By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The Ellis County Child Care Task Force will not be moving forward with a plan to offer meals to area in-home child care providers, but the task force may pursue further subsidies for food for children.
A subcommittee of the task force had been exploring the concept of having a central catering business provide food for centers and/or in-home providers.
The hope was a centralized food source could cut costs for providers or at least save the providers the time and labor it took to prepare menus, shop for groceries and prepare the food.
Only seven providers of the 70 in-home providers in the county responded to a survey on the possible program.
Andrew Cutright, who is on the board of the Hays Area Children's Center, said at a meeting Wednesday some providers may be making money on the meals they serve. A catering program might cost them income, he said.
The state already provides food subsidies for qualifying providers. All of those providers had been receiving the highest level of reimbursement during the pandemic.
Now the reimbursements are going back to a tiered system as they were pre-pandemic, which means a lower reimbursement rate for many providers in Hays.
Sarah Wasinger, task force facilitator, said she would investigate grants to further subsidize food for providers.
She said if she could show that a local child care food program could improve the quality of food for children, she might be able to obtain a grant.
However, she said many grant programs require the grantee to show a plan for sustainability, and she was unsure if that would be possible in this case.