Kate Barcellos poses a question to Lt. Governor Molly Gray, Todd Bauman, and Danielle Mitchell.<\/p>\n
ST ALBANS \u2014 Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray visited St. Albans this week on her \u201cRecover Stronger\u201d tour and spoke with local town and city officials and leaders at Northwestern Counseling and Support Services about plans to help struggling Vermonters and their communities moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach week, we are spending a day in a county just to listen to Vermonters,\u201d Gray said. \u201cTo meet communities, community leaders, nonprofit leaders, business leaders where they\u2019re at. To figure out what are our lessons learned? What do we need to do differently coming out of the pandemic?\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you hope to accomplish on your tour?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cOur plan is, at the end of the summer to put together a concrete list of priorities \u2013be it telehealth, regular access to broadband and childcare at home for a lot of Vermonters\u2026we have to invest in equitable, quality, affordable childcare\u2026until we figure out how to pay childcare providers enough, make sure that there are enough childcare providers and make sure childcare is fully affordable and accessible, we are going to have communities and families that are in crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n Who in the workforce have been impacted the worst by COVID?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWomen have been disproportionately impacted,\u201d Gray said. \u201cWomen have left the workforce at a higher rate here in Vermont than nationally\u2026families have had to choose between staying in the workforce or leaving the workforce to care for children.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had a hard time filling all of our positions in part because people can\u2019t come back,\u201d said Todd Bauman, Executive Director at NCSS. \u201cBecause they need to be home with their kids because they don\u2019t have access to quality childcare.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of our families have historically struggled with poverty,\u201d said Danielle Mitchell, Director of Children, Youth & Family Services division. \u201cWe have a lot of our families that are migrant workers, and because of a lot of the politics and policies in place who (may not be able to ) access our services. We\u2019re looking at families who have been impacted by trauma. All of these are just different populations that are even more impacted by COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n What could the future of family, community and childcare look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s (about) taking models like NCSS\u2026ensuring families have access to food, to childcare, to mental health and support services and being an integrative one-stop-shop where families can go,\u201d Gray said. \u201cThis is the model that works in Vermont, but we have to set up a funding stream that isn\u2019t year-to-year. That doesn\u2019t work. It has to be a long-term, consistent funding stream that allows NCSS and other providers to thrive and to plan for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kate Barcellos poses a question to Lt. Governor Molly Gray, Todd Bauman, and Danielle Mitchell. ST ALBANS \u2014 Lieutenant Governor Molly Gray visited St. Albans this week on her \u201cRecover Stronger\u201d tour and spoke with local town and city officials and leaders at Northwestern Counseling and Support Services about plans to help struggling Vermonters and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ncssinc.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}