How to Advocate
Are you passionate about issues around young children? We are too. Advocacy is one of the three focus areas of the Early Childhood Collaborative of Southington. But sometimes it is hard to know what to do, how to help, and if it will make a difference.
Advocacy Opportunities
The Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance hosts an annual Early Childhood Advocacy Day at the State Capital, usually in March during the legislative session. Childcare for Connecticut’s Future usually hosts a series of “A Morning Without Childcare” rallies across the state in the spring.
Contact us if you would like to join us at one of these events.
The ECCS shares additional advocacy opportunities from the Alliance, CCFCF and other organizations on our social media pages.
Finding Decision Makers
One step in knowing how to be an advocate is identifying the leaders who have the power to address your issue.
Decision-makers at the National level:
- United States Senate
- United States House of Representatives.
- Contact the President of the United States via the White House contact form or by calling the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 or the comments line at 202-456-1111 during business hours.
Decision-makers at the State level:
- Find your State Legislators
- The Committees of the CT General Assembly
- The CT Office of Early Childhood, which licenses and regulates childcare providers, runs Care4Kids, funds State-wide programs.
- The CT Department of Education
Decision-makers at the Local level:
- Southington Town government meeting minutes, agendas, live stream and recordings can be found here.
- Town Council member contact information is here.
- Southington Town Manager contact information can be found here.
- Southington Board of Education members can be found here. To contact all Board of Education members, send an email to sboe@southingtonschools.org.
- Southington Superintendent of School info is here.
- Southington Public Schools information, including main office contact info and staff directory is here.
Other Advocacy Resources
Connecticut Parent Advocacy Center, Inc. (CPAC) is a statewide nonprofit organization that offers information and support to families of children with any disability or chronic illness, age birth to 26. The disability can be temporary, such as a concussion, or life long. They offer a variety of classes and services, including training about how to advocate for your child in the special education system. http://www.cpacinc.org/
Presentations on How to be an Advocate
On June 16, 2021, Merrill Gay, Executive Director at the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance joined the ECCS Childcare Provider call and talked about How to be an Advocate. You can view the 2021 Advocacy Workshop PowerPoint presentation or watch the recording.
We learned about these elements of effective advocacy:
- There is power in numbers
- Know what you want
- Understand the system you are working in
- Find out who has the power to fix the problem
- Make a compelling case
- When at first you don’t succeed, try again
On January 17, 2018, the ECCS hosted a free legislative advocacy training session which was taught by Merrill Gay, Executive Director, and Samantha Dynowski, Director of Advocacy and Outreach, at the Connecticut Early Childhood Alliance. Here is their PowerPoint presentation. Advocacy Workshop for ECCS
We learned about:
- What is advocacy?
- Defining a problem
- Understanding the process
- Decision-makers (see lists below)
- Making the case for a solution
- A plan for action: Planning Template and Testimony Template
The examples they used related to children’s issues such as healthcare and the Care4Kids program but the material will be helpful to anyone interested in advocacy.
