(introductory music) - There's concern that the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating a mental health crisis that plagued children long before the virus first spread.

You're about to hear from parents, educators, policy makers, and providers about how COVID-era mitigation and a collapsing childcare industry are impacting kids' social and emotional wellness.

You're watching CUTLINE, COVID to Kindergarten.

For Connecticut Public, I'm Frankie Graziano.

Welcome to CUTLINE, COVID to Kindergarten.

And rather unfortunately, welcome to year three of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let's take a look now at some numbers that may paint a picture for how young children in Connecticut are doing.

Particularly the focus of this piece, kids that are under five with some type of diagnosable disability.

The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood says that's about 10% of roughly 200,000 Connecticut residents under the age of five.

The United Way of Connecticut runs a 211 Child Development Program in Connecticut.

The United Way of Connecticut reports that referrals increased for a state agency that specializes in early intervention for developmental delays called Birth to Three during the onset of the pandemic.

And Early Childhood Special Education referrals went up from 2020 to 2021.

But from the 2019-20 school year to the 2020-21 school year, kindergarten enrollment dropped in Connecticut, 12%.

We'll get into why experts think that happened later in the show.

Enrollment did rebound for a bit in the current school year.

Meanwhile in Connecticut, and really all over America, families are simultaneously dealing with a childcare crisis.

As you'll hear shortly, advocates say it has to do with childcare professionals leaving the field.

We've got some point-in-time estimates from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics on the total number of childcare workers in America and in Connecticut.

From 2016 to 2018, there were an average of about 565,000 center-based childcare workers across the country.

From 2019 to '21, there were 498,000 representing a 12% decrease.

In Connecticut though, the disparity is more stark.

Number of childcare workers during the period from 2019 to '21 dives 28% compared to the same time from 2016 to '18.

There's the labor shortage and then there's this.

President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Plan was supposed to cap the cost of childcare to 7% of many family's incomes and make it free for others.

Well, that's stalled.

So families continue to pay top dollar for childcare.

And if you live in a single income household, get this.

35% of the money you bring in goes to your child's daily care.

Yes, the childcare industry is most certainly in crisis.

And we'll take you now into a center and a family home center to give you a look at it.

- Good job.

My friends are sitting so nice.

So let's do this cross, applesauce.

Hands on our lap.

- Our center's name is Hope.

And so we are always gonna live in a land of hope.

And we know from the work that we have done, that we can make impacts and headway with children.

But I worry that not every single child is going to have access one to even the childcare facilities that are available because of the staffing shortage and because of its inaccessibility to parents because of cost.

We have people who work in the bank.

We have people who work in healthcare.

We're pretty close to Yale, so we serve a lot of families from Yale.

The biggest industry in our center is healthcare.

And so many of those folks had to go in.

So we stayed open for those families.

And I think for our family, it alleviate a huge stress for them because they knew that they could bring their children here into a facility that was trusted.

So we know that right now, there are lots of classrooms that are being shut down simply because of COVID exposure.

It's also for families, the childcare issue is now more exacerbated because classrooms are not only shut down because of COVID, but they're shut down because of staffing shortage.

- Say, yay.

We have friends here.

- So those children that remained in our facility are doing well.

We also have children who left and were away for about a year, some of them a year and a half.

And we definitely see the change when those children coming back.

There was regression in terms of their development.

Lots of delays with mental, emotional, physical, delays with....

It was easy to catch those children up.

What we are finding is many children are coming in with developmental delays that have been undiagnosed because they have been disconnected from these early learning environments and they've also been disconnected from their pediatrician as well.

So what we're seeing is a lot of children that are coming in that have never been in a childcare facility with undiagnosed developmental delays and we are so worried about when it's time for those children to go into the school system, how far behind they are already.

We can work to catch those children up but I fear that for many of those children.

They're coming in when they're three and four year old and they have so much loss during that period of time.

La pandemia realmente me afectó.

Me afectó en el sentido de que inicialmente no sabíamos qué es lo que iba a pasar.

No teníamos máscaras, no teníamos los supplies para poder seguir manteniéndonos Los gastos que he tenido, sí hecho uso de mis tarjetas de crédito, he hecho uso de mis ahorros y lo sigo haciendo hasta ahora.

Empezamos nosotros a negociar con los papás.

Example Si un padre quiere pagar, le toca un copay de 80 $ semanal.

Este papá no puede, esta familia no puede pagar.

Entonces yo por mantener en noso porque voy a a por todas para poder mantener.

Bueno, ok, vas a tener que pagar puedes pagarme 50, pero económicamente yo yo estoy afectada tremendamente.

De esta situación no viene sola a raíz de la pandemia.

Es es de Es desde antes.

Nosotros este se nos exige no tanto el, digamos las exigenc sino que tenemos que cumplir porque se tratan de los niños.

La situación es que muchas de no no completamos como en mi caso, por el momento tengo cinco, necesitaría una más para completar mi seis que me permite la licencia.

Por el momento no tengo los de tres que son antes y después de escuela, pero esta situación, muchas educadoras trabajan dos o tres turnos para poder mantenerse.

Entonces lo que necesitamos y yo creo que eso este se tiene que n que por lo menos la OEC nos puedan aumentar nuestra capacidad.

