Take a Stand for Child Care

Sign our petition TODAY! Let's urge our Members of Congress to co-sponsor and/or support the Child Care for Working Families Act. The Child Care for Working Families Act works to expand access to affordable, high-quality child care for all children who need it. Passing this child care bill would mean:

• Lowering the percentage of a family’s income spent on child care to 7 percent, making child care affordable.
• More than doubling the number of children eligible for child care assistance, and ensuring all those who are eligible have the ability to enroll their child in a quality program.
• Supporting universal access to high-quality preschool programs for all low- and middle-income three- and four-year-olds
• Ensuring that all child care workers are paid a living wage.
• Building more inclusive, high-quality child care facilities for children with disabilities, and infants and toddlers with disabilities, including by increasing funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Budget Update: Hearings Begin on CT's Biennium Budget

The Appropriations Committee will hold state agency budget presentations and public hearings this week. Public speaker order for the public hearings will be determined by a lottery system. Numbers will be drawn from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. in the LOB First Floor Atrium and from 10:15 until 1 p.m. in Room 2700. Speakers arriving after the completion of the lottery will have their names places at the end of the speaker list. The list of speakers registered through the lottery system will be posted outside the designated hearing room two hours prior to the start of the public hearing. Please submit 30 copies of written testimony at the time of sign-up, but no later than 2 p.m. Testimony received after the the designated time may not be distributed until after the hearing. Please email written testimony in Word or PDF format to [email protected]. A full list of hearings can be found on the CGA website under "Public Hearings," then "Appropriations Committee." Public hearings of interest include:

Wednesday, February 21 (Room 2C)

Human Services

10 a.m. to 11 a.m. - Department of Children and Families

11 a.m. to 12 p.m. - Department of Social Services

6 p.m. - Public Hearing

Thursday, February 22 (Room 2C)

Elementary and Secondary Education

1 p.m. to 2 p.m. - Department of Education

2 p.m. to 3 p.m. - Office of Early Childhood

5 p.m. Public Hearing

Advocacy Day In March

The Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance will host its annual Advocacy Day on Tuesday, March 6, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., at the Old Judiciary Room of the State Capitol. Registration begins at 9:30 a.m., the program runs from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., followed by meetings with your local legislators. To register, visit www.earlychildhoodalliance.com/calendar. The flier can be found HERE. We encourage you to wear red to the event to unite us as a group and make us more visible throughout the Capitol during the day.

Redlining Has Left Many Communities of Color Exposed to Lead

Although President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, redlining effects still exist. What is redlining? Redlining is "federally sanctioned unfair lending practices and social policies that denied home loans to even well-qualified black families, by treating them as too risky for federally-backed mortgages." This has concentrated minority and/or poor families into neighborhoods of old, poorly-maintained housing stock. One of the hazards of the old and poorly-maintained housing stock is lead, which can cause a myriaid of issues. To read the full Child Trends analysis, click HERE.  

Child Trends: Nearly Half of America's Children Experience at Least One ACE

A new report finds that 45 percent of children in the United States have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACEs). Adversities experienced in childhood pose a critical public health issue, because they can lead to long-term health problems, including alcoholism, obesity, and drug abuse. The trauma associated with these experiences can have lasting negative effects, especially if a child is exposed to multiple adverse experiences and does not have the benefit of protective factors, such as a relationship with a caring adult. 

SAVE THE DATE: Childhood Conversations/Together We Will Conference

In a new venture this year, the annual Childhood Conversations Conference and the Together We Will Conference are working together to bring you one comprehensive conference on Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7, at the Hartford/Windsor Marriott! Registration will be open soon, but please mark your calendars if you have attended either of these conferences and learned a lot from them. We hope to see you in 2018!

Support for the Alliance comes from of our members and our funders: The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, Connecticut Health Foundation, Connecticut Community Foundation, Children's Fund of Connecticut, CT Early Childhood Funder Collaborative, a project of CT Council of Philanthropy; The Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut; Community Foundation of Greater New Britain; Community Foundation of Greater New Haven; and The Fund for Greater Hartford.