"It appears that DSS is taking a step backwards from the way Medicaid has been interpreted," state Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein said. "These kids are supposed to get whatever medical services are available that will allow them to reach their highest levels of functioning."
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy will make a 10-year, $330 million commitment to affordable housing in the budget he is proposing next week, with much of the money devoted to the rehabilitation of long-neglected, state-financed public housing.
Advocates for low-income residents want the state to create a new health program for poor adults who don't get Medicaid coverage, and they say lawmakers must commit to doing so this year to make it work as part of federal health reform.
"We should take this opportunity and we need to take it now," said Jane McNichol, executive director of the Legal Assistance Resource Center of Connecticut.
Read moreBudget cuts by the Malloy administration will stall some plans to turn around the Department of Children and Families, an agency under federal court oversight for failing too many abused and neglected children. That is the message the agency delivered to community providers.
Read moreAs the state closes its group homes and restricts admissions to public residential programs, it is financially squeezing the very nonprofit providers who are expected to take up the slack. Nonprofit reimbursements have been flat for four years and aren't scheduled to increase next fiscal year.
Read more"We probably lost 80 percent of our customers in the last few years," said Marcia Chacon, co-owner, with her husband Wilfredo Matute, of My Country Store on Main Street. "Everybody was scared to come to East Haven."
Read more"The more money you spend on gambling, the more revenue you make, the likelihood is greater you are going to have more problems," said Marvin Steinberg, who steps down this week as head of the Connecticut Council on Problem Gambling. He called the relationship between an increase in gambling and an increase in gambling problems inescapable.
Read moreSpurred by a new study showing the high costs of treating the mentally ill in prison, the Malloy administration is searching for ways to treat nonviolent offenders outside the prison system.
It costs Connecticut nearly double to both incarcerate and treat an offender with serious mental illnesses, compared with the price of treatment alone, according to a new academic study that analyzed social service and correction trends in 2006 and 2007.
Despite the down economy, the need for home care workers is booming. But experts worry about finding enough people to take jobs that often come with low pay, no benefits, and a history of being devalued.
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy said Tuesday that four state employees have been fired, four have elected to retire and 90 others face disciplinary hearings that could cost them their jobs as a result of the Storm Irene disaster-relief investigation.
The governor said the state's investigation found that at least 686 of the approximately 800 state employees who obtained federal disaster relief through the state Department of Social Services were entitled to the aid.
DSS Commissioner Roderick Bremby likes to illustrate the balance of human and technological solutions with a story: If he told people to take down a tree and handed them a pocket knife, they'd have trouble. He could send in 10 more people with pocket knives. Or he could get them a chainsaw. The problem is, what happens before the chainsaws are available?
Read moreWith an announcement timed to make the Sunday newspapers, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy intends to propose a series of changes Saturday in the state's restrictive alcohol laws, including a repeal of minimum pricing and the ban on Sunday sales.
Administration officials say Malloy will explain his proposal in Enfield, one of the border towns where package-store owners have broken with the rest of what is a mom-and-pop industry and asked to compete with longer hours of operation and flexible pricing.
DCF spends $16.4 million a year on mental and behavioral health services, a sum that translates to about $30,000 for each child. But one of every five children has private health insurance that is not covering what their doctors say is needed, leaving the state to pick up the tab. That's about to change.
Read more
The state Department of Social Services has failed to employ enough workers to process Medicaid applications in the timeframe required by federal law, leaving thousands of low-income residents without access to health care coverage, legal aid attorneys alleged in a federal class action lawsuit filed Monday.
"Significant challenges" remain for DCF Commissioner Joette Katz, the court-ordered monitor said in his annual report card of the agency, but there is also evidence of "considerable progress" in the year since Katz took over.
Read moreAcross the country, states -- including Connecticut -- are pushing financial literacy training. They are offering courses that teach students and adults the basics of finance and credit in hopes that they'll save more and avoid the common pitfalls of predatory lending and expensive financial tools.
Read more"Children with autism and other developmental disabilities are probably one of the most underserved populations in the state of Connecticut," state Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein said. "We need all kinds of services and we need ways of paying for these services."
Read moreGov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration announced today it has forwarded the names of another 10 state employees to agency heads for review in connection with the ongoing food stamps fraud investigation.
This brings the total number of state workers still under close review to 44. An additional 29 employees already have been cleared of any wrongdoing.
With about 4,500 homeless people in Connecticut on any given night -- and more than 636,000 nationwide -- advocates have struggled for decades to find the best way to help. Now, a surprisingly fierce dispute is taking place over the best way to assist the homeless once they've left the emergency shelter.
Read moreA week after the U.S. Department of Education gave the state's early education efforts a C-minus, a new study concludes that the system is underfunded, ill-coordinated and insufficiently monitored to know what the state is getting for its annual investment of $224.6 million.
Stephen F. Cashman, chairman of the elections enforcement commission
Get the latest headlines right to your mobile
Visit m.ctmirror.org on your mobile device
FOLLOW US ON: 
PROUD SPONSOR
THE MINIMUM WAGE
Connecticut's hourly minimum wage of $8.25 is one of the highest in the nation, trailing Washington at $9.04, Oregon at $8.80 and Vermont at $8.46.
Five of the six New England states exceed the federal minimum of $7.25. The exception is New Hampshire, whose minimum is the same as the feds.
Connecticut is one of 18 states with a minimum higher than the federal standard. Twenty-thrree are at the federal level, four are below it and five have no minimum wage.
Ten states have a minimum wage indexed to the cost of living.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
PROUD SPONSOR
PROUD SPONSOR
