End Child Poverty Now – A Community Forum

Originally published in the CT Mirror, August, 2025:

While Connecticut, one of the wealthiest states in our country, may seem like an ideal place to raise a family, for far too many children it is not. Nearly one in 10 children in Connecticut grows up in poverty. In the City of Waterbury, that statistic is more than double, with 22% of children living in poverty.

For these kids – our kids – basic needs like stable housing, nutritious food, and access to quality childcare aren’t guaranteed, and the educational opportunities they deserve are often out of reach. While some areas boast world-class schools and enrichment programs, children in poverty are being left behind.

So, is Connecticut a great place to be a child? For many, the answer is no —especially when poverty limits opportunities and dreams feel distant.

That’s why more than 100 organizations – hospitals, higher ed institutions, nonprofits, philanthropy and experts throughout the state — have come together and pledged to End Child Poverty Now! Almost every community foundation serving our 169 towns is involved and leading local efforts to raise awareness, convene partners and advocate on behalf of our state’s children who do not have enough to thrive.

Morally, we know that this should not be. Sixty-one years ago, in his 1964 State of the Union Address, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced an unconditional war on poverty and called it a national disgrace that merited a national response. Unfortunately, those calls went unheard until the COVID-19 pandemic brought the issue to the forefront. The pandemic served as an unprecedented global crisis, but it also revealed the profound impact of targeted government assistance in alleviating poverty.

Through programs like emergency food aid and the refundable child tax credit, we saw a dramatic decrease in child poverty across the United States. In Connecticut, the federal government provided $2,000 to $3,000 in child tax credits per child, and child poverty was reduced by nearly 70%. However, as we now know, this progress was short-lived. The expiration of key pandemic relief programs in 2023 led to a sharp increase in child poverty, serving as a stark reminder that without sustained investment in social safety nets, progress remains fragile at best.

 

Children in Connecticut were not spared! Even here, with our great wealth, Connecticut experienced skyrocketing child poverty since 2022. According to the report, “Poverty in the U.S. and Connecticut 2019-2023,” by the Connecticut Voices for Children, the supplemental poverty rate was 10.5 percent in 2020, or 74,520 children living in poverty. By 2021, the child poverty rate had dropped to 6.8 percent or 27,080 children. Yet, by 2023, our numbers have skyrocketed and exceeded pre-pandemic level.

This spike tells us that when families have access to financial resources, they can meet their children’s basic needs, invest in education, and create a stable environment in which their children can thrive. To let these gains slip away is not just an economic failure, it is a moral failure.

In June, Connecticut Community Foundation hosted a public forum and panel discussion featuring a Community Data presentation with Mark Abraham, Executive Director DataHaven, and a panel discussion moderated by Ginny Monk, housing reporter for The Connecticut Mirror, with Panelists Emily Byrne, MPA, Executive Director of CT Voices for Children; Chelsea Harris, Director of Early Care & Education, Waterbury Bridge to Success, and Rashida Rattray, Education and Outreach Coordinator, Connecticut Fair Housing Center. Their wide-ranging conversation was both enlightening and sobering; serving as a wake-up call to remember the children and families left behind in our highly resourced state.

This moment calls for a renewed commitment to ending childhood poverty – a commitment that must be underpinned by policy change. The End Child Poverty Now Campaign is a unified platform for advocacy behind a common vision: a thriving and economically robust Connecticut where no child experiences the debilitating effects of poverty.

This nonprofit advocacy collaborative engages lawmakers and policy influencers to promote and enact policies that address the root causes of child poverty, including income inequality, access to healthcare, safe and affordable homes, and quality education. 

Our collective goal for the 2025 legislative session was to advance the following: 

  • Support a permanent, refundable CT Child Tax Credit at $600 per child.
  • Support universal no-cost healthy school meals (breakfast, lunch, and afternoon snack).
  • Support universal childcare subsidies for families earning up to 85% of the State Median Income.
  • Expand good cause eviction protections to support family housing stability.

We made progress: Connecticut chose to invest in our children’s education, approving a suite of bills designed to enable thousands of additional children to enroll in early childhood education programs. But our work is not finished, and the 2026 legislative session is soon approaching.

The End Child Poverty Now will continue to advocate for the passage of child-friendly policies that will lead to meaningful change for many more of our children. We cannot sit and watch while our neighboring states make steady progress to end child poverty. Now is the time for our vision of being a child-friendly state to be reflected more fully in the everyday experiences of all of our children and families within our state of Connecticut.

 

How can you help?

Take the pledge to End Child Poverty Now! Contact Laura Lyons for more information.

Donate to support our advocacy and community development efforts, or other charitable causes that support Connecticut’s children and families.

Engage with us! There are many opportunities to get involved with our work to make Greater Waterbury and the Litchfield Hills a place where everyone can thrive.

It’s time to stop treating childhood poverty as an inevitable reality and start treating it as the solvable problem it is. In Connecticut, this is our work! And the time is now!

 

Thank you to our speakers: (Left to right) Mark Abraham of DataHaven, our moderator Ginny Monk of the Connecticut Mirror, Kathy Taylor, President and CEO of the Connecticut Community Foundation, and our excellent panelists: Rashida Rattray of Connecticut Fair Housing Center; Emily Byrne of Connecticut Voices for Children; and Chelsey Harris of Waterbury Bridge to Success.