Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : At a bottom now for gold? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Whirlwind who wrote (1894)	7/1/1999 10:54:00 PM
From: Ahda	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1911

latimes.com Thursday, July 1, 1999 Ranks of Homeless Children on the Rise, Study Finds By ANNE-MARIE O'CONNOR, Times Staff Writer every night, more than 1 million children in America face the dark with no place to call home. They are hungry, anxious and often exposed to violence. They shuttle between shelters and fall behind in school. They are the vulnerable new face of the American homeless. Experts say that there are more homeless children in America than at any time since the Great Depression. About 40% of America's homeless are now women and their children--the fastest-growing homeless group. These are the conclusions of an unprecedented study unveiled Wednesday that shows that this transient childhood on the mean streets of America is shortchanging children, robbing them of education, health and emotional stability. The study's report, presented Wednesday at a women's conference in Los Angeles, documents how children are being scarred by the kind of trauma that ravages survivors of war and natural disasters--condemning some to mental illness. It warns that their harsh plight will squander countless potentially productive citizens unless action is taken to arrest the disturbing trend. "The face of homelessness in this country has changed dramatically," said Ellen Bassuk, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and president of the Better Homes Fund, which produced the report, "Homeless Children: America's New Outcasts." The fund is a national nonprofit group that uses research and fieldwork to recommend policies and programs to benefit the homeless. It derived its figures for the study from national homeless organizations, the U.S. Department of Education and the census. "Young children are without homes in the largest numbers since the Great Depression," said Bassuk, the lead investigator in the study. "We must act now to halt this epidemic before we lose another generation." Deborah Weinstein of the Children's Defense Fund, a Washington advocacy group, called the findings "groundbreaking--and heartbreaking too." "This is lapel-grabbing news," Weinstein said. "We are very concerned about what happens to these children. We consider this to be a major contribution." Weinstein said one of the most ominous findings of the two-year study was that an alarming number of the mothers studied--92%--had been sexually or violently abused. Forty-five percent had been sexually molested as children and 66% had been violently abused by an adult before age 18. Half had been homeless as children. Two-thirds of the women had been abused by intimate male partners. Forty-five percent have experienced major depression and more than a third had post-traumatic stress disorder--a syndrome, first observed among Vietnam War veterans, that subjects its victims to recurring anxiety and depression. Furious Darleen taken from the LA times off topic but ever so on reality