Reactive, Protective and Rights-Based Approaches in Work with Homeless Street Youth

Sarah Thomas de Benitez
London School of Economics

Citation: Thomas de Benitez, Sarah. “Reactive, Protective, and Rights-Based Approaches in Work with Homeless Street Youth.” Children, Youth and Environments 13(1), Spring 2003. Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

Abstract

Homeless children on the streets are one of the most disadvantaged sectors of urban youth. Their circumstances leave them without access to many of their human rights and excluded from mainstream society. Policies that affect these young people can range from broad-based to targeted initiatives- each brings advantages and disadvantages. This paper distinguishes three basic approaches that cut across this typology and describes how governments view and treat homeless street children. There are three main governmental approaches: reactive, protective and rights-based. The distinguishable impacts of each type of policy on the lives of homeless children who live in the streets are drawn out in this paper. Broad-based initiatives within a rights-based governmental approach, into which targeted initiatives by civil society can be integrated, seem a potentially effective combination for including homeless street children as participants in the wider society.

Keywords: street children; government policy; paradigms of childhood