T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM — Marshall County Extension Director Amy Pieper, left, provides some details on the Healthy Kids Iowa program, which was run during the summer to provide eligible kids with food. She met with other members of the Marshall County Food Access Committee on Tuesday to discuss how the program went and problems that were encountered.

The results of the summer Healthy Kids Iowa program might not be as positive as supporters had hoped.

During Tuesday’s Marshall County Food Access Committee meeting, an update on the program in Marshall County was provided by Emergency Food Box volunteer Gary Fulton and Iowa State Manager for Save the Children Action Network Paige Chickering.

Healthy Kids Iowa was implemented at the beginning of the summer after Gov. Kim Reynolds opted out of using the $29 million Summer EBT program. The EBT cards would have given 245,000 eligible children, 4,000 of whom reside in Marshall County, $120 cards to cover food during the summer months.

Based on the July numbers, Chickering said only one-fifth of eligible Iowa children were served. The August numbers have not been made available yet from the Iowa Health and Human Services Department.

“Even if the program had met its goal of 65,000 children, that’s one-third of the Summer EBT population,” Chickering said.

Marshall County Extension Director Amy Pieper said children in other states that used the Summer EBT were given $30 per month on the card.

Instead, the state of Iowa provided $40 food boxes for each eligible child once a month, with a focus on nutrition. In Marshall County, the boxes were distributed by the Emergency Food Box and the Salvation Army.

Fulton said the Emergency Food Box team distributed the boxes twice a month from the back door of the facility. When the truck with the food arrived on a Tuesday, volunteers unloaded it to get it ready for distribution. While they were handling Healthy Kids, the pantry continued to operate and offer food to other residents as usual, and that would not have been possible without the extra community volunteers.

“Thank you to the city for giving us barricades to allow us to do traffic control,” he said. “We served over 1,000 children this summer and several hundred families.”

It roughly took five minutes to take a Healthy Kids client through the process of picking out the approved foods for the box, Fulton said. So, it went fairly smoothly, he added.

Pieper said that according to Iowa Hunger Coalition statistics, the number of kids fed through Healthy Kids was not as much as Summer EBT. Plus, there were no other distribution sites in Marshall County, she said, which made transportation an issue.

According to Community Foundation of Marshall County Executive Director Julie Hitchins, at the distributions, no information was recorded on where children were from.

“I think that was on purpose,” she said. “Any other distribution, you want to know where people are coming from.”

Hirth said during one of the distribution times she volunteered at, they were giving away protein drinks, which was determined to be $3.86 per piece.

“That could be a gallon of milk,” she said. “Protein drinks are great, but that’s one serving, but you could get a gallon of milk or maybe more if it’s on sale. Maybe quantifying that’s not the best thing to have.”

Sandy Bennett with Hope United Methodist Church said the governor was pushing for nutrition in the food boxes, but there were several items which were not. Fulton said each child received one dozen eggs, some shredded cheese, sliced meats and hot dogs, canned pasta, spaghetti, hamburger, pancake mix and chickpea spread. The latter was not popular, and the Emergency Food Box has a lot leftover, but that might be attributed to people not knowing how to use the product.

“The chocolate spread went over very well, but the plain, which looks like baby barf, did not go over well,” he said.

There were also a couple times when distribution sites ran out of certain items, such as eggs and cheese. Some food which was not taken by families was placed in little food pantries.

Chickering said the experiences of the Marshall County sites and volunteers were similar to what she has been hearing from across the state. There was frustration from food pantries that Healthy Kids was a big “logistical lift” which was too complicated, especially for those which did not have double the amount of volunteers. The transportation issues were also felt through Iowa.

“There’s frustration around what we have at our disposal compared to what we’re spending our resources on,” she said. “It seems like we could be more efficient and effective in serving families.”

When asked if there was a cost comparison between Summer EBT and Healthy Kids to the state, Chickering said the state has not been transparent with those numbers. She has submitted an Open Records request, as it is information which should be made available.

“If $40 per kid per month for 65,000 children was what was allocated for purchasing, that would account for $7.8 million of the program,” she said. “That leaves $1.2 to $1.3 million that I would assume is spent on administrative costs. The cost to the state of Iowa to opt in for EBT if they covered half of the administrative cost of the program is $2.2 million. Last year, we would have been able to get a technology assistance grant to help with administrative costs, but that is [no longer] available.”

The other thing Chickering said is known is food banks ran out of funds the state gave to administer the program very quickly, some within the first month. The Food Bank of Iowa had to spend $700,000 to $800,000 of their own money to make Healthy Kids function.

Hitchins said the dollars from the Healthy Kids food did not flow through smoothly. Pieper agreed.

“The loss of economic impact on our communities was huge,” she said.

Hitchins hoped there was a competitive bid process of businesses to supply the food, as she noticed a lot of Hy-Vee brands.

Chickering has put together a letter on behalf of food pantries outlining the problems and concerns that will be sent to the governor’s office. If the state does decide to continue Healthy Kids, the letter contains changes food pantries would like to see, and also suggests it might be better to return to Summer EBT. She is also circulating a Summer EBT petition for people to sign to encourage Reynolds to accept the program again.

Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.