meal-claim limit, for one — sit in their own section of the regulations (7 CFR 226.17).
The program basics, what CACFP is and how it runs inside a center, live on the center-side guide; this page stays on the home provider's side of it.
If you are still weighing home-based care as a career, the family child care provider overview covers the role before the food program.
What is a sponsor?
A sponsor is a public or private nonprofit sponsoring organization that a day care home operates under for CACFP purposes (7 CFR 226.2, 226.18(b)).
The regulation's wording is that day care homes participating in the program shall operate under the auspices of a public or private nonprofit sponsoring organization — the sponsor is the organization your home operates under, and your home participates through it.
That is why there is no independent route for homes: it is not extra paperwork a sponsor helps with, it is how the rule defines home participation.
The sponsor also carries the program's teaching load.
Federal rules require sponsoring organizations to train the key staff of the facilities they sponsor before program operations and at least once a year after that, on meal patterns, meal counts, claims, recordkeeping and reimbursement (7 CFR 226.16).
For a provider new to the program, that topic list doubles as a map of what participation will expect you to know.
Finding a sponsor and completing the application are the operator side of the program — how to enroll in CACFP walks through that process for centers and homes together.
Tier I vs Tier II: which classification is your home?
Every day care home in the program is classified as Tier I or Tier II, and the rule draws the line with two tests (7 CFR 226.2).
- Tier I — income. Your home is Tier I if the provider's household meets the free/reduced-price income standards.
- Tier I — area. Your home is also Tier I if it sits in an area where at least 50 percent of the children at the local school, or in the census area, are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
- Tier II — the default. A day care home that meets neither test is a Tier II home.
Notice what the tests run on: the provider's own household, or the neighborhood the home sits in.
Those are the two inputs the rule names for day care homes (7 CFR 226.2).
The classification follows those tests, so the facts behind them — household income and the home's location — are what it turns on.
What the tier means for money is the natural next question, and the honest answer has two parts.
The tier is the classification your home's reimbursement is organized under; the dollar rates themselves are set annually by USDA, which is why this page does not reprint them.
Your sponsor can confirm both which classification applies to your home and the current rates where you live.
What records you keep
A useful map of a home's CACFP paperwork comes from an unlikely place: the topics federal rules require a sponsor's training to cover — meal patterns, meal counts, claims, recordkeeping and reimbursement (7 CFR 226.16).
The center of gravity is the claim, and this page groups the records around it in three places.
Meal counts and claims. A day care home may claim no more than two meals and one snack, or one meal and two snacks, per child per day — the same cap centers work under (7 CFR 226.17(b)(3), 226.18(c)).
The cap runs per child, and meal counts are one of the topics your sponsor's required training covers (7 CFR 226.16) — ask your sponsor what counts it expects behind a claim.
Your tier. The Tier I tests run on your household income or your home's area eligibility, and a home that meets neither test is classified as Tier II (7 CFR 226.2).
What documenting your household or area looks like in practice is sponsor-set — ask yours what it needs behind your classification.
Training. The duty here sits on the sponsor: federal rules require sponsoring organizations to train the key staff of the facilities they sponsor before program operations and at least annually (7 CFR 226.16), which makes training a recurring item on the program calendar rather than a one-time event.
What this page does not catalog is the form-level detail — which menus you file, in what format, and how long records stay on hand.
Those specifics were not established by the sources read for this page; get the checklist from your sponsoring organization, and the state agency that administers CACFP where you live, rather than assuming it.
Not a compliance checklist — confirm your home's recordkeeping before you build yours
How it affects income
For a home provider, CACFP is an income line that sits alongside what families pay, and it reimburses meals you serve the children in care.
Three structural terms set its size: enrollment, because claims are per child; the daily cap of two meals and one snack or one meal and two snacks per child; and the rates, which USDA sets annually and which this page does not reprint — your sponsor is the source for the current figures where you live.
Where the line fits in the rest of the money is the home daycare income math's territory: it treats CACFP as one term of the full formula — capacity × tuition − expenses, plus program lines — and walks each term, including what subsidy payments add.
This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. CACFP rules are set by USDA under 7 CFR part 226 and administered in each state by a state agency; licensing of family child care homes belongs to your state child care licensing agency. Confirm your home's classification, the current rates and the recordkeeping requirements with your sponsoring organization before you rely on any figure here.