Sí en pandemia digamos tuvimos n con sustituta, entonces este eso por lo menos para mi y como para me va a poder mantener mi economía.

- This classroom is usually filled with children.

It's usually filled with singing, it's filled with play.

And right now it's just empty.

And it's empty not because we don't have families who need this care, but it's empty because we cannot find the staff to fill the room.

And so this classroom has been shut down now for over six months.

And it's a process and a journey to find the staff to fill the room.

We are licensed to have 16 children in this room and this room has been empty for several months.

And there we know that the needs are there.

We get calls every single day for spaces and everyone since August has been going on the waiting list, waiting for us to find the staff.

- Working families are having hardships and they're having difficulties because they frankly, can't afford paying for childcare.

And the conversation throughout our nation of inflation is a reality.

Childcare is no different.

When you have a childcare center or childcare family home, where they're trying to maintain their rent, they're trying to maintain the food that they put on the table for the children in their care, that comes out of their pockets.

So the only way in turn for them to survive while those rising prizes are existing, is making sure that their rates go up.

But they also know that they can't raise their rates too high, or the parents no longer can afford it.

It's this continuous battle and negotiation with the parents who don't have the money to put up or front the costs with the providers who don't wanna close down and something's gotta give.

The federal government needs to step in, here in Connecticut and nationwide because many states like Connecticut don't really have the funding source already allocated to help early educators.

We need, desperately need that federal funding to come in, to give us that wiggle room to help providers stay open.

- Call it whatever you will, but we know building America means more childcare.

People can't go back to work, particularly moms if they don't have reliable, good quality childcare.

We need to allocate the tens of billions of dollars.

No more than a certain percentage of everyone's income should go to childcare.

There ought to be subsidies so that people who need that kind of support for childcare receive it in this country.

What I can promise is it will be at the very top of my priorities.

- Our coalition did advocate for $700 million.

That is not taking consideration the rent or the cost to maintain a building.

Be it in a family childcare home or a childcare center, that is not taking consideration, health insurance or a retirement package.

700 million is the bare bones to allow this workforce to survive and basically stop the bleeding.

They're going to take jobs at Amazon or taking jobs at FedEx that pay them $2 more while they have degrees, bachelor's, associate's degrees, early childhood degrees in this field.

And they're sacrificing all of those studies, their love and dedication for this field to make sure that they survive because they have families too.

The picture I can paint for you in 10 years if we don't do anything is, you better figure out what you're gonna do for work.

Because if you have a kid, you probably gotta stay home.

- In Connecticut, there's a state agency tasked with looking after the subjects of this program.

The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood oversees childcare in the state, a state program that helps economically challenged families get childcare called Care 4 Kids, and early intervention for children experiencing developmental delays.

Beth Bye is the commissioner of the Office of Early Childhood.

And she joins us now on CUTLNE, COVID to Kindergarten.

Thank you for joining us Commissioner Bye.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- Back in 2019, the US Census Bureau found that 1,716 children under five, something like that, in Connecticut were living with a disability.

- [Beth] Yeah.

- There's probably more.

I know that a program under your purview called Birth to Three, as of March 1st had 6,300 kids in their program.

You think more kids have needed help with developmental issues as soon as the pandemic started?

- Yeah, definitely.

Some services were delayed and we also know children had less socialization.

So their development was impacted, period.

So we had a good number of children before, you know, it's about 10% or more of the population have a diagnosable disability.

And during the pandemic, we believe that some of the disabilities were underdiagnosed.

And now we're seeing, as the pandemic is winding down, more children being referred to Birth to Three.

We did a lot of outreach during the pandemic, cause we were concerned about this challenge that kids weren't going to have as much surveillance, if you will, given the lack of programming.

We do a lot at the Office of Early Childhood to let programs know how to refer children who have disabilities to services.

We also have 211 Child Development Infoline where parents can call 211 and say, "I have a concern about my child."

So that happened during COVID.

That was very available.

And during the pandemic working with the United Way, we launched an app that was a developmental screening for children that parents could use.

And our initial research on this Sparkler app showed that parents were just as good at recognizing delays as professionals in some cases.

This app is designed to help you measure your child's development and those results go right into 211 and families would get outreach to see if they'd like to have a referral or a specialist come out and do an assessment on the child and then get support for the family as needed for those needs.

- Birth to Three, free at some point during the pandemic, you guys were able to make that happen?

- We were.

It was a really, there were two exciting developments with Birth to Three over the past couple of years.

Hard work at the General Assembly and with Governor Lamont and our agency, we both extended Birth to Three in the spring to the start of school, helping families not have to do two transitions before they start kindergarten, before they start public preschool special education needs coming out of Birth to Three.

So that was one thing.

The other thing was Connecticut had added a parent fee, which was discouraging participation and working with the legislature and Governor Lamont in last year's budget, we were able to cover that.

And now there's no parent fee any longer.

It's just access to free services if your child has a disability.

- Birth to Three, really quickly, why should people access a service like that?

What does it do to help folks with children under three years of age?

- Birth to Three comes into your home, helps you set up your environment for your child to help them with some of their disabilities.

Also helps you connect to programs that may be supportive.

You get physical therapy, occupational therapy.

