GALES FERRY, CT – New London County is the fourth largest of Connecticut’s eight counties but has the smallest population with just under 270,000 residents. But according to The Connecticut Project's Courtney McNally-Parkerson, the shortage of childcare options in the county has reached crisis levels and is just as great, if not more so, than it is in the state's more densely populated counties of Fairfield, New Haven, and Hartford.