Not all children who are homeless end up living in the open on the street. Many end up sleeping in very inappropriate but out of sight places – on the floors of friends or strangers, or sleeping in temporary accommodation like hostels. Thus, they are not taken into account in UK statistics -which is a problem- and some call them the “hidden homeless”.
Conversely, not all ‘street children’ are necessarily homeless. They may work, play or spend their time on the street, but may go back to sleep with their family or parents.
The term ‘street children’ or ‘street-connected children’ is to be used when describing children who depend on the streets for their survival.
To give you a more concrete idea, more than 7500 children are living in temporary accommodation for the homeless in Scotland, phenomenon being called "Scotland's shame".
Different factors can attempt to explain why children are in the streets
Although each child has a unique story, it does exist some recurrent patterns regarding the link between events in their lives and their connection to the street.
Poverty, displacement due to natural disasters, conflicts or family breakdown all contribute to a rise in the number of street children in a given region. Parental deaths, parental neglect or violence and abuse of children at home or within communities highly impact as well the number of homeless children. Other factors can also be pointed out such as discrimination, lack of access to justice, a lack of legal status. An example to illustrate this idea would be a lack of birth registration for example.
In addition of that, some young adults are being kicked out of their family for personnal matters such as sexual orientation or gender identity. According to a 2021 study by Akt, almost two-thirds of the LGBTQ+ homeless population who answered their survey felt threatened or frightened by their family before becoming homeless. Even once in the streets, figures from that same survey show that 59% of them have faced some form of discrimination or harrassment when accessing help services.
Different risks Being let to yourself is already a form of violence as no instant protection can be guaranteed by the justice system or by any adult. Moreover, they are often considered as easy targets, and are robbed or beaten. They are also an easy prey for abusers who may sexually assault them, forcibly recruit them into criminal activities, traffic them and send them out into the streets to beg and steal. Moreover, it has been explained (Consortium for Street Children, 2019) that street gangs can appear as ‘surrogate families’ to the eyes of those who have been left. If they can provide protection from outsider violence, the requested counterpart is often illegal. If associations and public policies are designed to help them find a roof, children who have been exposed to the streets frequently experience depression, anxiety, and trauma, which can lead to drug dependence or even suicide
Problems of Actual System
It could be argued that street children get punished by a legal system that has a discriminatory effect on being homeless or not registered at birth (Consortium for Street Children, 2019).
Indeed, too often street-connected children are criminalised for so-called ‘status offences’. These offences are noncriminal acts that are considered a law violation only because of a youth’s status as a minor. Outrageous research by the CSC demonstrates that the vast majority of street-connected children processed through justice systems were children arrested for begging, vagrancy, commercial sexual exploitation or truancy.
Moreover, thenEngland Statutory Homelessness report (Q3 2021) highlighted that end of private rented Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) was the most common reason accounting for 10,060 (32.1%) households. There are over a million families stuck on waiting lists, chasing too few social homes. The increasing price of rent and lack of help can be observed as a direct consequence to the number of children that are left in the streets.
Watch Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches ‘Growing Up Poor: Britain’s Hidden Homeless Kids’’ online on All 4.