As federal funding for safety net programs declines, local communities are facing mounting pressure to fill the gaps facing child care systems with fewer resources and tighter budgets.

Child care and early learning programing are an essential part of the safety net that yield wide-ranging benefits for communities. They:

  • support healthy development and strengthen school readiness for children,
  • enable parents to fully participate in the workforce, and
  • improve the local economy.

Localities across the country seeking to prevent ripple effects of safety net cuts can model their next steps after the approach Hartford, Connecticut, took during another period that intensely strained early learning systems and families nationwide: the COVID-19 pandemic.

How Hartford Combated Early Learning Gaps and Built a Resilient Child Care System

In a city where 27.3 percent of residents live in poverty and the median household income is just $42,397, losses to child care and early learning programming could have devastating effects. To help remedy these losses during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, Hartford’s Department of Families, Children, and Youth responded by rethinking its approach—using data to better align services with community needs.

The city faced a key challenge: Although Hartford’s state-funded early learning centers were entering administrative data into a centralized system, the city lacked the capacity to analyze it in ways that could guide decisionmaking around equitable pandemic recovery for Hartford’s young people. This challenge was compounded by a lack of comprehensive data on the needs and barriers facing young children, families, and providers.

In response to these challenges, in 2023, the city’s Early Learning Division partnered with CTData Collaborative (CTData) on a project that aimed to support an equitable pandemic recovery for Hartford’s youngest residents by analyzing and using data to guide targeted actions for maximum impact. The city’s Early Learning Division oversees early childhood initiatives, including child care, and leads the implementation of a coordinated early childhood plan. CTData—a member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership—is a nonprofit that helps people and organizations use data to make informed decisions and to advance equity in Connecticut. CTData provided technical expertise and strategic guidance, helping the city transform raw data into actionable insights to improve outcomes for children. The project was funded by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Read the full article about building resilient child care systems by Lizzy Ferrara and Gabi Velasco at Urban Institute.