eless children in alms houses along with poor, insane, and depraved adults (Stone, 1977, p. 87).
The situation that prevailed in England with respect to homeless children to a great extent was duplicated in the American Colonies (Simpson, 1987, p. 141). Orphanages began to be established by the states subsequent to the American Revolution. In New York State as an example, there were two such institutions by 1825 and 60 by 1866, and homeless children continually "swarmed city streets" in the United States because there was insufficient room in the orphanages (Simpson, 1987, p. 141).
Beginning in 1854, a program designed to clear the nation's streets of homeless children began shipping such children in so-called orphan trains to farm families in the West who provided care for the children in return for otherwise free child labor (Simpson, 1987, p. 141). The lives of these children were often worse than they had been on the streets (Jackson, 1986, pp. 94-103). By 1924, an estimated 100,000 children had been transported West to farms on the orphan trains (Simpson, 1987, p. 142).
The number of orphanages in the United States continued to increase through the 1940s (Jones, 1989, pp. 613-629). The length of stay in the institutions increased through the 1930s. Orphanages began to disappear in the 1960s in the United States as social activists characterized the institutions as a form of class-consciousness social control (Wilson, 1994, p. A14). The move began toward the placement of homeless children in the homes of foster parents. The foster parent program largely has failed to provide refuge for all the homeless children in this country.
Policies Since 1980 That Have Affected the Homeless Children Problem
Homeless among children in the United States since 1980 is a phenomenon that for the most part is defined within the context of the family (Edleman, 1989, pp. 20-30). This analysis of policies that have affect the p...