An Interactive Guide for State Agency Review of Sponsoring Institutions
Congratulations. You completed your review. An important next step in the review process is to determine whether your observations and findings, considered as a whole, rise to a serious deficiency. Consistent and judicious application of the serious deficiency process is critical to the sound management of the CACFP. While the decision to initiate the serious deficiency process cannot be reduced to a formula, USDA developed the CACFP SD Navigator to assist State agencies in making a fair and well-reasoned decision, one that is consistent with program regulations, and includes input from your peers across the country.
Before entering the CACFP SD Navigator, please ensure that you have completed all the required components of the review. In other words, you should make sure that all the information pertaining to your review has been gathered and is readily available, that you are comfortable that your observations and findings have been identified, and you have evidence to support those findings.
USDA supports States’ efforts to assist their sponsoring organizations with technical assistance at the earliest sign of management difficulty. But technical assistance is not always sufficient. Initiating the serious deficiency process can be a difficult call, but it is both appropriate and necessary to address violations of program rules or patterns of non-compliance that undermine the CACFP or indicate an inability to operate the program in the best interests of our participants.