New Britain, Middletown Unveil Community Plans

Two years of blood, sweat and tears was put into New Britain's Early Childhood Blueprint – the blood, sweat and tears of many, many people – hundreds of volunteers and thousands of volunteer hours. While the blueprint itself is done, those who worked so hard to put it together know the road won't be any easier in implementing it. But they are willing to try. And they have rock steady philanthropic support from organizations such as the Graustein Memorial Fund, the Community Foundation of New Britain, United Way of Central Connecticut, The New Britain Community Chest and the American Savings Foundation.

“You stuck to the task,” Graustin Memorial Fund Executive Director David Nee told the community plan development participants. “You developed strategies that can make a difference in the lives of kids. Even in tough economic times, we can't ignore the needs of young children. They're not young for long.”

Priorities were narrowed down to five indicators to improve the quality of life for young children in the city, said Tracy Madden-Hennessey, who is co-chair of the New Britain Discovery Collaborative and the associate director of the YMCA of New Britain. Those indicators are: reducing the number of low birthweight babies; increasing the number of mothers with a high school diploma; reducing the rate of obesity in three- and four-year-old children; increasing the number of children ready for Kindergarten and increasing the number of children reading at grade level. The committee identified relevant issues and gathered data, including city, state and national trends. They identified existing resources and developed strategies and worked to develop partners to help address the issues.

To prepare children for Kindergarten, the components of the comprehensive plan increase the supply of qualified early childhood teachers, increase the supply of early care and education in New Britain and identify children with developmental delays for early intervention.

Looking over the report, New Britain State Rep. Tim O'Brien said he is pleased with how thorough it is.

“It justifies a lot of the things [we're] already fighting for,” he said. “It's justified with facts and figures; it enables us to be forward-thinking. I'm very excited for this and what it represents for the possibility for the future.”

Rep. John Geragosian, co-chair of the Appropriations committee, said he plans to take the report back to the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) subcommittee.

“Investing in children saves a lot of money in the long-run,” he said. “It's important to keep fighting for these things and not balance the budget on the backs of the poor.”

“On behalf of the children who are not here tonight, thank you,” said Madden-Hennessey.

While Middletown completed and submitted its community plan in June 2009 and was not completely “hot off the press,” officials took the opportunity in December to officially present the plan. Called “The Middletown Early Childhood Plan,” prepared by the Middletown School Readiness Council, Opportunity Knocks and the Middlesex Coalition for Children, the plan places a new focus on children from prenatal to age three. There is more of an emphasis on two-generational strategies in early literacy and behavioral health and more emphasis on helping families. The three local collaboratives worked on the plan for 18 months, said Betsy Morgan, director of the Middletown Coalition for Children, with fifty people working on the plan at any one time. The 18 month period also included six community meetings for public input, she added.

The plan is organized around three key components – ready children, healthy children and thriving families. As noted in the plan itself, each component is integrated, overlapping and must be achieved simultaneously. Achieving ready children will mean expanding early literacy experiences for children birth to eight (create an early literacy collaborative and early literacy plan); recruit, train and retain high-quality early education teachers (expand/improve the early childhood program at Middlesex Community College); expand quality preschool and align with K-3 education (work with Middletown Public Schools to develop a long-range plan for preschool expansion); improve the quality and expand the supply of infant/toddler early care and education (train providers in early learning guidelines and re-bid for Early Head Start funding) and expand access to translation services for families (use translators from Wesleyan's Language Bank).

“When a community rallies around their children, good things happen,” said David Nee, who heads up the Graustein Memorial Fund, which supports the planning process of Discovery communities.

“How do we get the resources where they need to be – we will wrestle with that, but won't give up,” said Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano.

To finance its plan, Middletown seeks to use its infrastructure of piecing together resources from the School Readiness Program grant, Discovery grant, health grants and other sources; work on low-cost/no-cost activities in year one; use advocacy as a way to eliminate barriers to effective use of existing funds; use targeted fundraising strategies and secure partner commitments.

To view the New Britain Blueprint, visit http://discovery.wcgmf.org/community.php?community_id=1023 and for the Middletown report, visit http://discovery.wcgmf.org/community.php?community_id=1020