This article in the Washington Post, Summer Is No Vacation for Abused Kids reminded me of an inner city church that worked hard to save children from the nightmare choices facing their poor working parents when they are unable to afford daycare for their children over summer vacation.
This church often had many times the children they were able to care for…but they would not turn their communities children into the mean streets to be left on their own. It was messy, it was stinky, and it was crowded, but it was safe.
Poor working families have no choices.
Thousands of names ahead of them on a list for subsidized day care that won’t provide help for years to come, means that any available family member, friend, or neighbor is considered a better option than leaving a three, five, or seven year old unattended (or is it?)
Leaving your child with that drunken or meth using uncle or aunt, the friend with the mental health issues, the dangerous or abusive teenager. Children need and deserve better choices.
Choices that our communities are making it it harder and harder for poor people to make. One of my guardian ad-Litem duties was to take children away from a father that could not afford daycare
It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.
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