PSU Magazine Fall 1994

Homeless children and their families have a healing place to go- the Sunflower Family Center. By Valerie Brown Maggie Anderson MSW '90 Anderson and Exo work with traumatized children at the Sunflower Family Center (pictured right). ' s ouse n the fading light, a woman in a phone booth tum her face away from curious pas ersby. Her children huddle in the car, waiting for her to dash back to them through the rain and take them to warmth, safety, and food. But he can't. The homele s family has been turned away from every shelter in town. They'll pend another cold and hungry night in the car. This worst-case scenario is more common than most of us are aware. The most rapidly expanding segment of the homeless population is families with children, and most homeless families are headed by single women. For them, homelessness may be simply the grimmest outcome of poverty rather than the result of mental illness or substance abuse-the stereotypical causes of dereliction. Census figures for 1990 show that 57 percent of female– headed families with children under five live below the poverty level. That's a fifth of all the children under five in the country. The numbers say something about how hard it is to raise a family these days, and reminds us that, given the right circumstances, most of us are only a couple of paychecks away from the street. Many of the problems the homeless poor face are extensions of the common difficulties of everyday living---declining wages, a tight