Thursday, September 28, 2023
The COVID pandemic exposed the fragility of Connecticut’s child care sector — as well as its vital role in the economy.
Early Childhood
Friday, July 15, 2022
NEW HAVEN, CT -- Connecticut Voices for Children released a new report, “The State of Early Childhood: Equity of Access for Immigrant and Refugee Families.” The report, which examines the experiences of immigrant and refugee families in accessing early child care, outlines 12 policy recommendations to extend and expand access, increase funding, and reduce barriers to early care for both immigrant and refugee families.
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Finding and affording quality childcare are the top issues for working parents in Connecticut, according to a new survey released today.
Tuesday, August 25, 2020
STAMFORD, CT -- The Children’s Learning Centers of Fairfield County has received a grant of a $35,000 from the United Way of Western Connecticut. The grant will provide critical funding to enable families to access high-quality early childhood education at the the Children’s Learning Centers. The United Way said it is working to help families it describes as Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed, or ALICE.
Tuesday, June 16, 2020
DANBURY, CT -- While many of the providers in the Cora’s Kids network were not operating during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic because their clients lost jobs or were afraid to send their children to care, 32 of the 35 providers in the network are now open and ready to begin accepting children into their programs. Cora’s Kids is part of the DanburyWORKS initiative, whose mission is to improve equity and the quality of life in the City of Danbury; United Way of Western Connecticut provides backbone support.
Friday, June 12, 2020
NEW YORK, NY -- There is near-universal consensus that early-childhood education programs can break cycles of poverty and lead to lasting upward mobility. But funders say they have always been fragile, and have only become more so due to COVID-19. Early care and education do not receive much public investment compared to K-12 public education. The result is a patchworked system—if you can call it a system—kept afloat by various sources of revenue. Most early care and education providers teetered at the financial edge, with a month or two of reserves on hand even before the crisis. Weeks of closure have likely led to permanent closures for thousands of child care centers.