Microwave meals and Little Debbie’s: No nutritional requirements for feeding children housed at DCFS office

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Officials have said it is inevitable that there will be children staying in Cuyahoga County’s social services office building for however long it takes to find them appropriate placement – a process that can take weeks for some. Yet, the county still doesn’t have a coordinated plan for how to feed those children in its care.

At schools, childcare centers and residential facilities there are nutritional requirements for every meal, making sure youth have access to fruits, vegetables, whole grains and milk. Ohio law even requires foster parents who house kids in county custody to provide “nutritious” and “well-balanced” meals.

There are no such policies governing how the county’s Division of Children and Family Services feeds youth living in its Jane Edna Hunter office building, however.

The county and its top health and human services officials have repeatedly claimed that children in their care are fed balanced diets.

“Our policy is we feed them as we would feed our own,” county Spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer in an emailed statement in April.

The types of food offered depend on each child’s preferences, she said, but staff “look for compromises” and are “conscience of the amount of sugar they’re consuming, as well as processed foods.”

Health and Human Services Director David Merriman and DCFS Director Jacqueline Fletcher have repeated those lines. In a March conversation with cleveland.com, Merriman said kids at the building ranging from infants to teens are offered healthy options alongside other comfort foods meant to put them at ease after being removed from their homes or foster placements.

“Sometimes it’s fruits and vegetables, but sometimes they want some Kraft Mac and Cheese,” he said, defending that he feeds his daughter similar items in her school lunch. “A lot of kids eat mac and cheese out of a microwave.”

Fletcher agreed, sharing that staff once bought salad for a child who requested it. Social services involvement is not a normal experience, she told cleveland.com at the time, but they try to normalize it by at least providing the type of foods that kids might get at home, “making sure that they have every option that I would want for my child, in terms of nutrition.”

DCFS’s groceries tell a different story.

Receipts show kids eating almost exclusively sugary, processed foods that can either be found in a vending machine or cooked in the microwave, with little to no access to fruits or vegetables.

In 2022, the county spent $8,308 on groceries to feed youth staying in the childcare room, whether they were there for an hour or weeks at a time, according to receipts. An analysis of those purchases showed the county bought:

• $2,300 in meal foods, like frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, French fries, freezer meals, ramen noodles and hotdogs
• $1,000 in Lunchables
• $1,042 in chips
• $500 in various Little Debbie snacks
• $374 in cereal and Pop-Tarts
• $187 in cookies or Rice Krispie treats

Comparatively, the county spent just $21 on applesauce or fruit cups within the year and $10 on a single bag each of apples and oranges. Receipts do not appear to reflect any purchases specifically for vegetables – fresh or frozen.

For beverages, the county buys mostly water, with various flavor mixers, receipts show. There were few juice purchases and no evidence of the county supplying soda.

The remainder of expenses included miscellaneous items, such as baby food, paper plates, plastic cups, cutlery, food storage bags and laundry detergent.

Cleveland.com, through the county spokeswoman, made several attempts to reach Fletcher and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne for comment and clarification about how youth were eating in the building, including to confirm some staff reports that the new supervisor over the childcare room was now prioritizing offering youth several varieties of fruits and vegetables every day. The county said it was unable to provide any 2023 grocery receipts.

The county did not address specific questions but shared two emailed responses from Fletcher.

“When children are in our building because their parents can’t or won’t care for them, we treat them with the love and care we would treat our own children in our homes,” the first emailed statement, sent Monday, said.

An hour later, Fletcher sent a second statement:

“As we continue to deal with the statewide placements and treatment crisis, children from the community come to us with a variety of challenges,” she said. “We work to meet each child’s individual needs and assess the best way to get them the treatment and support they deserve, including offering a variety of food options as needed.”

Comfort and care

There are other ways that children and teens can be fed while in the county building, but those options are less frequent and harder to track.

Sometimes, a youth’s social worker might take them to a restaurant or buy them their favorite foods at the store, but because employees expense those meals, the county said it would be impractical to pull reports to determine how often that is happening.

There’s also a privately-run café inside the DCFS office where staff and visitors can go for hot breakfasts and cooked meals from 7:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Youth can eat there too, the county explained, if someone in the building is willing to buy it for them, but those purchases are also individually expensed, making them impractical to track.

After cleveland.com started asking questions about nutrition and how kids were eating, however, the county changed the process. Now, staff are required to submit purchase orders for food they buy for youth at the café, Madigan said.

