The Pros And Cons Of Homelessness

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Per the 2016 Annual Homelessness Report there are 461 homeless students in Highlands County alone. This number continues to fluctuate in Highlands County despite the Federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Improvements Act and HEP. These two programs combined have made it easier for homeless students to enroll, aided schools, and gave funding to schools to do with as they need. Some of this funding has gone towards parental education programs and activities, tutoring, and case management and outreach sources. While mentoring is mentioned in the 2016 Annual Homelessness Report, Highlands County still lacks these programs. Some may argue that it is too expensive or has no positive effects. However, mentoring programs are efficient in providing students with educational assistance, social skills, and friendships. To assist homeless …show more content…

Programs such as the one in Arizona ran off volunteers alone and cost little to no extra expense due to the people helping (Gardner). A local program that run mostly off volunteers and donations is Big Brother Big Sister and that has helped hundreds of kids in our communities (BBBS). The 2016 Annual Homelessness Report shows increasing budgets year by year to help homelessness and yet some of these programs are still ineffective. Therefore, mentor programs ran relatively with volunteers can be cheaper than the budget increases that are implemented annually. Another argument brought into debate is if the programs are even effective. However, in Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, states that the 1 year trial period of mentor-mentee relationships greatly improved the children’s mental stability (Niederhofer). Statistics listed in the previous paragraph from Big Brother Big Sister also prove mentoring programs effective. Due to these facts and studies, the argument that mentoring is wholly ineffective is