Children Are The Hope Of The Nation 's Future Essay

* Baby social worker visited. Plan is to initiate care proceedings ASAP reasons; history of substance misuse, concealed pregnancy, poor engagement with treatment and services

The Toronto Star published an article reporting that Toronto currently has the highest rate of children living in households that are considered low income in Canada (Monsebraaten, 2015). The article reports that in Toronto the child poverty rate is higher than the poverty rate of any other age group. This paper will discuss child poverty, how this is a challenge to public health practices and policies, and finally, discuss potential solutions for public policy that address this issue.

When people hear the words “child poverty” some assume that this term may refer to homeless children who are living on the streets. This isn’t necessarily true, in fact some children who go to bed every night with a roof above their head still suffer from some form poverty. According to National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), 21% of children throughout the United States live in families who are considered poor. It is crucial for society to be more aware of this issue and to take part in contributing to help reduce child poverty within our country.

“One out of every seven children will be born into poverty in the United States” (“Poverty in the US”). People are not aware of the poverty in America, but the United States has one of the highest poverty rates in the world. Many of the reasons for this issue is a lack of available jobs, low wages and barriers to employment. A primary issue is the lack of information on poverty. People need to be able to know where to go to obtain information on this issue. The media is not covering poverty enough so the people in America can not be informed of what the nation is going through. In the United States, the poverty rate has continued to slowly rise throughout the years, which greatly affects a family’s lifestyle and even worse, a child’s future, due to people not knowing what to do about the problem.

There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, tells a story about the family of LaJoe and Paul Rivers. The book focuses on Lafayette and Pharaoh, two of the younger children in the family, and their interactions with each other, the neighborhood, their family, their friends, and the police. Following the family over three years shows the importance of neighborhood factors when it comes to crime. According to Sampson and Groves (1989), social disorganization refers to “the inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls”. Many aspects in the book exemplify how neighborhood factors, social controls, and community factors have impacts on crime. The book exemplifies how neighborhood disadvantage can lead to informal social controls, which in turn produces crime. Due to these factors, social disorganization is the best theory to explain the crime that occurs in There are No Children Here.

In 1980, about 500,000 children were in foster care, but a series of successful reforms began with that year 's Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act which dramatically decreased the number of children in foster care. But in the early 1990s, with the advent of crack cocaine and an economic recession numbers went back up. Child welfare advocates said that the foster care system was in need of changes so that children spend less time in foster placements and that America’s child welfare system needed an improvement. Some children in care were separated from their siblings, others transitioned from one foster care placement to another, never knowing where to call home. Too many children were being abused in systems that were supposed to protect them. Instead of being safely reunified with their families or moved quickly into adoptive homes many remained in foster homes or institutions for years.

There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz tells the harrowing story of the Rivers family and their shocking experiences living in an underserved Chicago public housing project. The story focuses on Lafayette, a middle school aged boy discovering his identity, Pharoah, an elementary school aged boy with high ambition and goals, and their resilient mother LaJoe. Matza’s Techniques of Neutralization discuss how people can create rationalizations to justify delinquencies and crimes. Specifically applicable to There Are No Children Here is the theory of Denial of Responsibility which occurs when the perpetrator of an offense claims the situation was out of their control, they did not know the law, they were a victim of circumstance, or they were acted upon by outside forces rather than acting themselves. The second theory applicable to There Are No Children Here is Becker’s theory of Master Status. The theory of Master Status states that labels can take on a “master status” and can have an enormous influence and once you’ve been labeled, then define you. These theories aid in understanding how the pattern of violence and destruction is perpetuated in the projects of Chicago and the misfortune in the Rivers family.

When children that live in poverty are in the school, the school system automatically labels these

Current legislation, guidelines, policies and procedures within the UK affecting the safeguarding of children and young people

‘Free the Children’ was written by Nancy Gibbs, a professor at Princeton University. The author finished her studies from Yale and Oxford universities. ‘Free the Children’ was first published in July 2003 in Time Magazine. This thought-provoking essay talks about letting the children enjoy their free time in the summer and burden them with extra work. It also talks about the possible consequences of overburdening them and the dangers of letting them free.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is an international organization present in 190 countries (Unicef, n.d.). It is an agency focused on the area of maternal and child health. Recently, the organization is providing fresh water and food for mothers and children, education for mothers and girls, and immunization programs for children (Unicef, n.d.). The advantages for this program are the benefits to the education and health of the women and children, but the disadvantages are ability to retrieve funds all the time, and providing care to everyone. They have to have a focused topic, like they do, in order to start to care for the population. There are many issues in the third world countries that go beyond the abilities of one organization,

Children account for nearly half of the world’s extreme poor and yet over nine hundred million people, one in seven people, are still living in extreme poverty. Many are kids. The latest survey conveyed by the UNICEF organisation,

The thought was by working with children at an early age it would provide them with the tools and encouragement to embrace life and find meaning for their own lives. This is a worthy challenge, however now I see the need to seek an active role on the macro level. Assisting people in embracing and cultivating their personal skills and qualities is exciting but without equal access and fair opportunity these same children could be doomed to an inevitable fate of being stuck in the system. There must be a change in people’s mindset regarding genuine poverty and the true struggle of American citizens, from the forsaken Native American reservations to the old mining towns in rural areas of American to the impoverished citizens in both urban and suburban America. These changes will not manifest until policies and laws are changed. It can only happen when people unite with a solid strategy to dismantle the personal kingdoms created by corporate America and the government, replacing them with a commitment to implementing programs and services that eliminate some of the inequities of the

“The World Health Organization has declared poverty the single largest determinant of health for both adults and children.” (Jakovljevi, 2016, p. 455). Recent studies report that many children are living in poverty all across the world. These children are facing many obstacles as a result. These barriers range from lack of money or resources, nutritional foods, and suitable housing. Additionally, these children have a hard time focusing in school because their number one priority is survival. There are also studies that support poverty that play a role in the development, behavioral issues, and cognitive problems (Jakovljevi, 2016). Poverty affects people adversely due to the lack of financial stability in the home, missed educational

Let children be children, is not only a popular phrase heard in education, but it is also my motto. Yes, it is true, today’s children are tomorrow’s future; but how we choose to raise our children determines the outcome of our future. Many believe academics should be stressed more in schools, taking away from children’s playtime. I feel that play is what molds a child. Play allows not only a child’s imagination to run freely, but builds and strengthens children’s motor, language, cognitive, and social emotional development skills. I believe that play; along with parental involvement forms a child’s identity. Play is what makes children: tomorrow’s future.