Friends Center for Children sent in this article and these photos about a recent event it organized.
What do we want? To fix child care! – and have some fun along the way.
Last Saturday marked the 10th New Haven Family Stroll and Festival, an annual event to raise awareness and much-needed funds for high-quality early care and education. After a two-year Covid-induced hiatus, this year’s event grew by over 300 people and had over 1,220 children, parents, educators and advocates converge at the Quinnipiac River Park for a day of awareness, fundraising and family fun
The day kicked off with a 1.5‑mile stroll around the Quinnipiac River bridge loop. The “Strollers” then returned to the park for food trucks, face painting, parachute play, magicians, musicians, Zumba, bubbles, arts and crafts, and of course, education, from over 60 community resource partners.
“As all of you know, the child care system is broken,” said festival MC Pierre Goubourn, Director of Operations at ConnCAT. “How many people feel like child care costs too much? How many people know that child care costs too much?” he asked to cheers from the crowd.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, State Sen. Martin Looney, and State Rep. Robyn Porter joined the festivities to share their support for high-quality early care and education. “We’ll continue to work hard to make sure that our young people have what they need, and also their caregivers and parents have what they need so we can be whole families,” promised Porter.
This event comes on the heels of a recent win for child care advocates. This year, organizers secured the largest increase yet in funding for investments in child care through the FY 2023 Budget Adjustment, though this increase fell short of the $700 million investment many early care advocates initially called for.
“We know there’s been a crisis during the pandemic. People have struggled. People have suffered, and this budget makes real progress in addressing those concerns,” Looney shared, discussing the bipartisan budget.
“The crisis in child care is that the business model is impossible. You’re balancing your budget on the backs of your families or your teachers and that’s really the two groups we’re trying to take good care of,” shared Susan Taddei, director of Calvin Hill Daycare Center and event partner.
Organized by Friends Center for Children, alongside community partners Calvin Hill Day Care Center, FIRST Step Child Care & Learning Center inc., New Haven YMCA Youth Center, Montessori School on Edgewood, and Elm City Montessori School, this landmark year’s march focused on a single theme: compassion. Organizers implored attendees to express compassion and help support the youngest members of their communities by calling for investments to bridge the funding gap in high-quality early care.
“Child care is absolutely necessary and 100 perce t broken,” said parent Tom Reznick while discussing issues in accessing stable care and the low wages generally available to providers. “It puts so much of a burden on everybody. I don’t know how we as a society have created a system that seems to work for nobody.”
Connecticut state subsidies pay for only 50 percent of the actual cost of providing high-quality early childhood education. That means programs have to charge families more, pay teachers less, or work to fundraise the difference.
“We know 90 percent of a child’s brain develops before they turn five,” shared event organizer and Friends Center for Children Executive Director Allyx Schiavone. “Funding early care and education is essential if we want to do right by our children and families.”
Many parents can’t afford childcare, while many childcare workers can’t afford to work in the field. The system is broken, and the only solution is a government subsidized standardized system of childcare pay and programming and standards to give every child, regardless of income or background, a quality birth through kindergarten childcare and education, and provide a livable wage for quality early childhood teachers and care providers with standardized training.