As federal funding for safety net programs declines, local communities are facing mounting pressure to fill the gaps 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

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.

The project focused on several core activities:

1. Analysis of administrative records from Hartford’s Early Childhood Data System, focusing on pandemic-related changes in early learning center enrollments and attendance rates from 2017 to 2022. The analysis highlighted disparities by race and ethnicity, English language learner status, age, family income, and zip code.
2. A citywide survey of child care providers identified operational and staffing challenges, including staff stress, burnout, and concerns about children’s development. Notably, 85 percent of administrators reported feeling stressed or burnt out, and more than half said they were considering leaving the industry.
3. Focus groups with parents of young children surfaced parents’ perspectives on the pandemic’s impact and ongoing challenges with child care access. Parents voiced concern that the pandemic had negatively affected their children’s development—particularly their social skills. They also emphasized the financial and emotional strain they experienced, including job losses and frequent, unpredictable child care disruptions. The focus groups also underscored the need to expand access to early learning and child care subsidies for working families who are not income-eligible under the state’s current system but still struggle to afford care. Parents also called for improved communication about available resources to help them find child care.
4. Engagement with the city to encourage use of the findings. To assist the city in utilizing the findings, the research team created communications materials that were used to facilitate discussion with city leaders as well as the Hartford Early Learning Network.

This approach gave Hartford a more nuanced understanding of its early learning landscape—one that combined robust data with lived experiences and community voices. In 2023 and 2024, CTData shared the findings with city leaders, including the Division of Early Learning, the Mayor’s Office, and the broader public. Dissemination occurred through presentations, meetings with Hartford’s Early Learning Network (which included child care providers across the city), and a public webinar.

During one of the webinars, Hartford’s Assistant Director of the Early Learning Division, Shyleen López, shared how her department was already using the data to strengthen early childhood systems: “This data helped us focus on evidence-based decisionmaking, to ensure policies meet the needs of children, families, and educators in our community.”

The division translated these insights into concrete action:

• Launched targeted outreach to boost early learning and child care enrollment among families with low incomes, including a campaign to raise awareness about the availability and benefits of affordable early learning and care in Hartford.
• Developed new programs to support children’s language development, social-emotional growth, and mental health—benefiting both families and providers.
• Created staff training initiatives to improve recruitment, training, and retention of qualified child care professionals.
• Provided financial support to early learning and child care providers facing funding gaps between operational costs and available resources.

Demonstrating that data were informing decisions helped the department secure funding to adopt PowerSchool, the same data system used by Hartford Public Schools. This upgrade enabled seamless information sharing between early learning providers and kindergarten teachers—addressing a long-standing gap that often left families repeating assessments and losing valuable time during school transitions.

This initiative reshaped how Hartford collaborates across sectors. The Division of Early Learning now convenes five ongoing working groups—focused on areas like literacy, trauma, and workforce development—that bring together families, providers, public school staff, and city agencies. These groups are helping to rebuild relationships, identify service gaps, and surface new community resources.

“We’re not just collecting data—we’re using it to build systems that can withstand the next crisis,” López said.

The partnership with CTData brought the expertise Hartford needed to make informed decisions that put families first. Enrollment is rising, and although workforce shortages and low wages remain, the city is better prepared to adapt to shifting political and economic conditions. Hartford continues to track how state early learning policies affect families and providers—not as a box-checking exercise, but to guide real action.

Using data to fill child care safety net gaps nationwide

Hartford’s experience offers a timely model for cities navigating today’s realities: growing demand for services, limited resources, and increasing responsibility as federal support recedes. These pressures are echoed in places like Washington, DC, and Massachusetts, where leaders are working to build coordinated early childhood systems that truly center families’ needs. By following Hartford’s lead of combining rigorous data analysis with deep community engagement, other localities can develop solutions that are not only responsive to immediate needs but also designed for resilience.