If you need it, speech therapy, with the expansion of the number of children with autism, they have people who are specialists in autism.

And again, we know the earlier you get those supports the better and they're on parents terms, in their homes or at their childcare center.

It's very family-based.

So Birth to Three understands that family is a primary teacher and they really support parents understanding how they can help their child's physical, emotional, or language development.

- Another group of individuals I want to talk to as, as youth in underserved communities.

I mean, during the pandemic, we're talking about Connecticut residents facing racial disparities in obtaining the vaccine.

There's also people living below the poverty line that face eviction and food shortages.

So we're talking a lot about people that live in these spaces.

I wanna know about children that live in these spaces, I guess.

- What we call high social vulnerability communities.

We saw that children were slower to return to both public school and childcare.

Families maybe lived in multi-generational homes where they were more concerned about a child bringing COVID into a home if there's an elderly grandparent.

Many reasons why parents work schedules might have been thrown into different patterns.

And so we saw less access to early childhood education in those communities.

And then those programs in those communities were suffering because you know, they're public private programs.

So if you lose children, you lose tuition and you can't keep your teachers who you spent years training.

So there was definitely a disproportionate impact on early childhood education in communities with more low-income families.

- Those kind of communities, communities with low-income families, many of them could be supported by a program called Care 4 Kids.

- Yeah.

So Care 4 Kids is a way that parents get sort of a voucher to bring to family childcare home or a childcare center to help them pay for childcare.

So during the pandemic, because of the federal relief from our federal delegation, we have been able to increase Care 4 Kids, both the income levels of families who can participate and for the first time, Governor Lamont really wanted to make sure people changing careers or in workforce development or higher-ed had access to childcare support.

So it's never been available in Connecticut before, but now it is.

So if you're a parent going back to school and you need help paying for childcare, Care 4 Kids is for you and you can access that by calling 211 as well.

And just to give you the numbers.

We were, before the pandemic, spending about in Connecticut, we were spending about $120 million a year, federal and state money combined for Care 4 Kids.

And this year in 2023, fiscal year '23, we will spend 190 million on Care 4 Kids.

So that's $70 million more out there to help families, out there supporting childcare programs.

- But that comes from the governor from the state taking federal coronavirus relief dollars and then putting it into Care 4 Kids.

So good news in the short term, but are you worried about that, I guess in the long term, if that money will be there over time?

- Well, I think we're always concerned.

We are really hopeful that childcare would be a part of the federal budget reconciliation process and it has not been yet.

Connecticut would've gotten an additional $170 million to help with childcare, had that passed.

- So are you talking to, I guess Senator Richard Blumenthal or representative Rosa DeLauro, who's got a lot of weight nowadays being in charge of approps at the federal level.

Are you talking to them?

What are they doing?

Can you reassure some of these folks that work in the space?

- Well, we are talking to them and I think they're all very supportive.

We just need to get 50 senators to be supportive and I think we're at about 49 right now.

So I've been in childcare for 35 years and been an advocate many of those years.

I've never been as hopeful as now that the nation understands that childcare is critical infrastructure.

- Childcare and infrastructure, as I understand in crisis right now.

So how do you view?

- [Beth] It is.

- How do you view the industry?

What are some of the pitfalls that you see that business owners are running into?

I guess, families trying to put their children into childcare as well.

- 75% Of childcare are just private businesses, as you say.

And they're really struggling right now.

There's a workforce shortage.

They have dealt with changes in enrollment and changes in family work schedules and needs.

And so the industry's going through challenges right now and we're working to support it as much as we can given, we still have some federal funding.

We have some workforce programs and we're trying to support with small grants.

We've just sent out $14 million to all programs in April, you know, split equitably across the state.

That's not enough for good, again.

We're trying to sort of hold things together while we wait to see what comes out of DC.

- There's one more program to talk about.

- [Beth] Sure.

- There's some recent news that the department made and comprising of 15 member, I believe it's called the Parent Cabinet of The Office of the Early Childhood.

- Parents co-created this.

And they interviewed the parents and selected parents where you have two from each part of the state and then a couple of at-large members.

So each region has representatives and the idea is to have parents or grandparents of young children who understand the challenges that families are facing.

You know, we're up in Hartford doing our best to try to understand parents and try to understand programs.

We hear a lot from programs and meet with them regularly.

And we solicit parent feedback, but it's very different to have a cabinet that is of parents that meet with leadership and directors learn about The Office of Early Childhood and offer input so that our services are responding to family needs, you know, not to the needs of lobbyists or just to childcare programs.

That there's a balance, you need to balance the needs of a community, of business, of families and of childcare programs to really do everything Early Childhood could do.

- Office of Early Childhood Commissioner Beth Bye, taking a break from crafting this new panel, from crafting legislation with the governor and from fielding questions from, I guess, hundreds of advocates dealing with a childcare crisis.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us here.

- It's so fun.

Thanks for doing it.

- COVID-19 forced many people to work from home instead of the office and for children with special needs, important in-person services shifted to remote too.

You're about to meet a child named Patrick Roy.

The peak of the pandemic was hard on Patrick and his family as therapy was conducted over a laptop.

But now Patrick's thriving and you're about to see him fly.

(instrumental music) - Bye.

