New Hampshire Federal Nutrition Programs Lagging
WASHINGTON—The number of families helped by New Hampshire federal nutrition programs since 2000 falls behind the national average, according to a report released Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) that profiles each state’s progress in providing assistance to low-income families.
The report stressed the need for improvements in the food stamp program-New Hampshire was listed as having had one of the worst-and other programs including the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program.
While improvements have been made over the past two years to recover from a sharp decline in program participation during the late 1990s, the number of people living in poverty-stricken households nationally rose to 33 million in 2001 from 31 million in 2000, according to the report.
Using data from agencies including the Census Bureau and the Department of Agriculture, the report showed New Hampshire reached only 39 to 53 percent of people eligible for food stamps in 2000, the fifth lowest state after Nevada, Kansas, Massachusetts and Idaho.
FRAC President Jim Weill said Congress and state governments need to “start aggressively implementing new choices in the food stamp program,” including making nutrition programs “administratively easier for sponsors to operate and for parents to access.” The Bush administration made federal improvements to the nutrition programs last year, Weil said, but has not shown the same commitment in this year’s budget.
“The president’s budget has not a single penny for new money for any of the child nutrition programs,” Weill said. “We think that’s unacceptable.”
“No mother should have to cut her milk with water in order to feed her baby’s stomach,” he added.
States must also strive to provide the same accessibility to School Breakfast Programs and Summer Nutrition Programs as it does to School Lunch Programs, Weill said. New Hampshire provides breakfast to only 36 percent of students who participate in the lunch program, ranking 37 among the 50 states and District of Columbia. It provides summer lunch to only 12 percent of students who participate in the lunch program during the school year, ranking 38.
The child nutrition programs are scheduled to go before Congress this year for reauthorization, the first time the programs will be reevaluated since 1998. FRAC, joined by other anti-hunger interest groups, sent a letter to Congress last November urging them to appropriate approximately $1 billion annually for child nutrition programs.
FRAC officials also said they hope the report will draw attention at this weekend’s winter meeting of the National Governors Association in Washington.
Terry Smith, the food stamp program manager at the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, said many of the statistics in the report are from 2000 and are therefore out of date. Smith also said that it is important to look at improvement statistics, adding that New Hampshire has improved its food stamps program considerably over the last five years.
The report said participation in the food stamp program in New Hampshire increased 5.2 percent from 1997 to 2002, more than double the national average of 2.3 percent since 1997.
“We submitted [an outreach plan] for approval in the fall of 1998, when we were one of nine states with outreach plans,” Smith said. “After one year we showed improvement. The food stamp program has a very articulated outreach plan.”
Smith said the department’s outreach plan includes improving customer service, eliminating barriers to participation, notifying potential participants of the resources available to them and reaching out to the community by going to places where people in need congregate.
“We’re working on it,” Smith said. “We’re working very hard.”
New Hampshire Rep. Jeb Bradley, R-N.H., said that the state should continue working to improve its outreach program, adding that the House’s passage of a welfare reform bill last week also could help state programs providing assistance to needy families.
“If the Senate joins the House in passing the reauthorization of the welfare reform bill, it’s going to give new authority, new flexibility to the states to better . . . develop programs that work for states in a whole range of assistance issues,” Bradley said. “So, I think that if welfare reform goes forward that should help the situation too, giving states more flexibility to deal with this issue and I think that would benefit the poor people of New Hampshire.”
Published in The Manchester Union Leader, in New Hampshire.
