Those Who Wander: America's Lost Street Kids

by Vivian Ho

The factors that drive kids into the streets are legion, and every kid’s story is unique. We could talk about fixing a foster care system that seems to forget about way too many kids who age out and have nowhere to go. We could talk about putting in place better drug treatment programs and providing better mental health care. But the more we go into it, the farther we spiral into a pit of hopelessness, because the fact is, too many of the systems we have in place now are broken. Even if we had the commitment and the compassion to fix them all, it would take several generations before we saw any sort of results. Beyond that, there are just some root causes of youth homelessness that we won’t ever be able to fix. As long as there are children in this world, there will be parents and other adults who neglect them, abuse them, mistreat them, and molest them. Try as we might, we can’t always intervene before it reaches the point of no return for the kids affected. We can’t save everyone.