The Early Care and Education Candidate Guide provides an overview of the state’s current challenges and solutions pertaining to early childhood issues. It outlines a framework to create a dynamic early care and education system that is responsive to the needs of all our state’s children and families.
The report examines the progress that Connecticut has made in expanding early care and education, but emphasizes that far too many families, often families of color and those that are low income, still struggle to access affordable, high-quality early care and education. Connecticut needs a robust, state-of-the-art infrastructure to promote early childhood development across our entire population – and such infrastructure requires investment. Investments in early childhood are investments in Connecticut’s social and economic future. Prioritizing the needs of Connecticut’s youngest children today is an investment in Connecticut’s citizens, workers, decision makers, and leaders of tomorrow.
The report proposes a series of solutions grounded in fundamental early childhood principles to build a strong early care and education system, including:
Prioritizing investments that will improve the quality of early care and education programs, raise wages for early childhood educators, and fully fund Care 4 Kids.
Expanding family supports, such as home visiting that promote healthy births and reduce risk factors.
Providing the opportunity for families to support their newborns by implementing paid family and medical leave.
Improving access to reliable and affordable infant and toddler care that meet families’ cultural, scheduling, and financial needs.
Reducing disparities in access to preschool by implementing universal preschool.
This publication was made possible with the generous support of the CT Early Childhood Funder Collaborative, a project of the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy. For more information about the Collaborative and CCP go to https://www.ctphilanthropy.org/collaborative.
