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UNITED WAY OF CONNECTICUT | |
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Connecticut United Ways advocate to make life better for ALICE – the more than half a million households across every single zip code in Connecticut who work very hard but aren’t paid enough to make ends meet. This financial stress affects all aspects of a family’s life, particularly their mental health.
Now that the 2024 legislative session has concluded, and in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, let’s take a look at its impact on ALICE households and explore what we can ALL do to carry on with the business left unfinished.
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The Campaign for Working Connecticut Opportunity Youth Initiative worked hard to help codify the definition of “disconnected youth” into law and begin data sharing agreements between youth serving agencies, as well as insure they provide annual reports on their progress.
While there is much more work to be done, we are on our way to helping young people reconnect with school and/or employment. It’s progress, not perfection, and we celebrate this as a win for ALICE!
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MERRILL GAY
Executive Director
CT Early Childhood Alliance
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As the Executive Director of the CT Early Childhood Alliance (CTECA), Merrill Gay leads the organization towards the goal that all children will enter kindergarten healthy, eager to learn and ready for school success. Since both our organizations care deeply about CT families with children, let’s learn what transpired in this past legislative session that will positively and negatively impact these families: | |
This legislative session was dominated by the decision not to reopen the budget. That meant that any bills that passed were stripped of anything that would cost money. For example, the bill that proposed to establish an early childhood fund at the Treasurer’s office was stripped of the $100 million intended to seed it. In the case of a bill, which among other things merges four different funding streams for Early Care and Education into a new Early Start Program, the effective date was pushed out to July 1, 2025 – so it will impact the next two-year budget, not the current one.
The one exception to leaving the budget alone was a reallocation of federal ARPA funds that have to be allocated by the end of 2024.
School Meals For All, which proposed to continue free, healthy school breakfasts for all Connecticut students, received some one-time funding, and Care4Kids, CT’s child care subsidy program, administered by United Way of Connecticut 211 Child Care, received $18.8 million more. That was 50% more than the Governor requested in his proposed budget adjustments. The additional funding will make it possible to reduce the Care4Kids waitlist – and potentially raise the income limit for eligible families!
Another potentially big change for Care4Kids down the road was the addition of a new eligibility category for children on Medicaid (Husky). The way the law was previously written, families in this category were last in line for a child care subsidy. However, they will remain on the waitlist until enough additional funding is secured.
These are both wins for ALICE!
The CT Child Tax Credit is unfinished business and on the list for next year.
In the next session, we need to tackle the question of how we make the investments needed to make quality child care affordable for the substantial portion of the population who are priced out of the market or struggling to pay for care in order to work.
In my ideal world, we would make it much easier for families to raise children in the state. There would be more affordable housing for families in high opportunity areas, and parents would have their choice of several great options for early care and education, all of which would be either free, like public schools, or heavily subsidized, like the Canadian $10 a day child care. Not only would these be great places for children, but also hubs of information and parenting support for families. Early educators would be recognized for the important work they do and be compensated on par with public school staff.
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ALICE ADVOCACY IN ACTION WEBINAR | |
TOMORROW, May 30,
1:30 PM-2:30 PM
Join us for a webinar panel discussion about the policies enacted this year and those we will continue to champion. Whether you are an ALICE family or an ally supporting these households, join us to learn about critical issues and advocacy opportunities in our communities. Scan the QR code above or register here:
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June 1
United Way of Connecticut is celebrating PRIDE at the Middletown Pridefest on June 1 and will be hosting a “Make a Buddy and a Bracelet” booth for you to make friendship bracelets, connect with UWCT staff and learn about mental health resources for the LGBTQ community. We can’t wait to see you there!
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JANÉE WOODS WEBER
Executive Director
She Leads Justice
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I am honored to be the Executive Director of She Leads Justice, an intersectional feminist nonprofit organization that advocates for women in Connecticut, especially women who are marginalized and under-resourced. We work to close the civil legal justice gap, to organize communities for change and to create state policy for economic security. You might know us by our former name Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund or our nickname CWEALF, which we proudly held for 50 years since our founding in 1973. Last year, we changed our name to She Leads Justice to show our commitment to using a justice and equity lens as we strive toward gender and racial equity.
Connecticut is a wealthy state but, at the same time, we are also a state of deep disparity related to income and generational wealth. Women, especially women of color, continue to experience the greatest wage gaps and the most barriers to creating financial security for themselves and their families. This is why each year our policy agenda is centered intentionally on advocacy for legislation that protects, supports and increases women’s economic security.
Expanding access to paid sick days was our top policy priority this year because too many people have been faced with the difficult choice between losing a paycheck or being able to take time off from work to care for themselves or a loved one. Connecticut was the first state to pass a paid sick days law back in 2011, but the law excluded about 88% of workers, so that means approximately 1.6 million workers have not had access to paid sick days. This lack of access has many everyday impacts, such as not being able to go to a doctor’s appointment or care for a sick child, but we also saw firsthand the harsh consequences during the pandemic when many workers could not afford to quarantine.
