2011 - 2012 Meal Reimbursement Rates

All rates shown are effective until June 30th, 2012 and are subject to change on July 1st, 2012

Online Claiming For Centers Is Here! 

The long awaited day is finally here.  Karamu has officially begun offering online claiming to its sponsored child care centers! We started a trial period last month that began with one center submitting their October claim online.  For the month of November we expanded our trial group to 5 centers.  Starting December 1st, all centers will be eligible to participate on the program!  Online claiming is simple, convenient, and much more accurate.  It also provides you much more detailed information about your claim once we process it. Within hours of submitting your claim to us you will be able to log in and see exactly what meals you were paid for, the reasons any meals may have been denied and even get an estimate of how much your reimbursement will be! Ultimately, once we have a large number of centers participating, online claiming will allow us to get your monthly reimbursement to you in a matter of days!   For more information, Karamu centers can log into the Provider Only section of this website and review the Online Claiming Guide and watch the short training videos.

If you're a Karamu sponsored child care center and are ready to start claiming online, please let us know right away so we can get you ready to start by December 1^st!  

Karamu child care home providers may soon be able to enjoy the benefits of online access to their Karamu files also!  We are currently evaluating a product very similar to the program our child care centers have been using for the last year. Once the new program is up and running, our child care homes will be able to manage their food program more collaboratively with Karamu. From the comfort of your own home (or anyplace in the world with internet access for that matter) you'll be able to log into your Karamu account to check the current status of your food program. You'll be able to enroll and drop children, quickly create your own creditable menus, track your attendance and meal counts, and eventually have the luxury of submitting your claims online as well. Check back here in the coming weeks for more information!

Karamu's Main Office Has Moved! 

We have settled in to our new office suite at 2670 Union Ave Extended, suite 900 in Memphis. Our new home is in the Lipscomb & Pitts high rise building located just one block from our old office location on Poplar. We are still in the process of having our old phone numbers transferred so we are using a set of temporary numbers provided to us by our phone company.  So don't be alarmed if your caller ID shows "Karamu" but with a phone number you've never seen before.  Our numbers should transferred early during the week of October 17th.

In the coming weeks we will also have a mail slot installed for after-hours drop offs.  For those of you who have visited the office already, the mail drop will be located in the Karamu employee entrance doors. If you turn right at the main entrance to suite 900 and go down the hall to the double doors on the left, you'll see the mail drop there.  Keep in mind that the elevator and stairs in our new building are available to non-employees from 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM (Monday through Friday) and from 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM on Saturdays. Outside of those hours, you won’t be able to get up to the 9th floor.

We want to thank the crew at Ewing Moving Service for their outstanding service!  They were prompt, professional, and very dedicated to doing a good job. If you ever need a professional moving service, we suggest you give them a try! 

Finally, that open house we promised our providers is still being planned.  So keep an eye out for your invitation!

Regulation Updates

On December 13th, 2010, President Barack Obama signed S. 3307, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into law.  This law, which reauthorized the CACFP through September 2015, also introduced a significant number of changes in the CACFP. Gone are the regulations regarding blocks claims and the use of full social security numbers on CACFP documentation. Featured below are links to memos on some of the latest CACFP regulations.  Please check back here often for updates as new rules and regulations are posted.  Please note that we only feature key changes in this column.  For a complete list of all recently released CACFP policies you should visit the USDA Food and Nutrition Service website.

• Nutrition Requirements for Fluid Milk and Fluid Milk Substitutions in the Child and Adult Care Food Program

• Water Availability in the Child and Adult Care Food Program

 Featured Child Care Links

To help keep our providers well informed, we routinely search the web for sites that may be of value to our sponsored providers. Please click the link below for our latest discovery!

Tennessee Child Care Resource & Referral Network Best Practices Videos For Child Care providers

Ask Miss Vera

If you have any CACFP or Child Care regulation questions you would like Miss Vera (our Executive Director and Founder) to answer, please e-mail us at askmissvera@karamu.org. Your question, and Miss Vera's response may be published here for all to share!

Dates To Remember

October 5th: Deadline for providers to submit their September claims for reimbursement.

Tennessee Small Business Development Center Offers Assitance For Small Business Owners Like You

For more information on available training opportunities please Click Here.