Finding Children Who Are Homeless

The challenges faced by children in families who experience homelessness include a lack of the basic necessities of food, clothing, medical services, lack of shelter, and the displacement of other family members along with numerous issues related to the individual experiences of their family’s situation.

The U.S. Department of Education reports that children who are homeless face additional challenges in accessing educational services and are likely to face learning disabilities or emotional disturbances but may not be able to access special education programs. The barriers to accessing special education may include the following:

• Not being identified as needing special education services
• Difficulty with diagnosis due to mobility and other stressors
• Lack of timely assessment, diagnosis, or service provision
• Lack of continuity of services due to school transfers
• Lack of timely or efficient records transfer when enrolling in a new school
• Lack of an available parent or surrogate to represent the child or unaccompanied youth
  

A definition of who is homeless is provided by both the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 2001—Title X and Part C of the No Child Left Behind Act—Sec. 725.

The term “homeless children and youth” —

(A)    means individuals who lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. . . ; and

(B)    includes —

(i)    children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due the lack of alternative accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; are abandoned in hospitals; or are awaiting foster care placement;

(ii)    children and youths who have a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. . ,

(iii)    children and youths who are living in cars, parks, public spaces, abandoned buildings, substandard housing, bus train stations, or similar settings; and

(iv)    migratory children who qualify as homeless for the purposes of this subtitle because the children are living in circumstances described in clauses (i) through (iii).

The McKinney-Vento Act also provides the mandates below:

• Immediate school enrollment and full participation in educational activities, even when records normally required for enrollment are not available [Sec. 722(g)(3)( C)]
• The right of children and youth experiencing homelessness to remain in their school of origin (school last attended when permanently housed or in which last enrolled [Sec. 722 (g)(3)(A)]
• Transportation to the school of origin [Sec. 722 (g)()(J)(iii)]
• Access to programs and services including special education services, preschool services, free school meals, Title I services, services for English language learners, vocational/technical education, gifted and talented services, and before-and after-school care [Sec. 722(g)(4)]
• The appointment of a local homeless education liaison in every school district to ensure that homeless children and youth are identified and given full and equal opportunity to receive all educational services for which they are eligible in order to succeed in school [Sec. 722 (g)(6)(A)]
  

The reauthorization of IDEA 2004 specifically references the responsibilities of responding to the requirements of the McKinney-Vento Act in providing all the general requirements of special education—evaluations, Individual Education Programs, and free appropriate public education—for children who are considered homeless.

The requirements of Child Find as outlined in the federal IDEA regulations since 1999 also include the specific requirement that children with disabilities who are homeless are identified, located, and evaluated.  Each State must include personnel on the State Advisory Panel who work with State and local McKinney-Vento issues as well as a representative of the State child welfare agency responsible for foster care. Timelines set for evaluation and IEP development must be considered so that children who move will receive coordination between schools and immediate services provided through the previous IEP and prompt transfer of records.

Funding is available through LEAs to develop and implement programs for intervening with K–12 students who have not been found eligible, and this opportunity may be considered to support children who experience homelessness to overcome some of the barriers in obtaining special education.

Additional considerations are provided in Part C of the IDEA to ensure that early intervention services are also available to the infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families who are homeless. States are encouraged to develop and conduct public awareness programs that target other service providers for homeless families such as health services, shelters, schools, and child welfare systems in order to support a referral network for finding infants and toddlers who may be identified with disabilities, and State Interagency Coordinating Councils are also required to include McKinney-Vento and foster care personnel to provide support to the efforts to identify children in need of early intervention.

More information about the issues of children who are homeless and to develop collaborative efforts to better identify children with disabilities who are homeless can be found through the following resources:

The National Center for Homeless Education (NCHE):

http://www.serve.org/nche

U.S. Department of Education, Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program:

http://www.ed.gov/programs/homeless/index.html

The National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY):

http://www.naehcy.org

The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP):

http://www.nlchp.org