Family Day Care Home (FDCH) Providers in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) must maintain child enrollment forms, menus, meal count records and attendance records as required by Federal Regulation at 7 CFR 226.10(d) and 226.18(d), (e), and (g).

The Federal regulation requires that records shall be retained for three years after the date of submission of the final claim for the fiscal year to which they pertain. However, if audit findings have not been resolved, the records shall be retained beyond the end of the three year period as long as may be required for the resolution of the issues raised by the audit.

Providers must maintain and have on hand for immediate review all records that support their program activities for the current month plus the previous twelve months of operation. Providers may store the remaining two years of records offsite; however, the records must still be in the control of the provider and accessible within a reasonable amount of time. If no offsite storage is used, providers must retain three years of records onsite at the FDCH.

Records can be kept in hard copy or electronic format, provided that they are readily available to reviewers.

Sponsors must begin to train providers on this requirement. All providers must be trained no later than September 30, 2009. Sponsors must document that the providers have been informed and trained. Sponsors may send information to all providers, update handbooks, and will also need to provide training on this during monitoring reviews. Evidence that the provider has been trained must be in the provider's permanent file.