Street children face many dangers as both a cause and consequence of being on the streets. This year’s International Day for Street Children is highlighting some of these risks, as well as providing individuals and governments with the knowledge to advocate for safer streets.
We used our Digitally Connecting Street Children platform to ask street-connected children themselves what makes them feel safe, in order to ensure any solutions reflect children’s views and address their concerns.
The most popular answer, with 33% of the children choosing it (out of a respondent pool of 69 children), was that having a trusted adult in their lives would make street-connected children feel safer. 32% of children would also seek out a charity worker to help them if they were in an unsafe situation.
CSC’s merger with StreetInvest in 2022 introduced StreetInvest’s sector-leading Street Work approach – a specialist form of youth work that we believe is the best way to support street-connected children, and often the first step towards changing a child’s life.
What do Street Workers do?
Street Workers are essential to a rights-based response to street-connected children. They work tirelessly to ensure street-connected children are valued, supported and can access vital services.
A street worker from CINI, India, talks to a street-connected child
Street Work takes place physically on the streets, where the child is. Trained adults build a relationship of trust with street-connected children that enables a purposeful and empowering relationship to develop where children come to trust Street Workers and know that they can depend on them. This is of huge value to children who are so frequently subject to violence, harassment and discrimination from the adults around them.
Street Workers establish relationships with street-connected children by beginning to understand their values, attitudes, issues, and their ambitions. Once trust is established, Street Workers support street-connected children in their personal growth and development. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 21 (2017) on children in street situations recognises the importance of Street Work and recommends governments develop specialised solutions for street-connected children that includes recognising the skill of frontline Street Workers to be able to deliver these specialised solutions for street children.
How can we support street workers?
We are now working to bring the Street Work training model to more organisations and individuals in 2023.
Training such as this is a key part of the professionalisation of Street Work. Street Workers consistently inform us that training is an asset, empowering them with effective techniques and approaches to doing Street Work. It not only equips Street Workers with the skills they need to support children and young people but also builds and grows a team of professionals that together can widen their reach of support to street-connected children across their country and region.
Together with Street Workers, we continue to advocate for more support, training and resources to strengthen the profession and invest in providing that ourselves.