Waterbury, VT—The federal government has authorized the Vermont Department for Children and Families (DCF) to provide temporary food benefits to households who:
- Receive 3SquaresVT benefits, and
- Have children under 6 years old in the household.
The last round of benefits, called Pandemic-EBT Childcare, have been issued for the period September 2021 through August 2022. Children did not have to be enrolled in childcare to receive the benefit. Benefit amounts per eligible child are as follows:
- $32.31 each month in September, October, November, December and January
- $33.55 each month in February, March, April, May and June
- $391 lump sum summer benefit
Eligible households will receive a letter explaining the benefit, and all eligible households should have received their benefit by November 30, 2022. Approximately $4.5 million in benefits has been issued to 6,942 Vermont households for September 2021 through August 2022. This covers 9,746 children under the age of six.
In addition to the childcare benefit, P-EBT benefits have been issued to PreK-grade 12 students who would normally receive free or reduced-price meals at school, but missed meals at school due to COVID. Over $20 million in P-EBT benefits for the period September 2021 through August 2022 was provided to 70,293 households with 105,468 children in schools.
To learn more, read the Frequently-Asked Questions About P-EBT Childcare online at https://dcf.vermont.gov/esd/P-EBT. The FAQs are also available in Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Dari, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Karen, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Korean, Malayalam, Nepali, Pashto, Portuguese Brazil, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and Vietnamese.