Good job.

Patrick, Patrick, wave good.

- My son, Patrick Roy was diagnosed with autism when he was 17 months old.

We are so lucky and blessed that he's always just been happy-go-lucky, really calm, content.

His belly laughs are something that people always remark about.

And that's just something that we're so fortunate to have because it allows his sisters to interact with him as well and they love getting a laugh and being able to tickle him and him just being happy all the time.

We're really blessed to have that.

Patrick, as many people know, people with autism sometimes really thrive on routines.

He'll, when he gets off the bus, he either walks up or is driven up by us because we have a really long driveway.

He comes in, usually spends a few minutes, sometimes longer, snacking, depending on what he ate during his school day.

We have some family time, whether it's me and Jordan being home or just Jordan sometimes with the girls while they all snack and eat together.

And then Patrick gets started with his ABA therapy routine that sometimes does involve our two daughters as well, depending on what they're working on that day, if they're working on parallel play or sharing, or if they're just gonna take him individually and work on his specific more robust programs that include like, toileting, matching, labeling, things with his AAC devices, his assistive communication device.

They are amazing.

They've been so helpful with us and navigating how to attend to him and play with him and develop routines that are beneficial for him.

So they come to the house six days a week.

I think it is five or six days a week now.

And they're here for three hours at a time.

- We're gonna- - Eat.

- Eat.

- So one of the carrier phrases we use often is, "We're gonna eat."

So when Patrick wants to eat or we think he wants to eat, or he brings us a snack that indicates he definitely wants to eat, we'll prompt him by saying, "We're gonna", and we wait for him to say, "Eat."

- Patrick, we're gonna- - Eat.

- Eat.

What would you like?

- Eventually the goal of the carrier phrase is he'll bring us the food or let us know he wants to eat by saying the entire carrier phrase, "We're gonna eat."

So for now, we're usually saying the first two words.

Some other carrier phrases we have are, "Tell me more", "Want it open?"

or "Want it yeah?".

So Patrick uses the carrier phrase system because in addition to his autism diagnosis, he also has a apraxia.

And the apraxia is kind of very special in a sense that there are processing delays and things that he has to overcome.

So sometimes even if, and we don't know if he wants to tell us something or say something, he has to jump over kind of some hurdles to be able to get there.

So with his processing, the carrier phrases help him to be able to know, "Okay, I think this is what I wanna say."

So it helps us to be able to figure out what it is he wants.

And with the carrier phrases we've elicited, I think it's now 18 words that he can say with use of the carrier phrase.

One before that, we were very limited to just gestures of "More" and he was over-generalizing the word, More.

So now that we've taken that away and introduced carrier phrases, there's a lot more ability for us to communicate with Patrick.

Ready, set, go.

Patrick really likes gross motor stimulation.

He really likes, some people call it rough play, but like a lot of tickles, a lot of tight squeezes.

He likes being thrown up in the air and landing on a soft surface, like the couch or a bed.

Life at the start of the pandemic was really challenging.

I work in healthcare, so I didn't really have the option to be home with my family during that time.

So I was working five days a week and usually extra hours just because of the nature of what I do.

So my husband was actually the one that was primarily home with Patrick and his two sisters.

- During the pandemic, it was really crazy.

It was challenging.

It started out well in short sessions and working with him, but it broke up his routine, which he needs and it became time, you know, wasted trying to sit him down and teach him things.

And he was unfocused and unmotivated, so I wasted time.

And then I would try again, and I had therapists on the Zoom with me trying to guide me through how to, you know, do DTI and perform ABA tasks with him.

- Patrick and Jordan worked really hard.

Jordan was chasing Patrick around with the laptop, trying to get him to attend his therapy sessions.

He needs consistent adult one-to-one support throughout his day, so that he's able to meet his goals and achievements.

He has a lot of needs where if we're not pushing him to his full potential, he'll just skate by without really making a lot of progression at all.

So our goal for him is to push him to his absolute potential, which involves a lot of knowing what he can and can't do.

When we started changing things up at home, we noticed a lot of improvements and we started working with experts outside the home that kind of taught us how to best push Patrick in the right direction.

- It really became kind of the natural thing and we were there as coaches.

So if we saw something, we could just coach the parent.

"Okay.

What do you think if you tried, you know, putting the spoon over on that side of the plate?"

Or, you know, "What do you think it would be if you asked him to help set the table?"

So we were really, really embracing that coaching model and it worked.

I'm a developmental therapist for SARAH, Inc, KIDSTEPS.

And part of my responsibility is to support families who have children from birth to three and are experiencing delays in their development and looking for, looking for help to support their families.

I'm thrilled to be back in-person.

From a developmental perspective, young children and screens are not a good match.

And I actually remotely preferred to just coach the parents and not necessarily have the kids even register that there was a screen there.

Let them do their thing and then we'll just coach through that.

- If we have to go back to virtual, I will say that that's where I would have some extreme concerns because my husband and I aren't speech therapists, we're not occupational therapists, we're not physical therapists.

So we can imitate what the therapists are telling us to do, but we are not providing the service in the best way that he really needs.

So I'm really hopeful that we'll be able to stay in-person for his therapy.

- [Jordan] Good jumping, Pat.

