The Impact of Poverty and Homelessness on Child Welfare in Developing Societies: A Social Worker's Perspective

The future of any society lies greatly in the proper mentorship of its younger members to develop them into ideal leaders and responsible individuals. To attain this goal, it is required of societies to ensure provision of adequate welfare services and livable environment to these young generations. However, this has been identified to be a contrast in many societies across developing nations, especially in Africa where children have been identified to be victims of inhumane and tormenting experiences such as hunger, homelessness, malnutrition, emotional abuse, physical assault, bullying and so on. These conditions are traceable to factors like lack of adequate/proper parental care, poverty, unhealthy environment, irresponsible parenthood and overpopulation. The effects of these range from physical defects to psychological trauma, low self-esteem, poor lifestyle, increase in destitution and dependency, value disintegration, increased crime rate, untimely death, poor economic development and so on. This research argued for improved living conditions for poor or homeless children in communities across developing nations as a core requirement to attain meaningful development. The research adopted a combination of research methodologies; the analytic approach was employed to unravel the meaning of key concepts and their interlink with one another; the phenomenological method was adopted to present life experiences of children who have been victims of improper care and unhealthy lifestyle; the prescriptive approach helped to provide some measures to ameliorate the situation in a bid to attain an improved world.