What dangers do street children face?
Find out
Disease
The streets are a dirty place to call home. With nowhere to wash themselves or their clothes, hygiene is one of the many problems that street children face. Cuts and scrapes can easily become infected, and drinking dirty water is a major health risk.
Most street children cannot afford to go and see a doctor or go to the hospital, and so easily treatable diseases like tetanus can, and do, kill.
Sexual abuse
For far too many street girls, prostitution is the only way they can earn even a pitiful income with which to buy food. Needless to say, this leaves them extremely vulnerable to exploitation, STDs, unwanted pregnancies - and the emotional and physical trauma is very hard to overcome.
Many young boys too are targets for sexual predators (in countries where homosexuality is outlawed or very much a taboo).
Violence
Sexual violence, abuse by adults, beatings and robberies by other street children are a daily occurrence on the streets. It’s something that street children have to accept and live with as they cannot go to the police and cannot afford to go to hospital.
Street children are often seen as being a nuisance by local residents and businesses. Although though they should enjoy some protection by the law, in reality they can be beaten and abused with almost total impunity.
Drug use
Life on the streets is so harsh and unforgiving that it is no surprise that many street children turn to drugs or home-made alcohol as a means of helping to numb the trauma and escape from the reality of their situation.
Glue sniffing and street alcohol are dangerous to children’s health, and addictions to them can lead down a spiralling path of crime and substance misuse.
The police
Whilst you might hope that the police would be there to protect vulnerable children, in reality they’re sometimes part of the problem, not the solution for many street children. Many street children turn to petty crime, begging or prostitution in order to feed themselves. The drug use and anti-social behaviour mean that local residents, businesses don’t want street children in their neighbourhood.
Many police officers don't understand or implement child protection laws properly and use violence against street children because that's how they have traditionally treated them. We're working alongside police forces and training them how to treat street children with compassion and in accordance with local and international laws.
Blighted future
Disease, bad hygiene and violence all combine to give street children a much reduced average life expectancy, and that life is an incredibly harsh one. Most street children have had little or no schooling and are illiterate. They have no skills or qualifications they can utilise to get a job and a route away from life on the streets.
Before their lives have properly begun, their fate has been sealed. That’s why it’s so important to get help to them as quickly as possible.
Communication & social skills
It’s not just literacy and academic skills that most street children have never acquired. Many lack the basic communication and social skills that we take for granted that children naturally learn at home or in school/nursery. Many street children have been abandoned or neglected from a very early age and they have had no-one to nurture their development.
Our research in Kenya showed that three-quarters of street children showed communication or learning difficulties. Most are not due to conditions at birth like cerebral palsy, but because they’ve never learned how to interact properly with other people, to trust them, to listen and show empathy towards them. Without those essential ‘soft skills’, reintegrating into mainstream schools and wider society is almost impossible.
Is it best to find them and take them home?
Yes
Ultimately, we believe that families, extended families and local communities are best placed to take care of their children.
Where it's deemed safe and in the best interests of the child, reunification with their family or rehoming them with extended family is the focus of our work.
We don't believe that institutional care environments (like orphanages) are the best and most sustainable long-term places for children to grow up in.
No
Without addressing the reasons why the child ran away or was thrown out of their home in the first place, it's highly likely that they'd soon end up being back on the streets.
We work with families to address the underlying problems (often related to extreme poverty) so they are in a better position to provide for their children and keep them in school.
This takes time, and sometimes street children are better off in a temporary shelter or school in the short-run.
