Without quality, affordable child care, our world simply doesn’t work. It is vital for families, children, and our economy. That’s why, this legislative session, The Connecticut Project Action Fund is calling on legislators to invest in child care in two ways: with funding to help parents afford costs right now, and by putting money into the child care trust fund for our future.
As Connecticut’s Blue Ribbon Panel has laid out (and as educators and families have been saying for years), Connecticut is facing a child care crisis. Parents can’t find and afford care for their kids, employers can’t keep workers because employees can’t find child care, early educators can't make ends meet and keep their doors open, and children are missing out on valuable early learning.
This year, ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money is also running out – money that our state has partly used for early education, including subsidies to help parents afford child care costs.
There is hope. With the 2025 legislative session just beginning, legislators and Governor Lamont have already signaled that they are open to building on past work to make child care more accessible and affordable for all families. Parents, educators, employers, and others are ready to speak out for investments in early education. And our state is sitting on a massive surplus.
We’re asking the legislature to make a down payment on our future by doing two things this year:
1) fill the ARPA gap by investing $110 million this year in subsidized child care slots and wage increases for early educators; and
2) make a substantial investment in the child care trust, so in the years to come, our state can use surplus dollars to ensure every family has access to affordable, quality early education, from infancy and beyond.
Every hard-working Connecticut family should have the freedom to find child care that works best for them, without having to put their entire paychecks toward the cost. Early educators should be able to do their work with dignity, with wages that sustain them, their families, and their businesses. And every child should have access to the best start in life, including with quality early education.
Connecticut has a chance to support working families today and tomorrow by filling the child care ARPA gap and investing in the child care trust fund – and we’ll be advocating for the legislature to do both.