Report: Homelessness the biggest issue for Vermont children

By Eileen Weber
April 5th, 2023
Alison Krompf
Alison Krompf, MA, deputy commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Mental Health.

According to Building Bright Futures’ (BBF) annual report, Vermont’s children have issues surrounding caregiving, mental health, and homelessness.

More than 30 percent of children under the age of 12 live in households with incomes below 185 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, which is the benchmark for qualifying for many benefit programs. (Sixty-three percent of children who live in poverty in Vermont live in rural areas).

More than 13,000 children under the age of 18 or 12 percent of that demographic, lived in food insecure households in 2020 (down from 14 percent in 2019). But of that 12 percent in 2020, 33 percent were ineligible for federal nutrition programs.

And, 32 percent of households are cost burdened by their rent or mortgage.

While there was little significant change in the U.S., Vermont had a 60 percent increase in children between the ages of three and eight with a mental, emotional, or behavioral health condition from 2018 to 2021.

“We focus so much on shelters, but there’s an intermediate period of desperation. Women may stay with people who are unsafe—maybe they’re violent or there’s drugs or sexual abuse—and their kids are exposed to that. We need to destigmatize shelters and educate the mothers about other options.” -- Alison Krompf, MA, deputy commissioner, Vermont’s Department of Mental Health

The state has its challenges based on workforce shortages as well. There is an 18 percent vacancy rate as of October 2022 in the state’s mental health industry, 17 percent of the Head Start staff left during the course of the program year, and there was a drop of 16 percent fewer childcare workers between 2018 and 2021.

Yet, one of the major highlights of the BBF annual report focused on homelessness, according to the organization’s Executive Director Morgan Crossman.

“Childcare, mental health care, and housing are expected to be a major focus of the Vermont General Assembly in 2023,” she said in a released statement. BBF noted all children in Vermont should have a “healthy start,” and that includes investing in safe, permanent housing. The organization emphasized the need for more support and investment in shelter for unhoused families.

Paul Dragon is executive director at Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, one of BBF’s community partner. In an interview with an NBC affiliate in Vermont, he said there are approximately 400 families and 500 children experiencing homelessness.

During that same segment, Committee on Temporary Shelter Development Director Rebekah Mott said, “Incidents of families with children experiencing homelessness have risen. We’ve seen more families come to us; more families with young children, bigger families.”

Even a brief introduction to homelessness is considered an adverse childhood experience that could have a lasting detrimental effect on children. Alison Krompf, MA, deputy commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Mental Health, she said their circumstances are uniquely chaotic. For healthy development in children, stability, security, and caregiver engagement are needed, things severely limited when children are homeless.

Krompf said there’s a difference in how children react to homelessness depending on their age.

Younger children have more of an attachment to objects and may obsessively hold on to things. That may create social problems with their peers, because having something that’s “theirs” is not something they have elsewhere, she said.

They also seem to be less aware of acceptance by their peers in terms of wearing the same clothes or taking a shower.

Older kids can show anger, be more aggressive, oppositional, or have increased substance abuse.

Krompf said in addition to improving shelter programs, there is the issue of transitional housing.

“Many of the shelters, which are there for an emergency, are becoming overcrowded and are functioning more like transitional housing,” she said. “You can’t attend to children’s needs in crowded shelters.”

According to some of the Department of Mental Health’s child welfare partners, to combat homelessness, it is important to invest in these five buckets: emergency housing, affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, homelessness prevention, and rapid re-housing (as detailed by the 2016 Roadmap to End Homelessness). Shelters are important but they are not the only investment to help homelessness.

Krompf added the best place to start is with pregnant mothers. Often, homeless children will have a single mom. Working with that population early on, they can start screening for social determinants like housing options and whether or not they are exposed to domestic violence.

“We focus so much on shelters, but there’s an intermediate period of desperation,” she explained. “Women may stay with people who are unsafe—maybe they’re violent or there’s drugs or sexual abuse—and their kids are exposed to that. We need to destigmatize shelters and educate the mothers about other options.”

Krompf emphasized however, that a child who has an experience with homelessness growing up isn’t necessarily doomed to remain homeless or have it permanently affect their mental health. What is often referred to as “posttraumatic growth” applies here.

“There’s a danger in talking about homelessness. We don’t want to define people by that,” she said. “There are studies that show how resilient kids are. It’s not a preordained future.”

Based on research in 2020 from the Yale School of Medicine, the majority of children when faced with a trauma “do not develop psychopathology and instead return to resiliency as their baseline.” A further point was that posttraumatic growth is actually more common in children than PTSD.

Krompf noted that there are opportunities for effective parenting during difficult periods. Homelessness may not be the catalyst for change that people want, but it may make an indelible impact on a positive future in a child’s life. “Kids can grow up normal,” she said, “even though they’ve experienced homelessness early on.”

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