Homeless Children

On any given day, 550 men, women and children are living in one of Baltimore County's homeless shelters, officials say. Counselors receive an average of 40 calls daily from those asking for beds. Hundreds are living on county streets, sleeping in doorways or on steam grates. Nearly 2,000 homeless children attended county schools last year. Kathy Martin, vice president of the Baltimore County Communities for the Homeless, a nonprofit that works with the county, delivered those and other dire statistics at three community meetings this week.

Brittany Jackson, a junior at C. Milton Wright High School, earned the Girl Scout Gold Award on April 14. An awards banquet was held at Martin's East to celebrate her success. Brittany's Gold Award project, entitled "Confidence for Kids," involved working with the homeless children living at Anna's House in Bel Air. She created and led the children in many confidence-building activities, such as building a beautiful butterfly garden with them and instructing them on how to care for it in the future.

Yellow school buses fanned out to the House of Ruth and the Druid Heights YWCA on Monday to pick up 140 homeless children for the first day of what promises to be a happy summer spent at Camp St. Vincent in Patterson Park. The day camp for children ages 5 to 12 holds classes in reading, math, art and music in a Head Start building at Patterson Park Avenue and Gough Street. Daily swimming takes place at the park pool, and a circle of tents house other activities. There is also a social and emotional development component of the curriculum that teaches life lessons in themes of respect, self-esteem, and love of the family and community.

A team of 90 volunteers painted and cleaned the playground at the Pratt House this week to prepare the site for an overhaul next month. College students, part of Students Today Leaders Forever, joined Volunteers of America Chesapeake to enhance the playground at the 35-unit apartment complex for formerly homeless families with two or more children. The recreational area will be rebuilt in April with new equipment for the children, who helped design their dream playground. The students from Minnesota and North Dakota are taking part in the Pay it Forward Tour, which offers an alternative spring break trip.

"Senseless" would be another appropriate word for your "letter of the day" if our community permits the closure of the Ark ("Preschool for homeless children losing its home" July 13). As the only accredited preschool for homeless kids in Baltimore, the Ark gives children in unstable environments the opportunity to prepare for school and parents the chance to get back to work. Losing this resource would undercut two true solutions to homelessness. In my work with homeless and at-risk children over the past two decades, it's clear that those in stable and nurturing educational environments demonstrate greater social interaction and markedly improved health status than those without such supports.

Grace Callwood, a second-grader at William S. James Elementary School in Abingdon, donated many new and gently used toys and books to the homeless children at Harford Family House, a shelter for homeless families with children in Aberdeen. Grace has been battling cancer since 2011 and receives an abundance of toys as gifts from her friends, family and admirers. Grace had so many toys she thought she should share some of them with the families who reside at Harford Family House.

A team of 90 volunteers painted and cleaned the playground at the Pratt House this week to prepare the site for an overhaul next month. College students, part of Students Today Leaders Forever, joined Volunteers of America Chesapeake to enhance the playground at the 35-unit apartment complex for formerly homeless families with two or more children. The recreational area will be rebuilt in April with new equipment for the children, who helped design their dream playground. The students from Minnesota and North Dakota are taking part in the Pay it Forward Tour, which offers an alternative spring break trip.

You can see why a state might require minors to have a parent's OK before they receive medical care. But Maryland law has made life especially difficult for homeless teenagers who have no adults watching out for them. It's the sort of problem that drives Lisa Stambolis crazy. As director of pediatric and adolescent health at Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore, she organized people — including homeless teens — to press for change. It worked. A new law offering more leeway for minors' medical treatment goes into effect Oct. 1. In July, Stambolis was honored for her efforts and named a White House "Champion of Change," one of 13 selected for their efforts on behalf of homeless youth.

Like a real-life episode of "Sesame Street," the lesson at The Ark preschool on a recent day was sponsored by the letter "S. " Eight friends, as the teachers call the 3- and 4-year-old children, were buzzing like a hive of bees as they sounded out words such as "summer," "soccer" and "square. " For the grown-ups who run The Ark, Baltimore's only state-accredited preschool for homeless children, the task at hand is even more challenging: to find a way to continue the lessons beyond "S," and the summer.

Baltimore City Councilman Carl Stokes wants the city school department to determine whether homeless children are getting their fair share of education opportunities.Mr. Stokes, D-4th, introduced a council resolution yesterday calling on the city to study the education needs of children who are homeless or whose families change addresses so frequently that the children are forced to change schools frequently.