In April, the first month of the change, Madigan said the county spent $280 feeding youth at the café.

Merriman previously stressed to cleveland.com that DCFS’s main strategy was to feed kids whatever they could to make them more comfortable while in the building, amid what can be a stressful and traumatic experience of having to leave their home and family. Staff will ask, “Is there a meal that you like?” and try to provide it, he told cleveland.com in March.

Treat meals can be useful for most kids, who stay less than 24 hours before being placed with a foster family or in some other residential facility. Once at their placement, Merriman said, it is an “expectation” that they receive proper nutrition.

But for years, the county has struggled to place some youth – predominately teens – who have mental health or behavioral needs or who are facing criminal charges. Those kids can linger at the building for weeks to months at a time, sleeping on air mattresses in a childcare room and repeatedly eating whatever staff can prepare out of a microwave.

There is not a full-service kitchen in the building and the county did not answer questions about what other cooking appliances staff might have access to. However, Madigan indicated they are hoping to expand their options.

“We’re looking soon to purchase or ask for donations for small appliances, including an electric skillet, so that we can do bigger breakfasts,” she said.

Minimum nutritional standards elsewhere

The limited food options in the building is another example of how unprepared children services offices are to house youth in the absence of enough foster homes and placement beds to meet the need.

The purpose of public children’s services agencies is to “assess and investigate reports of child abuse, neglect or dependency as required by state law,” according to the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services website. It says nothing about what should happen if the county agency itself becomes the de facto primary caregiver.

“While there are meal requirements for youth in foster homes or residential care, these do not expressly apply to youth who’ve not yet been placed in one of these settings,” Ohio Department of Job and Family Services Spokeswoman Dasia Clemente said.

The Ohio Revised Code only mandates that those with legal custody of a child provide “adequate parental care,” including “adequate food,” without defining what it means by “adequate.” It also requires residential centers and group homes to provide youth with “three nutritious meals per day” that “meet the most recent dietary guidelines” from the USDA.

However, ODJFS said state law “does speak to” the grey area between placements, stating “no court, agency, resource caregiver, residential facility or any employee, volunteer, intern or subcontractor of an agency, court or residential facility is to in any way violate any” rights of children. This includes their right to receive access to the same type of “nutritious” and “well-balanced” foods they’re required to receive in foster care.

While state law does not appear to define exactly what “nutritious” or “well-balanced” means, those terms are defined for other places where young people receive care.

The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act requires school meals to meet minimum nutrition standards to “support program integrity and the responsible use of taxpayers’ money by ensuring that children are offered wholesome foods that optimize health and academic achievement and minimize the risk of long-term chronic diseases.”

That means tracking calories, sodium and saturated fat, and ensuring every meal comes with an age-appropriate serving of fruits, vegetables, grains, meat and milk.

“Discretionary sources of calories (solid fats and added sugars) may be added to the meal pattern if within the specification for calories, saturated fats, trans fat and sodium,” the rules say.

Child or adult day care centers that serve meals are also governed by similar rules under the federal Child and Adult Care Food Program, which notes that providers “have a powerful opportunity to instill healthy habits in young children that serve as a foundation for healthy choices in life.”

It goes as far as to restrict the types of breakfast cereals offered to “no more than 6 grams of sugar per dry ounce,” and even addresses how to handle picky eaters.

“Each adult day care center and at-risk afterschool program must offer its participants all of the required food servings…” though “participants may be permitted to decline.”

If a child declines one food option, however, an alternative must be offered, it says.

Scott Brittan, assistant director of the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, said he wasn’t aware of any kind of state or national guidelines for food or nutrition in children services offices.

PCSAO is a membership-driven nonprofit that advocates for policy and programs that support the industry and the families they serve. It doesn’t have authority over agencies, nor does it track individual policies, Brittan said, but they do know that some agencies are making changes to better accommodate the youth inevitably forced to stay in their buildings.

One northeast Ohio agency built individual beds and bathrooms for kids who must sleep overnight, he said, declining to identify it.

“Different agencies, depending on available resources and available space, are trying to figure out at least a comfortable and quiet place, if (kids) do have to spend the night” he said.

But so far, none of the agencies are talking about crafting uniform policies for how they should operate or what kind of care they should provide, including how kids should be fed while staying there. That might be something to consider, until agencies find a solution to the placement crisis, he said.

“We think it’s really important and needs a statewide solution and statewide leadership from multiple systems,” Brittan said.

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