- [Mariah] He is the happiest, most content, little hands ever and we are so lucky to have him.

He just really wants to be near and around people, although he might not show it in a way that most typical children do or typical adults do.

He just wants to smile at you or get a laugh outta you.

He might grab your hand, pull you somewhere accidentally thinking that you're his one of his, myself or Jordan.

So just, you know, before you judge somebody, just get to know them and see what they're like.

Sometimes they can't tell you, but they can show you in other ways.

- Enrollment in Connecticut public schools has been declining.

A 2018-19 state report shows a 3.5% decrease over the course of five years.

And then a global pandemic happened.

While stakeholders in Early Childhood grapple with that and their jobs of trying to get kids ready for grade school, they're also dealing with COVID-19's impact on early childhood development.

Connecticut Public's Catherine Shen spoke with local educators and concerned parents.

- So with me at this time is Irene Parisi.

She's the Chief Academic Officer with the State Department of Education.

And she works with Andrea Brinnel, who is the early childhood specialist.

And we are sitting in Lisa Cordova's kindergarten classroom at the Glastonbury-East Hartford Magnet School.

So I wanna talk to Andrea real quick about what are you hearing about kids matriculating into kindergarten?

- Well, school districts are required to offer kindergarten.

Parents aren't required to send them till they're seven.

So that's part of it.

And then the other part is we have had students that haven't had the same kind of experiences that they had over the past two years.

So some of the things that kiddos may have in the past come into kindergarten with certain skills, they didn't get the chance to practice some of those skills.

And I think a lot of that falls probably into the area of executive functioning, which really does need to be intentionally taught kids need opportunities to practice.

And without that practice, we're seeing kids show up looking a little different in kindergarten than they did a couple of years ago.

- Perfect transition to Lisa, I wanted to ask you.

You're on the ground.

You see these kids every day.

Are you finding yourself in a situation where certain kids may need more instructional time or teacher's attention, or just an increased need of something?

You know, what has that been like for you in the classroom?

- Well, the most wonderful thing about kindergarten is it's developmental.

So whether the student was home or here, most of the things they learned developmentally.

What I did notice many of the students who came in, who did not have in-person learning the year before had very poor social skills and needed a lot of instruction on how to be a peer and a colleague and actually a friend.

Instructionally, some friends came and they knew their letters and sounds, some did not.

But fortunately, when we came in and we did some of the learning, they were able to catch up quickly.

We have small instructional groups, so we do task stations.

So they'll have a group with me.

So everybody, whatever they needed, they got what they needed based on where they were.

- So the next question I have, either Irene or Andrea, whoever wants to take a stab at it, I wanna ask you, what resources are schools asking you in terms of mental health?

What are schools asking for and what is a department doing to help them out with that?

- What we've provided are technical assistance times where districts can meet with us and really as a community of practice, come together to talk through this and learn from others because we don't have all of the answers.

We learn just as much from the field.

And so in those community of practice spaces, it could be about kindergarten students, but it could also go all the way up to 12th grade.

- We've also had administrative support sessions on a monthly basis.

We partnered with the Connecticut Association of Schools and our regional education service centers to have a space once a month, where administrators that are early childhood, so preschool, kindergarten can get together.

We can do learning together.

And then we can sort of talk to each other about, you know, "What have you learned?

What resources do you have?"

So very similar to that community of practice idea, but really built into just a support session and then being able to hook them up with the regional education service center or with the Connecticut Association of Schools to support them as well.

- And so on a related note, I think we all agree that mental health is the topic right now for kids.

And there's recently been a panel of national experts who made a recommendation to the United States Preventative Taskforce that kids ages 8 to 18 should start screen for anxiety on a regular basis.

And I also believe in 2016, they made a similar recommendation for kids 12 and older to screen for depression.

And these recommendations also come at a time where mental health cases in the youth, it's escalating to the point where our health system is overwhelmed.

So I wanna pick all three of your brains here and ask, what are your thoughts about these recommendations and how do they impact both teachers and students?

- I think we're all smarter now about trauma-informed practice.

And then there are other things too, you were talking about screenings where the State Department of Education has offered the opportunity for screenings with something called the DESSA, the Devereux school age screening.

And I think making tools more available to classrooms and that that's for our younger, that goes up a little bit higher, but it's for younger students and being able to gather information and then use what we know now about trauma-informed practice is really important.

- It has had a huge impact this year in the classrooms.

I'm sure you've seen, like I said, lots of students are coming with trauma.

When you have trauma, you make choices and you do whatever it takes for you to feel better.

We have a lot more social workers this year, which has been imperative for us to get through the school day.

But a lot of times, a lot of your instructional day, it's working on how to calm our students of trauma.

And just talking through like, noticing how are you feeling?

How can we make you feel better?

So yeah, it's been a huge instructional year and how to make kids notice how they feel and make themselves feel better.

- And so we know, we've touched on a lot of different challenges from your perspectives.

And so we actually have two clips from local parents who express their concerns.

And the first one you're gonna hear from is Monica Nugent.

She is a Summer's mom with two kids and they live with grandma.

So yeah, let's take a look.

- I'm a little bit concerned about, not a little bit, but quite a bit concerned about potential other surges.

