The Lives of Homeless Children

[n2doc]

by Im a frayed knot

This is an update to a diary I published many years ago. I published it before the financial crisis that led to the jobs and housing crisis. Since that time, the homeless population has ballooned. I saw a news program (sorry, I can’t remember which one and can’t find the link) that suggested homelessness is up by 60%. They also indicated that the face of homelessness has changed as well. Many of the newly homeless are intact families who had been working at jobs that paid the bills. The homeless population is not comprised of the old male drunks we see in the Salvation Army ads. The number of homeless children is growing and they need help. The problem is not going away. Over the summer, they have nowhere to go.

The following may help understand of the life of a homeless child.

Many years ago, I was working with a program that helped homeless children in grades k-5. It was a tutoring program. The school buses would bring the children after school to a designated school where we gave them snacks, provided activities and helped with homework or problems they had in school. Circumstances changed for me and I wasn’t able to continue, but the circumstances for homeless children have not improved for them. They have gotten worse.

We had about 100 children in the program. We could have easily had 500, there were that many eligible for the program. But the woman who ran the program would not take more than her volunteers could handle. Further, and she refused public money for this reason, there were a number of children in the age group who were already dangerous to other students and the volunteers, and she could not include them. It broke her heart but she could not allow her students and volunteers to be put at risk.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/04/982021/-The-Lives-of-Homeless-Children