In the Connecticut General Assembly, 2022 is the Year of the Child, as two years of the COVID pandemic have highlighted weaknesses in services for young people that lawmakers are prepared to address.

Legislators are currently reviewing several major pieces of legislation, ranging from a focus on urban trauma, to better mental-and-behavioral health services and improved air quality in schools.

Gov. Ned Lamont, along with Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, have all proposed initiatives that would require tens of millions of dollars in funding in attempt to mend the damage that’s has been done over the course of the pandemic, or the decades, in the case of trauma among under-served, inner-city youth.

“For some communities it’s just normal to have mental health issues,” said state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, during a public hearing Friday before a joint meeting of the Public Health and Children committees.

“It’s just normal for us to pass trauma along,” Winfield said during a morning portion of the day-long virtual hearing. “And yet, the science and the way we operate has been slow to actually recognize it. You know the schools that we send kids to that are supposed to be safe in their communities, are not as safe because we send kids into schools where many of their peers have the same trauma that they have when they return home or go to school.”

The stresses of homelessness, hunger and domestic and urban violence are a big part of troubled-kids lives.

“And whichever place they go, it’s there,” Winfield said. “It’s complex. It doesn’t end. Remember, that as we are doing this, there are communities that will not respond to what we think of as the normal issue of trauma because that’s about an event or an instance and what theirs is, is trauma that persists for life.”

“There are family crises that we know that have a root of trauma,” said Vannessa Dorantes, the commissioner of the state Department of Children and Families, who is planning a new initiative to address the issue. “And then we also know from a systems’ perspective that there is community, or racialized trauma.” Among the pending legislative proposals is a children’s behavioral cabinet.

“The COVID pandemic has exacerbated what we know is an emerging behavioral-health crisis in children,” she told lawmakers on Friday. “Isolation, disruption in learning, family stress, reduced economic stability, food and housing insecurity, lack of access to timely community-based supports, has resulted in a demand for services that has exceeded the workforce capacity.

In addition to supporting mental-health programming, Republicans who are a 23-13 minority in the Senate and 97-54 in the House of Representatives, have proposed enhancing criminal penalties for some juveniles.

“We need to ensure law enforcement and our justice system have the tools to keep all people safe,” said Senate Minority Leader Kevin Kelly, R-Stratford. “We also need action to prevent crime, to end the cycle of juvenile injustice and a lack of opportunity that pushes people, especially young people, towards crime. We cannot ignore that Connecticut is dead last in job growth and income growth and Connecticut’s economy is failing our children and failing our cities. We need to build a ladder out of poverty.”

Winfield said last week there is room to compromise on some juvenile-crime proposals, including the possibility of electronic monitoring of teens awaiting trial.

Earlier in the week, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker led a group of mayors from throughout the state asking for a billion-dollar, five-year program to treat kids, train them for jobs, and provide employment opportunities and safe spaces.

With a projected $1.9-billion budget surplus – coincidentally in an election year – there is a bipartisan legislative will to acknowledge the isolation that children have coped with over the last two years or more.

For state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, gun violence is also a major children’s issue. “Over my lifetime I have seen it flare up over and over again here,” Moore said Thursday during a committee-level confirmation hearing for acting Public Health Commissioner Manisha Juthani. “We always seem to put a Band-Aid on it.”

She said that during a recent round table conversation with inner-city youth from throughout the state, young adults spoke starkly of the trauma caused by the neighborhood shootings that continue the cycle of violence. “They can’t even explain why they’re acting out,” Moore said.

“This is such a troubling topic and I think you raised such an important point, because there are so many survivors and observers of gun violence who may not actually be the recipient of the actual bullet, and yet the damage that is done is far beyond what we can really conceptualize, I think,” Juthani said. She pointed out that there is an injury-prevention group in the Department of Public Health that is focused on it, and Gov. Ned Lamont’s budget includes initiatives to reduce gun violence.

“When a young person is engaged in criminal activity it is often a manifestation of deep, unmet mental or behavioral health needs: exposure to repeat trauma,” Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin told lawmakers on Friday, citing studies indicating that childhood trauma is “off-the-charts” among those who wind up in the criminal justice system. He stressed the importance for better mental health care inside juvenile detention centers.

This past week, legislative committees were still in the process of agreeing on concepts for public hearings, including the air-quality initiative, which the Public Health Committee on Thursday agreed to raise for a public hearing in March, as the legislature heads to its early, May 4 adjournment. Educators throughout the state complained that most schools do not have the right kind of heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems (HVAC) to help eliminate airborne viruses such as COVID.

“We have indoor air quality standards for businesses like pet stores to ensure animals there remain healthy. That makes it all the more jarring to lack such regulations in our schools,” said Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, a physician who is co-chairman of the legislative Public Health Committee, which will set a hearing date on the proposal once nonpartisan lawyers for the General Assembly assign it a bill number.

“The pandemic showed us we simply can’t delay in remediating HVAC systems in our schools,” said State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, the committee’s other co-chairman. “Some retrofits, like adding controls or adding small circulation/filtration units, don’t have to be expensive. And we need better protocols for effective maintenance.”

[email protected] Twitter: @KenDixonCT

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