Public Policy Development In Health And Human Services

The organization of LAF recognizes the importance of ensuring access of education to homeless children and youth. Our organization will develop a ten-year program to ensure the partnership and development for those that experience homelessness so that their children will not be excluded from education. This program will provides federal support to ensure that homeless children and youth have equal access to the same free, appropriate, public education (including public preschool) provided to other Texas children, with the opportunity to meet the same challenging state content and student performance standards. The program requires the removal of barriers to the enrollment, attendance and success of homeless children and youth in school. Technical assistance and support to local education agencies will be provided for the implementation of the provisions, Act, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act.

According Texas Homeless Assistance Act, a homeless person is an individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, including children and youth who are: sharing a house due to loss of permanent housing, economic hardship or similar reason; who are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks or camping grounds due to lack of alternative adequate housing; who are living in emergency or transitional housing; are abandoned in a hospital and/or are awaiting foster care placement (this includes children and youth who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, regular sleeping accommodations; who live in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing bus or train stations and migratory students meeting the descriptions above.( http://education.vermont.gov/new/html)

The LAF wants to address this problem because this could be the start to end homelessness. Today in the world if you want to be able to live, have a home, buy food, it all start with getting an education. IF these children are not able to get an education then the problem of homelessness continues. If homeless children are turned away by the schools to get an education, because they don't have a address to register for school and then they fall behind in their education or they simple end up not attend school, then as they go out on their own they will not be able to get a job that pays enough to have a home. They would end up in a low paying job where they are not able to make a good living and then the cycle carries on from their parents to them and then it could continue on to their children. So we need to stop this horrible cycle. Homeless children deserve an education just like the person that gets food stamps get to eat. Our program will cover the Wichita and surrounding areas. Our principal objective in selecting this area for on-site data collection was to ensure diversity with respect to geographic location and program design.

The objective of our on-site data collection was to obtain detailed descriptions of program goals, and design, students and student selection, program structure and staffing, program services and activities, and program evaluation. We developed research questions in each of the areas of inquiry and loosely structured data collection protocols, based on those questions, to guide our discussions with LAF, facility, and school staff members. While on site we also reviewed available

program documentation, including applications for funding, program descriptions, cooperative agreements between the LAF and facilities, and evaluation reports.

We found that many of the homeless children where falling through the hoops. Kids would not be attend school anywhere and then we they did attend they would miss to many days of school to be able to get their education. Many school where finding that with transfer being high it was hard to keep track of where the student was or was supposed to be. That's what we want to stop, every child should be able to go to school know matter what. In this situation there are more losers than just the children. First we defiantly know that the kids that are missing school are losing they are losing

their chance for a better life and for a better education, and to improve themselves for the future. Then society also suffers. If the children are not able to get an education, chances of them ending up on welfare and great, so then they become a burdened to society, because we are supporting a great number of people. So where does the cycle end, if we don't step in a get a program set up to take control of this situation, the cycle never ends and continues as families become homeless.