HUNTINGTON â The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources has extended the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program to children under the age of 6 who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and are not enrolled in school.
The P-EBT benefit will be issued retroactively in two-month allotments beginning with the October/November 2020 benefit period. The amount of benefits will vary by county and the child will receive the average student benefit for their county of residence.
Each SNAP household with a qualifying child will receive a West Virginia P-EBT card. A letter will be mailed separately from the card with a DHHR case number and will explain the amount the child is eligible to receive during each benefit period. The P-EBT letter case number is needed to activate the P-EBT card.
Credit WAER file photo
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is trying to gather support for legislation aimed at reducing child food insecurity nationwide. The Universal School Meals Program Act of 2021 is part of the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization being negotiated by the Senate Agriculture Committee. Gillibrand says the program would make all school meals permanently free.
“The burden -plus the stigma some children or families fear- of being labeled poor by their classmates often makes eligible families decide not to participate.”
Gillibrand says that one in four children in New York State are fighting food insecurity, and likewise in rural counties, where one in three children are food insecure. Locally, Syracuse City School District Food and Nutrition Director Rachel Murphy told WAER News last summer the district served up to 20,000 meals a day. It was recently announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will continue to feed 34 million children nationwide this summe
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Vonda Ramp, Pennsylvania Department of Education director of child nutrition programs, said while schools and communities have made strong efforts to provide free meals, families are still in need.
Ramp pointed to grab-and-go meals and curbside meal pick-up programs. These are things that schools ”were never able to do before,” said Ramp. In the last year, Pennsylvania provided about 144 million meals to families.
The USDA recently announced that many of those programs will continue into the summer months and the 2021-22 school year.
But, Ramp said, the need for cash assistance remains.
“Despite the tremendous efforts of schools and communities,” said Ramp, “students and families may not be able to access all of the meals provided by schools.”
The serving area in the Mt. Lebanon High School.
About one million Pennsylvania children enrolled in public schools will begin receiving a combined $1 billion in cash assistance this week through the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer program. Eligibility is limited to students who receive free or reduced school lunch who attended virtual school in 2020-21.
The federal relief funds are meant to make up for the added food expenses families faced without access to school meals.
“Food insecurity was a serious public health risk before the pandemic, said Pennsylvania Department of Human Services Acting Secretary Meg Snead. “And the last year has exacerbated that.”
Thanks to the USDA’s decision to extend the waiver program, schools across the country will be able to provide free meals to their students through June 2022. The extension was discussed at the previous Roaring Fork School Board meeting where Superintendent Rob Stein clarified that even though applications aren’t required from students and families to receive the meals, it is still important that they fill them out.
“The main point is we still want people to continue, if they think they qualify to submit the paperwork and to always give us accurate contact information,” Stein said. “There are other benefits to families, students and schools if you qualify, even if you don’t say, want lunch at school.”