Attorney General Maura Healey

Earlier this month, we were excited to welcome Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey to Strategies for Children’s 9:30 call, our daily briefing for members of the early education and care field.

Healey, a longtime advocate of early education, was joined by Angela Brooks, the director of Healey’s Children’s Justice Unit.

Healey’s story:

Responding to the question of how she became attorney general, Healey said she didn’t grow up wanting to be a politician. In fact, after college, she was a professional basketball player in Europe. When she returned to Massachusetts, she enrolled in Northeastern University School of Law, and went on to work for the Boston law firm Wilmer Hale. She the joined the Attorney General’s office as chief of the Civil Rights Division. And in 2014, she was elected attorney general.

One insight from her time abroad:

“I remember living in Europe. It was amazing to me, the recognition of the role of child care providers, early education providers, and the primacy of that from day one.”

Fighting for child care during a global pandemic:

When the pandemic first hit, Healey and her office took on unexpected but needed roles, trying to secure personal protective equipment for first responders and searching out hotels for families in which one family member had COVID-19.

Last summer, Healey led “a coalition of 22 attorneys general urging the United States Senate to provide robust financial support [$50 billion] for childcare providers” in a federal stimulus bill.

The letter said in part:

“As our states’ childcare systems began to shut down several weeks ago, the fault lines were quickly exposed. Many of us heard from parents and guardians desperate to know whether they were still required to pay their childcare bills, even though many of them had lost income and jobs themselves. Many of us also heard from providers who pleaded that, without some financial support, they may be forced to close for good.”

“In the long-term we have to fix the broken model and treat childcare as the public good that it is; your immediate action can both address the emergency crisis and set us on a path to reform.”

On the 9:30 call, Healey added:

“I think we all learned as a society just how essential the role of early education and child care is.” Healey said she sees this across the state and in her office where she is the “CEO of 600 people, many of whom have kids.” Healey’s plan is to let her staff work remotely through the summer.

Of course, not everyone can work remotely, Healey said, noting that the pandemic has been especially hard on low-income children, especially those who have single parents or parents who are essential workers.

Fortunately, Healey has seen members of the business community support early education and care because they realize that parents can’t go back to work without appropriate settings for their children.

Angela Brooks added:

“On the policy side, we’re very interested in exploring how to expand childcare to more kids. We’ve been having conversations, as the AG mentioned, with the business community and with the Common Start Coalition.”

Healey called for more funding to expand access to child care and to help the many women across the state who have struggled to balance work and child care during the pandemic.

Moving Forward

“I come to you all for solutions,” Healey said, explaining that her job as the “People’s Lawyer” is to champion good ideas. “I come to you to ask, What do you need? What can we do?”

That’s a great invitation for advocates.

Healey also thanked the field, saying:

“The tireless and crucial work that you all have done over the course of this pandemic doesn’t go in the headlines, but it shouldn’t go unrecognized. And I would encourage you to keep up your storytelling, your advocacy, which has helped inform and shape responses to this crisis.”

Perhaps most importantly, Healey made a simple but crucial policy point about early education and care as well as other social problems. Instead of waiting for problems to become disasters, “I’d rather invest in the front end.”

This can be done, she said, “as a moral imperative to treat kids with dignity, to value the worth of every human being, to invest in everybody.”