Connecticut Voices for Children Announcements

State of Working Connnecticut 2010

This annual review of wage, employment and job sector trends finds that:

The long-term unemployment rate in Connecticut -- the share of unemployed workers seeking work who have been out of work for 6 months or more -- is the fourth highest in the country at 37%. The underemployment rate -- which includes the unemployed, part-time workers who want to work full-time, and discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work -- is at a historic high for the state, at 14%.
Only the Health and Education job sector experienced substantial job growth since the beginning of the recession, growing by 4.6% from March 2008 through 2010. The state's only successful job sector may be threatened by state budget cuts, since this sector is heavily dependent on public sector investment.
In recent years, middle-wage occupations have experienced the steepest job losses. This group of occupations, which include middle-class jobs have lost 6.8% of their positions between 2006 and 2009. This is a troubling loss of occupations that have traditionally provided living wages.
Racial, ethnic, and gender gaps in wages are much wider in Connecticut than among workers in other states. The median wage for Connecticut's African Americans was only 62% of the white median wage in 2009. Hispanics earned only 60% of the median wage of whites in the state. Connecticut also has the sixth worst gender gap in wages among all states, with women earning 76% of men's median wages.

A supplemental report, "State of Working Connecticut 2010: Trends in Local Labor Market Areas," summarizes local wage, unemployment, and business trends in Connecticut's nine Labor Market Areas: Bridgeport-Stamford, Danbury, Enfield, Hartford, New Haven, Norwich-New London, Torrington, Waterbury, and Willimantic-Danielson. An Excel data file is available with more detailed Labor Market data.

Investing in the Early Years: A Great Return for Kids and for Connecticut

The early childhood years are a time of rapid cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and motor development. However, despite a professed commitment among policymakers to expand early care and education opportunities, overall state funding for early care is lower than it was in 2002.

Connecticut can improve quality and access to its early care system by: increasing per-child funding for all state-subsidized early care and education programs to a rate based on the actual cost of providing high quality programs; fully funding both the rating and improvement elements of a Quality Rating and Improvement System; increasing funding for professional development and scholarship assistance for child care staff; continuing to expand School Readiness so that all eligible children have access to programs; expanding consultation and wraparound services in the areas of children's health, mental health, and social-emotional development; and helping parents afford to stay home and care for their own children in their earliest years of life, through paid family leave.

Protecting Children and Youth in Connecticut's Child Welfare System

The state of Connecticut bears legal and moral responsibility for the children in its care and custody. As of December 2009, nearly 4,000 Connecticut children and youth were in the custody of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and placed outside their homes because they had been abused or neglected by their parents. Many other children and families are receiving services from DCF to avert out-of-home placements. While there have been some improvements in Connecticut's child welfare system in recent years, Connecticut still fails to meet its basic responsibilities to many of the children and youth in its care.

DCF needs to do a much better job of caring for children -- especially children under 12 -- in families, rather than in expensive institutional care and orphanages. As of May 2010, 1,019 children in DCF care, including 235 children under the age of 12, were placed in orphanage settings. Historically, Connecticut has had one of the highest rates of use of "congregate" care for young children in the nation.
Connecticut's DCF needs to improve services for older youth in the system. Connecticut falls short of ensuring that many vulnerable older youth who "age out" of foster care get a healthy and secure start in life. Each year, approximately 90 youth turn 18 and leave the care of DCF entirely on their own, without any formal family relationships.
Continued federal oversight of DCF is critical to ensuring accountability. Despite the fact that DCF has been under federal court supervision since 1991, the agency has failed to meet key performance objectives in providing appropriate case plans and meeting identified treatment and permanency needs.

Ensuring Educational Opportunity for All Connecticut Children

There is no better investment than the education of our children. This brief for electoral candidates reviews several challenges facing Connecticut's K-12 education system, including:

Achievement gap. The state has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation between Hispanic and black children and their white peers. Ensuring that Connecticuts schools meet the educational needs of the states growing Hispanic population is particularly vital, as Connecticuts under-20 Hispanic population is expected to increase by 45% over the next 20 years.
Reducing racial isolation. In 1996, the Connecticut Supreme Court in the landmark case Sheff v. O'Neill ruled that the racial isolation of Hartford students violated Connecticuts Constitution. However, seven years after the House of Representatives agreed on a plan to solve this problem, Connecticut has not yet met its desegregation goals.
Keeping children in school. Too many Connecticut children lose educational opportunities because of truancy, out-of-school suspensions, and dropout. In 2010, Connecticuts State Department of Education released new graduation data that show that far more students fail to graduate from high school on time than previously estimated. The new data show that more than 20% of the class of 2009 failed to graduate in four years.

Strengthening HUSKY as a Cornerstone of Health Care for Connecticut's Children and Families

HUSKY and Medicaid are pillars of Connecticut's health care infrastructure and the foundation upon which health care reform will be built. One in four children in the state relies on the HUSKY Program for preventive and comprehensive health care services. Any future cuts to HUSKY -- in the form of increased premiums and co-pays, reduced benefits, increased enrollment barriers, and eligibility restrictions -- would weaken this infrastructure and increase the numbers of uninsured.

Cuts to HUSKY are penny wise and pound foolish. The federal government currently is paying for almost two-thirds of Medicaid and CHIP costs in Connecticut. So to "save" $1 in state funds, policymakers would need to cut over $3 in HUSKY funding for children's health coverage. HUSKY cuts would result in more uninsured residents, who may forego preventive care, leading to more expensive emergency room visits and hospitalizations. These higher health care costs will simply be shifted to other areas of the budget (e.g., the uncompensated care pool), providers, low-income persons, and private insurers.

This candidate briefs makes suggestions on ways in which state policymakers can help to maintain and improve health insurance coverage for Connecticut's children and families, including maintaining current coverage and benefit levels, determining how best to protect families from unaffordable cost-shifting in 2014 when some low income adults who are currently in Medicaid may no longer be eligible as a result of federal health reform, implement and expand upon the Department of Social Services' plans to "modernize" its processes for determining eligibility in HUSKY, and maximizing federal funding, and strengthening the network of providers who participate in HUSKY and Medicaid.

Child Well-Being Data by Town: 2010

This sheet summarizes data for each Connecticut town highlighting areas of child and family well-being, including, including children eligible for free and reduced price meals, unemployment rates, 3rd and 10th graders at or above educational achievement goals, HUSKY enrollment, preschool attendance, children in families receiving Care4Kids child care assistance, low birthweight births, and births to teens under 18 years old.

Election 2010: Voter and Candidate Resources

Covering CT's Kids Quarterly Meeting on HUSKY

The next Covering Connecticuts Kids Families (CCKF) quarterly coalition meeting will be held on Thursday,September 23^rdfrom 8:30 AM to 12:00 PM at theComfort Inn Suites at 900 East Main Street in Meriden. Registration and coffee will be from 8:30 to 9 am, with a meeting from 9 am to 12 noon. These free educational meetings are open to all organizations interested in helping eligible families to enroll in HUSKY.

Tentative agenda items include:

HUSKY and Charter Oak Eligibility Updates
Access to Care Issues
National Health Reform and SustiNet

Please complete the RSVP form below and return to Linda Deemy by e-mail at Ldeemy [AT] ctkidslink.org (replace [AT] with @) or by fax at (203) 498-4242 by September 16^th.