And their not being either a mask mandate or other precautions in place anymore.

You know, we are seeing that the numbers are starting to come up again with a new variant that's out yet again.

And we know this, you know that viruses mutate and they change and they crop up all the time.

And so I just don't want them to get sick.

I don't want them to bring it home, you know, to one of our grandparents or even my in-laws.

- So I wanna direct the first question to Irene.

You are in a department where you have a say in mask mandates.

So what are your thoughts about what Monica just said?

- It's real.

It's a real concern.

Certainly as a parent, of course, bringing that forward.

And this is why the commissioner had worked so hard with the district superintendents as well as other state agencies to understand what are the best mitigating strategies, what resources might you need, what guidance is the best guidance to support you in the decisions that you are making at the district level to help parents like Monica, to understand the importance of having students in front of you and learning in-person.

And at the same time, what can we do to make them feel safe and learn with confidence.

But it's real.

I mean, we have to stop and acknowledge her thoughts.

- And for Lisa, you know, being in the classroom, what are you hearing from parents about this?

- I'm gonna be honest with you.

I haven't had any parents concerned about sending their child to school.

When a child is sick, they've been really good about keeping them home this year.

In past years, pre-pandemic, you know, they'd have parents who'd their kid with Motrin and know that there's gonna be a fever at one o'clock.

But now like if they have a cough or anything, they keep them home.

The students whose parents want them to wear masks have been amazing wearing the mask.

And nobody looks at them differently.

No one treats them differently.

It's just the way it is.

They're like, "You're wearing the mask.

You're not wearing the mask."

And actually it really works out well.

- And so the second parent that we wanna show you is Dana Franks.

She is a mother from Greenwich.

She has three kids and she is really concerned about her children wearing masks in their learning environment.

So we're gonna have a look.

- It was really a hard start for him to school and a big new school.

You know, he was a shy kid.

So people always are talking about how kids are resilient.

They're resilient to an extent, but this has been two years in their little lives.

My four year old has been in a mask at school, literally half of his lifetime.

So we'll never be able to measure what the difference would've been if he was in his preschool normally.

I mean, my husband and I have seriously considered moving to another state if this mandate comes back.

- So I wanna direct this question to Andrea, with what Dana just said.

Are you concerned that this will affect enrollment, especially with parents who are concerned about the mask mandate and they may take out their kids because of that concern?

- Well, I think we need to really be cognizant of parents, you know, their feelings about how they feel about wearing masks.

School districts are working really hard with their departments of public health.

And I know our commissioner is working very, very hard again with regard to mitigation strategies.

I'm not sure going forward, you know, mask mandates or no-mask mandates.

I do know that for the most part, children are pretty flexible and resilient and that learning did go on in-person with masks on.

So I think at this point, being able to acknowledge how parents are feeling about these things and being able to have conversations with them is probably the best thing for us to do.

That even when there are mandates or, you know, when those things happen, giving voice to parent's concerns is still very important.

- Irene Parisi and Andrea Brinnel are both from the State Department of Education.

And I wanna thank both of you for being here with us today.

And Lisa Cordova, thank you so much for sharing your kindergarten classroom with us.

- Thank you for having us.

Come back anytime.

- Developmental pediatricians can help parents identify issues their children are facing, but they're hard to come by.

The American Board of Pediatrics says there are less than 750 board-certified developmental pediatricians in the United States.

In Connecticut, there's one for every 49,589 kids.

So it's good that we got one for you to hear from right now.

Dr. Robert Keder works with kids and their families out of Connecticut Children's.

Dr. Keder.

Thank you for joining us for CUTLINE, COVID to Kindergarten.

- Thank you for having me.

- You see at least 500 kids aged 18 months to 21 years.

That's your range, as your patients.

The children you see faced a lot of adversity in the pandemic.

Do you think children under five will be able to bounce back from this?

- We think kids can and will bounce back.

We want to be thoughtful about how we approach it, because it's been two years, unlike anything we've experienced for our generation kids, haven't had the same experiences that they did have.

They might not have the same level of readiness walking into school, whether it be emotional readiness or just even being able to sit still in a chair, level of readiness.

So what we wanna do is make sure we're adjusting our expectations appropriately to meet these kids where they are and support them the best we can.

- And if kids have to stay in the home for whatever reason, and parents have to stay with them, you have any tips for parents on approaching work and parenting in the home?

- Yeah.

So work and parenting at home is hard.

The pandemic taught us that, right?

Kids don't understand work-at-home parenting, cause they're like, "Hey mom or dad, right?

You're home and you're hanging out with me like, so let's have fun."

And you're like, "Oh love, I gotta do this like, Skype meeting or Zoom meeting."

Or you know, a million calls and because you're there, they don't understand that you're at work.

We want to help our kids by making sure we're scheduling those times, right?

Even if we can get in and do like 20 minutes of reading with our child here or there throughout the day, those are those nice golden moments that really help build skills and safety and security for kids.

So I joke and kind of plan with families in clinic.

Like if you take 20 minutes, three times a day and read with your child, you did an hour of reading one-on-one with your kid.

That's pretty awesome.

- What about when things kind of break down?

I'm thinking about when kids might emote in a particular way or express themselves or even deal with self-regulation?

