CT has 163K+ kids needing child care and just 59K slots. Here’s why and what’s being done

Hartford Courant – Wednesday, November 19, 2025
By Livi Stanford

With the promise of improvements brought by legislation passed in 2025, Connecticut’s early child care system continues be underfunded, leaving many children without care and workers struggling to care for their families.

This is according to a new report from Connecticut Voices for Children, which found there are an estimated 163,951 children needing care with just 59,790 slots available. The situation is also strained for low-income parents needing care. The number of infants and toddlers served through Care 4 Kids increased from 7,069 to 8,127, an approximately 15% increase, over the decade, the report found.

This past May, 3,000 children were on the waitlist for Care 4 Kids, with many families waiting months before being offered a slot, the report showed.

Emily Knox, research and policy director for CT Voices, said one trend clearly seen in the data is that 2024 hit a decade-low number of early care slots.

“Preschool slots fell sharply between 2023 and 2024 reflecting a 20% decrease which amounted to a loss of nearly 10,000 preschool slots in a single year,” Knox said.

The number of providers also decreased from 4,527 in 2014 to 3,861 in 2024, the report said.

“In looking at the data why providers closed, most cited personal and financial strain, retirement health needs, burnout or simply the inability to keep operating on such thin margins,” said Knox. “These aren’t isolated business decisions. They are a symptom of a system stretched past its limits. Every close affects more than its providers. It affects families who lose access to care.”
2025 legislation offers hope

But Voices for Children is hopeful that legislation passed in 2025 will ease the state’s strained child care infrastructure. Ruchi Sheth, research and policy associate for CT Voices for Children, highlighted four pieces of legislation passed in 2025 that “in tandem will increase child care slots, make child care more affordable for families and increase provider pay to strengthen the state’s early childhood education system.”

One of the signature pieces of legislation this past session created a new early education endowment fund, which is drawn from the budget surplus and was funded with $300 million in fiscal year 2025, according to the report.

“Based on these estimates, this means that in just three years, the endowment may amount to over $1 billion for early care and education,” the report noted.

“If all the components are implemented as intended, we believe this package will be the most transformative and comprehensive early child policy in the country,” said Emily Byrne, executive director of CT Voices for Children in a press call.

“However time will tell whether what Connecticut enacted this year meets the intended promise because the early childhood education system is in transition,” she said. “It is still very fragile. The sector stability depends not only on the new policies passed but also on the broader economic environment as well as the state’s tax policies, employment and workforce policies and ability to sustain this investment through the changing fiscal conditions.”

The report notes that “without continued funding, the endowment will not grow quickly enough to sustain funding new phases of the Early Start CT program including increasing the number of child care slots, limiting family costs and increasing provider pay.”

Gov. Ned Lamont announced last week that the state is adding up to 1,000 new spaces in the state’s Early Start CT program in January 2026, enabling more families to have access to early childhood education and child care, according to the governor’s office. The governor is also increasing provider payments for the program by 8% to “support providers with operational costs and increased staff compensation,” the governor’s office release states.
Impacting families, women and the workforce

The early education system has proven “fragmented and unreliable” due to underfunding, Knox said, impacting those who work in it.

“That’s meant that the people who make the system work — child care providers who are women and disproportionately women of color — have been subsidizing the system with their own low wages.

“Chronic underfunding has created instability that touches everyone: workers, parents and children,” she said. “When care becomes unstable, it is usually mothers who scale back work or leave the workforce entirely and for providers, persistently low wages drive high turnover, making it harder to maintain consistent high quality care. So investing in early child care is not just about children, it is about stabilizing family income support, women’s workforce participation and strengthening the labor force.”

Knox said the median salary of child care workers is just over $30,000, with workers earning $15.59 per hour, which is below Connecticut’s minimum wage of $16.35 per hour.

“These gaps aren’t just unfair, they are destabilizing,” Knox said. “Low wages fuel turnover, reduce program quality and make it harder for families to find reliable care.”
Solutions for long-term investment

Sheth cited several recommendations that the think tank and advocacy organization believes will help to maintain long-term funding for the education endowment fund, which depends on a surplus from the state budget and economic conditions.

One recommendation includes closing the tax gap of $3.7 billion by hiring more auditors.

“The primary cause of the tax gap is underreporting of income, primarily that of non-wage income which constitutes $1.2 billion due to lack of auditors,” Sheth said. “The audit rate is exceptionally low at 0.39%.”

Another recommendation is inflation indexing the Connecticut personal income tax, which means “annually adjusting the core components of the income tax, the personal exemption, tax brackets and personal credit to reflect changes in the cost of living,” according to the report.

Sheth said the cost for implementation of the inflation indexing of the Connecticut personal income tax is $67 million.

Sheth also recommended establishing predictable scheduling protections for hourly wage workers.

“Despite the progress this session, it does not take effect immediately,” Sheth said. “Over the next decade as the many programs are implemented, there are many additional steps we can take as a state to support children, families and the ECE workforce.”

Access this article at its original source.