You Lift Up Adults, Children and
Our Community

Chronic stressful conditions such as extreme poverty, homelessness, and abuse — what scientists now call “toxic stress” — can alter the architecture of the developing brain. Exposure to multiple stressors without strong support systems to compensate can have detrimental effects on children. This can lead to lifelong difficulties in learning, memory, and self-regulation.

All children grow up in an environment of relationships that affects all aspects of their development. Healthy development also depends on the quality and reliability of a child’s relationship with adults. The support and interaction of trusted adults shape a child’s brain circuits and can affect academic performance and interpersonal skills later in life. Parents with children experiencing homelessness face multiple stressors themselves and often do not have the wherewithal to provide the support, and stability needed to build a solid developmental foundation for their children.

While every individual or family has their own unique circumstances for experiencing homelessness, people living in poverty are at the highest risk of homelessness because they are already in precarious financial positions and are particularly vulnerable to rising housing costs, unemployment, and unexpected costs and emergencies. While these individuals experience stressful situations like all of us, they are particularly susceptible to more difficult outcomes that can destabilize familial relationships and lead to mental health problems including substance misuse, all of which are risk factors for homelessness.

When families do not have this basic foundation for well-being, it becomes difficult for the adults in the family to offer the support and resources that children need today. Layered on to this are often barriers like language skills, working multiple jobs and still not making a living wage, self-medicating to reduce insurmountable stress, mental illness, and incarceration.

We know that children living in poverty and experiencing homelessness who are exposed to high-quality academic enrichment programs with quality and reliable tutors and the encouragement of caring mentors show long-term academic and learning skills improvements. This gives them the greatest chance to break out of the cycle of poverty.

Ensuring that these children can access high-quality, education programs with consistent, highly trained staff will build these brain connections and result in positive outcomes in their later ability to learn as well.