- Yeah, self-regulation's been hard.

And I think that it's hard for kids when we've been cooped up at home or we haven't been able to travel and do some of the experiences that we like to do.

But it's an opportunity to teach kids how we can learn to regulate.

One of the first things we wanna recognize is kids have feelings too.

So what we wanna do with little kids, preschoolers, kindergartners, and even first, second, third grade is help train kids to develop a vocabulary to talk about feelings, to identify their feelings.

And then we can help them plan things.

So you can say like, "Hey buddy, like, are you hangry, right?

Are you hungry and grumpy?"

Right?

Because that's a thing.

And a lot of kids deal with hanger and helping them learn to recognize that and then maybe say, "How about you ask for a snack, right?

", is helpful.

And we can help them build those skills over time.

- And one way you could do that from what I understand in talking to you before in advance of this interview, it's a book, it's maybe a show like a, a Daniel Tiger or something like that.

Give me a couple more examples of where people can find ways to help label emotions.

- These are all books that I just personally like.

I have no disclosure or connection to them, but like I love one called the Color Monster.

My niece and I will read that.

It's about a little girl who helps a monster figure out what his emotions are and kind of label them and put them back together.

There are shows.

I love Daniel Tiger.

I love Bluey.

These are all really great shows that teach lessons and give opportunities to talk about like, when is enough enough?

There's one really great episode of Bluey where she's playing with her father, the four year old.

And she doesn't realize that it's that too much and she needs to learn to say like, "Daddy, that's too much, too rough."

Right?

And teaching kids how to have these conversations.

And remembering that kids learn through play and activities.

So when we have opportunities to act out stories with dolls or puppets or characters, or we can talk about what we're reading in books or watching on shows, we can process and we can help scaffold.

- In talking about development and identifying issues with development, if parents have that kind of a concern who can help them with it?

- Yeah.

That's a really great question.

There are kids who struggle and there's kind of normal levels or typical levels of struggle.

And then there are kids who are more sensitive.

There are some toddlers and kids who are either more fussy or intense or colicky, right?

Those of you who have that child who's three and they know what they want when they want it and they will fight for it until they're blue in the face.

While that child might be the best future defense attorney or surgeon or future governor or leader, that's great, but it still makes it hard while they're three and trying to learn how to package and deal with those emotions.

A child's pediatrician or primary care provider or family practice doctor is always a good place to start.

Talk through your concerns.

If you're worried about any issues about child development, any child who's under three can call for a Birth to Three referral and evaluation.

If you're worried and your child's in this in-between space, there's a nice thing called Child Development Infoline, where you can call or go online and you'll get sent some screening questionnaires and forms that will be scored and interpreted by nurse practitioners and advanced practitioners who will then help guide you to what are some good reasonable next steps.

- I'm looking for ways that when parents are having these conversations with the pediatrician, they can kind of have answers for the pediatrician because the pediatrician or any kind of professional is gonna rely on parents for data.

So how can parents get the correct answers?

What kind of ways can they get to get some more information on their child to then turn it around for doctors and get good answers?

- Great question.

Communication is really helpful.

I, as a specialty provider, find it really helpful when parents come in with a list of questions, because that makes sure that we're organized and able to address all of the concerns that a family has in that time.

There are also really nice tools.

The CDC, you can go to the website and print out milestone sheets for each age, and it has little tips on how you can support development too.

They also have a really nice app that you can download on your phone to keep track of what your child's doing based on that age.

Bring that information to your child's doctor or primary care provider and that could be really helpful.

- I am so grateful that we were able to have a developmental pediatrician that can explain this subject and talk through this as well as Dr. Keder does.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- We know workforce is huge, but if you don't have committed dollars for daycare, you can't work.

Education is huge for parents to know that their children are going to excel, especially children that have special needs.

- That's State Representative out of New Haven, Toni Walker talking about the adjusted state budget for the next fiscal year in Connecticut and how she believes it funds the future.

Throughout this program, childcare advocates have said, area providers need money to retain staff.

The state's responding to that with a subsidy that it gives certain childcare workers, a temporary wage supplement for the next two years.

There's that and children under five may benefit from a couple bills passed earlier this month.

Both the State Senate and House of Representatives push through bills that among other things, support the creation of a mental behavioral health and substance abuse screening tool of children for providers and emergency room physicians and the expansion of emergency mobile psychiatric services in the state so that personnel can better respond to children in crisis.

We're now gonna have two lawmakers on to talk us through an effort to support children's mental health in the 2022 Connecticut General Assembly Legislative session.

Joining me at this time is the co-chair of the State Committee on Children, Democratic State Senator, Saud Anwar.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Joining us as well is the leader of Senate Republicans in Connecticut, Kevin Kelly.

Senator Kelly is also a ranking member in the State Committee on Children.

- Well, thank you for the invitations.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- I'm gonna start first with Senator Anwar.

And what I wanna ask you is that one childcare provider kind of gave me an anecdote in the lead up to this.

Georgia Goldburn is her name.

She's in New Haven.

She told me that a big problem in Connecticut is this emphasis on K through 12.

Not really enough on birth to five, almost like we're saying to parents, she said, "You're on your own before kindergarten."

I want your take on Georgia's thoughts.

