Elsewhere, the statistics of the participants are listed [In the upper left-hand corner of this blog is a search feature. Type in a word or phrase and carefully hit the search button. You can then sort by date.].
The article below highlights how Massachusetts deserves praise for supporting a program that makes sense.
Why would anyone deny Americans FOOD?
WIC program keeps running thanks to state
Patricia Nogueira is the senior nutritionist for Cape Cod WIC.Cape Cod Times/Merrily Cassidy
HYANNIS — The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program in Massachusetts is safe — for now.
Unlike many other states, the commonwealth supplements the federally funded program with state monies that are helping to keep the program solvent in the face of a shutdown of the federal government, said Magolia Solorzano, program director Cape Cod WIC Program.
Solorzano, program director Cape Cod WIC Program.
"A lot of the money we receive for food is state funding," she said. "We have funding, hopefully for the rest of the year."
Cape Cod WIC not only continues to issue grocery store vouchers to more than 3,000 families on the Cape and Islands, it is accepting new clients, Solorzano said.
"It's business as usual for WIC now," she said. Solorzano said she told 18 grocery store and pharmacy managers meeting at her Hyannis office for a training session Thursday: "Deposit checks in the bank, and they will be paid."
The situation in other states is more dire.
Utah briefly shut down its WIC program but reopened with $2.5 million in emergency funding.
The state of Washington said Tuesday it had enough money for just nine more days of assistance; other states relying solely on federal aid expect the money to last just about two weeks.
WIC provides supplemental food and nutritional education to low-income pregnant, postpartum and breastfeeding women, infants and children up to age 5.
Low-income clients get several vouchers a month for products including whole wheat bread, low-fat milk, infant formula, baby food, eggs and fruits and vegetables that they can redeem at local grocery stores and farmer's markets.
WIC vouchers are unlike food stamps in that they do not have a cash value but can only be used on specified products, usually the store brand because that is the lowest cost.
In the interest of promoting nutrition and combating obesity, WIC clients can use the vouchers to purchase whole grain bread and brown rice but not white rice, white bread or sugary cereals, Solorzano said.
WIC also provides breast- feeding support and nutrition counseling for parents of young children, said Patricia Nogueira, senior nutritionist with the Cape Cod WIC program.
The nutrition counseling is a requirement for participation in the program and takes place one-on-one or in small groups, she said.
Nogueira weighs children, takes their measurements and can do finger-prick tests to check the iron content in their blood.
"We want to ensure they have a healthy start right from the beginning," she said.
Nogueira makes heavy use of food models to make the point about healthy eating.
A line of cups on her desk represents different types of milk — whole, fat-free and
1 percent.
The whole milk cup is almost half filled with a tallowy yellow substance — showing that 48 percent of the calories come from fat, Nogueira said.
That usually makes an impact on parents, who don't want their children chugging several glasses of fat a day when they can get the same amount of calcium and protein from lower-fat milk, she said.
WIC has been a nationwide program since 1980. Thirty years ago, Massachusetts became the first state to provide supplemental funding.
It's become a fairly big business on the Cape. Vouchers from the Hyannis office covering Bourne to Dennis and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, account for $1.7 million worth of food purchases annually, Solorzano said.
In total, Massachusetts received $82.4 million in federal money for food in fiscal year 2013, which ended Sept. 30, state Department of Public Health spokesman David Kibbe said.
He said the program gets an additional $25.4 million in federal money for administration.
The state funding for WIC comes to $12.3 million in 2014, Kibbe said. While it's a help, the WIC program can't survive on state money indefinitely, officials say.
"While the Massachusetts WIC Program is currently operational, we are concerned about the impact of the shutdown on this program in the near future, as the program has only limited reserve funding,"
Kibbe wrote in an email. "We will continue to carefully monitor the situation."
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