Since passage of the 2011 law, several other states have passed more expansive and inclusive paid sick days laws, so it was clear and imperative that Connecticut needed to do the same if we want to protect our public health and create an equitable state that values the workers who are the backbone of our economy. She Leads Justice was proud to lead the Paid Sick Coalition, comprised of dozens of community and advocacy groups from across the state, which organized and lobbied for years over the course of several legislative sessions. This year, our efforts were successful, and the paid sick days bill was passed!
This was a major victory for workers, especially women and working families! We’re very grateful to Representative Manny Sanchez and Senator Julie Kushner, Co-Chairs of the Labor and Public Employees Committee, for their leadership in getting a strong and inclusive bill passed that will benefit all of us collectively, but especially our ALICE families who are working hard and struggling to make ends meet.
Full-time and part-time workers in Connecticut will be able to earn up to 40 hours of paid sick time each year, regardless of employer size or industry. Workers can use this time to care for themselves or family members during a short-term illness, including a loved one who is like a family member to them but is not related by blood or marriage. For so many working families, like ALICE, not losing income because of needing to stay home when you have the flu, for example, can be the difference between being able to afford necessities like groceries and going without until your next paycheck.
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For so many working families, like ALICE, not losing income because of needing to stay home when you have the flu, for example, can be the difference between being able to afford necessities like groceries and going without until your next paycheck.
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Now, we need to work on getting the information about paid sick days out to the public. Many more people will now have access to paid sick days that didn’t before, so we must spread the word to make sure people know their rights.
And while this is a big win for ALICE, we certainly have work to do to ensure that everyone in our state is able to live with dignity and have their basic needs met. I hope that we never stop being shocked and moved to action by the fact that poverty exists anywhere, but particularly in a state of abundance and prosperity like Connecticut. The existence of poverty is a policy choice. Choosing to actively eradicate poverty, especially child poverty, is also a policy choice. We must make more policy choices that disrupt systems of inequity instead of perpetuating them, like our unjust tax system that unfairly burdens those who earn the least and gives advantages to those who earn the most. Like many other advocates, She Leads Justice was disappointed that legislation was not passed for a permanent Child Tax Credit because that would have been a significant step toward lifting a critical mass of our children out of poverty.
We each have a responsibility to be part of this change, no matter our social background, line of work or political affiliation. We encourage everyone to follow the leadership of United Way of Connecticut and other advocates who are leading the charge to push the legislature to establish a permanent Child Tax Credit. Just because the legislative session ended in May doesn’t mean that we should stop reaching out to our elected officials or organizing people and organizations in our community to join the Child Tax Credit Coalition.
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We need to be relentless in our demand for the Child Tax Credit, inside and outside of the legislative session, and keep the issue at the forefront of all policy conversations.
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On a personal note, what led me to be passionate about this work was that many years ago I worked for a small nonprofit with a mission toward building multiracial democracy in local communities. I traveled to numerous states across the country for five years, working with community groups that wanted to organize people to address big issues like food security, police-community relations, diversity and changing communities, access to education, et cetera. My favorite part of that work was meeting people in the places where they lived, talking about their everyday lives and learning from them how they viewed the potential solutions to their concerns because they were, indeed, the experts on their own lived experiences. | |
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I do the work that I do for everyday people, especially those of us who have been told that our lives matter less because of our gender, race or class. Every single one of us deserves a life with dignity, opportunity and safety.
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When I’m not working, I love to cook and am a cooking show and cookbook addict. When I was a little kid, we didn’t have cable TV, so I watched a lot of public television and that’s when I discovered how much I enjoy cooking shows, which turned into a love of cooking for friends and family as an adult. Back then, I watched with wonder and curiosity as Julia Child taught us how to clean artichokes on The French Chef and Martin Yan flashed his giant knives while mincing ginger on Yan Can Cook. As an elementary school kid, I had never tasted (or even seen) an artichoke, and I wasn’t allowed to touch the knives in our kitchen, but I was mesmerized! Fast forward to the present day: my cookbook collection spans seventy books at my last count, and I am always on the hunt for more interesting volumes. I particularly like to look for cookbooks in used bookstores because the idea that other people before me prepared some of the recipes with care for their friends and families makes me feel happy. Someone once told me that the definition of family is who you eat dinner with and that sounds like a pretty good definition to me. | | |
- You can still actively contact your legislators to sound off on issues important to you. As Janée said, we indeed need to be relentless in our demand for the Child Tax Credit, inside and outside of the legislative session, and keep the issue at the forefront of all policy conversations.
| - Mental health resources are available at your fingertips! Call 2-1-1 or click here.
| - In addition to the Mobile Crisis Intervention Services, short-term, high-intensity care centers for children and youth experiencing mental health crises have also been created at various locations in Connecticut. Services are available to children and youth ages 0 - 18 facing a mental health crisis that does not require hospitalization. Crisis intervention, diagnostics, safety planning and treatment recommendations with pathways to services are being provided at these crisis centers. For a link to the centers set up around the state, visit the 211 website. For more information about mental health crisis intervention services in Connecticut, click here.
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