And I'd like to know Senator Anwar, what you're doing to sort of remedy that?

- She's right.

She's absolutely right.

We have not paid enough attention to the birth to three or birth to five arena because that is formative years and the most critical years of a child's growth.

And as a state, we had the opportunity to try and fix that and during this session, we have made this one of our priorities to address this challenge, to take care of the childcare educators and childcare centers.

We have come together to make transformative decisions and policies with resources, so that that's going to be, the trajectory is gonna change for the children's wellbeing in our state.

If you look at the three bills, the Senate Bill 1 and the Senate Bill 2 are more of the preventive part of the bills, to make sure that our children remain healthy and well.

And this House Bill 5001 is a bill, which looks at what can be done to try and take care of the children who are hurting, who are going through challenges and making sure that there's a safety net and a plan of action to take care of their needs and fix the gaps that have been there and their management throughout the spectrum of care.

So the collaboration of the Democrats, Republicans, the House and the Senate, that is what gives me so much pride in what we have been able to achieve together for our children.

- Senator Kelly, can you do me a favor and highlight one of the things that you enjoyed from Senate Bill 1 and 2 and House Bill 5001?

- So as he mentioned, you know, I think Senate Bills 1 and 2, they look a lot at the prevention and how the state can respond to that.

And 5001, I think is particularly beneficial because that's a bill that really looks at the system from the perspective of a parent and a child needing to access care and how can we make sure that people not only get to access the care and quality care, but then make sure that it's affordable.

I think that's when the area we might have a little bit more work to do, but, you know, I think this is a great start.

We're laying the groundwork and we're working together, which is the good news for the people of Connecticut.

- Is there anything that you'd like to tackle, I guess next year?

- Well, certainly.

I mean, we continue to look at this.

I mean, I know I was also a chairman and ranking member on the insurance committee and what we looked at was parity.

To make sure that the insurance is gonna be cover of these needed services.

And that started to show that maybe these carriers are not covering as much as they could.

And so we need to evaluate that and look at ways that we can make sure that when somebody promises insurance coverage, that it's going to be paid, it's gonna be paid at a market rate so you get quality care and that payment doesn't become an impediment to access.

Another area that we looked at at the outset was maternal mental health.

You know, when someone has a child and there's postpartum depression, that needed to be looked at also in the context of children's mental health, cause if their mom isn't feeling good, they're not going to have the biggest caregiver in their life.

And so we were happy to see that part of this bill and another area that we would like to continue to explore and expand upon.

- We can only be good enough if we actually make sure that there's a payment reform takes place around these issues.

The part that I'm looking forward to working on is to make sure that the workforce issues that have truly impacted our ability to take care of our children and adults are addressed.

We have in these bills, a strategy to try and increase the pipeline of the workforce, especially psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed social workers, the entire spectrum of people who are part of the village, if you will, to take care of our children.

So if they are not recognized, they are not paid, their quality of life is not protected, they will self select to either not be in the State of Connecticut or not even choose this profession.

So we have put the framework for that as well, going forward.

The other thing that needs follow up is we have a number of groups that are going to come together to try and give us guidance on some of the difficult areas.

For example, even for the maternal mortality as Senator Kelly has spoken, we have a group that's gonna look at an opportunity of addressing that.

And we have groups that are going to study the children's needs in various components.

So we will wait for those groups to weigh in on what their recommendations are and we will have follow up legislations in the next session, should I be there.

- Some of those supports to workforce include training for pediatricians if they want it in Connecticut through Connecticut Children's and also a $2 an hour raise over two years for childcare workers.

I wanna get to Senator Kelly here really quickly.

And the laws that y'all just passed are really for children of all ages but specifically, I kind of asked this to Senator Anwar earlier.

I wanna know if you feel you've done enough for young children this session, these kids that are under five?

- Well, you know, this was a start.

I think what we have to do, we had to start somewhere and we have, you know, one thing the pandemic demonstrated was that there's substantial need and there's not enough services to be provided, which creates an access point issue.

So what we need to do is look at that, try to expand the access point, whether it's through workforce development, getting more people involved in the process and to say this is somewhere where I want to be also looking at licensure to make sure that we can maybe get other states and access clinicians in that manner.

- Saud Anwar and Kevin Kelly, our State Senators in Connecticut.

Thank you both so much for joining us on CUTLINE, COVID to Kindergarten.

Young children and their families are going through a lot right now, as they confront mental health issues and struggle to find quality childcare that's affordable.

Kids can miss out on support for developmental delays or access to childcare at any moment, with COVID-19 continuing to spread.

And one key prevention tool is still not available, children under five still can't be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Many parents may feel helpless, but we did do this show to let you know help is available.

If you have concerns about your child, you can do the following.

You can visit the website of the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or dial 211 for information on where your child should be developmentally at whatever age they are.

You may also share your concerns with your child's pediatrician.

May even help if you have a background in developmental milestones, prior to the visit to better inform the pediatrician.

You can contact Connecticut Birth to Three for support of a developmental delay in a child.

And finally, even though they're hard to come by, you can reach out to a developmental pediatrician.

This is CUTLINE, COVID to Kindergarten.

For Connecticut Public, I'm Frankie Graziano.

I thank you so much for tuning in.