Grace Callwood, a second-grader at William S. James Elementary School in Abingdon, donated many new and gently used toys and books to the homeless children at Harford Family House, a shelter for homeless families with children in Aberdeen. Grace has been battling cancer since 2011 and receives an abundance of toys as gifts from her friends, family and admirers. Grace had so many toys she thought she should share some of them with the families who reside at Harford Family House.

From the outside, Camp St. Vincent looks like many other summer camps. There are crafts and reading along with plenty of time to play outside, and campers beat the heat with a dip in the pool. But the reality of these kids' everyday lives is anything but carefree. Camp St. Vincent, a free summer day camp at Patterson Park, has been serving homeless children ages 5 through 12 from Baltimore City and Baltimore County for more than 100 years. The eight-week camp, which is a program of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore in partnership with Baltimore City's Department of Recreation and Parks, is specifically designed for children living in shelters and transitional housing.

You can see why a state might require minors to have a parent's OK before they receive medical care. But Maryland law has made life especially difficult for homeless teenagers who have no adults watching out for them. It's the sort of problem that drives Lisa Stambolis crazy. As director of pediatric and adolescent health at Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore, she organized people — including homeless teens — to press for change. It worked. A new law offering more leeway for minors' medical treatment goes into effect Oct. 1. In July, Stambolis was honored for her efforts and named a White House "Champion of Change," one of 13 selected for their efforts on behalf of homeless youth.

Not everything in childhood is bowls of mush and little old ladies whispering "Hush," and Maurice Sendak understood that. Our children understand that, too. Instinctively. That's what makes his books, like "Where the Wild Things Are" and "In the Night Kitchen" such a delicious experience for them. They could feel that frisson of fear and adventure without ever leaving the crook of Mommy's arm. This was especially true for our sons, who found kindred spirts in the unruly little boys of Sendak's stories.

For a few hours after school, Ryan Johnson is just like most 16-year-olds. He lounges on the couch with his favorite Xbox game or checks his Facebook page. But then reality sets in. He decamps from his cousins' house for the Howard County cold-weather shelter. Dinner is a meal with his father and 20 other homeless people. He goes to bed early, on a green plastic mat next to strangers, who also have no other place to go in one of the state's wealthiest counties. "It has been really hard," said Ryan, a junior at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

They were dancing in the halls at Sandalwood Elementary School in Essex and for good reason. The Baltimore County elementary is one of only two in the state — the other is on the Eastern Shore — to earn recognition as a National Title I Distinguished School for the 2011-2012 year. The staff has hung a banner proclaiming the award in bold letters near the front door, across the lobby from a large billboard filled with photos of smiling academic achievers, who are the newest Sandalwood Star Students.

Although they face problems most children don't even know about, homeless children are remarkably robust and resilient, a Stanford University study has found.Reasonably healthy and surprisingly well-adjusted, they not only attend school fairly regularly but act like "little adults," helping their parents figure out how to pay bills and find food and places to sleep.But there are limits to this resilience. Even after short bouts of homelessness, children are damaged psychologically and physically -- in ways that often do not show up until after their families find housing.

Yearning for a valentine from Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor or Margaret Thatcher? A sweet sentiment perhaps from Erica Jong, Queen Latifah or the Minnesota Twins?They may not come in the mail, but valentines made or donated by these and other celebrities will be sold at auction this evening at a party to benefit Impact, an organization that provides recreational and educational programs for homeless children in shelters.The cocktail party and auction will be at the Puck Building in Manhattan.

Homelessness among children is a serious issue in today's society. Over 2 million children are suffering from lack of food and shelter. Children are commonly born into this situation and have no control over their living arrangements. Most of these children go through life living on the streets or in homeless shelters. Health care is very limited or even nonexistent for these children. Physical, psychological, and emotional damage is very frequent in homeless cases. Also, it is common for a child to leave their home because of abuse and violence.

Maybe in the larger scheme of things, this is small stuff. But on a day gloomy with bad weather and worse news, I was happy to learn that a Baltimore preschool for homeless children won't be homeless itself after all. I'd written about The Ark this summer, at a time when it was desperate to find another home because its downtown building was being sold. Something about a preschool for homeless kids being booted out into the street just gnawed at me — and apparently others. "All I did was pick up the phone and call a number of folks who I thought might care," said Mark Furst.