Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why are there children living alone on the streets?

• Children end up living a life on the streets for many reasons, however these are the most common.

• Children are abandoned by their families or orphaned and find themselves living alone on the streets.

• Children are trafficked and either escape or are abandoned by their traffickers.

• Family relationships breakdown and children are often left hurt, neglected by their parents or abused by their new step families.

• Governments are unable to respond well to the needs of children living on the streets.

2. How many children are there?

This is a question we are most often asked and is one of the most difficult to answer, as there is no definitive data relating to street children.

The last official estimate on the numbers of street children across India was 12 million. This number of children is difficult to imagine, however our work focuses on children when they first arrive on the streets where we estimate that across 50 mainline railway stations at least 87,000 street children arrive onto the platforms every year.

Here in the UK there are at least 100,000 children who runaway every year, many of which are not reported as missing by either their parents or caregivers.

Across East Africa there are an estimated 250,000 children living on the streets in Kenya and a further 20,000 children in Tanzania. Our new development programme currently helps around 5000 of these every year

3. What does Railway Children do?

We look to reach children when they first arrive onto the streets, as we know that this gives us the best possible chance of protecting a child from abuse and the best chance of restoring family relationships. We achieve this through paying outreach workers to make interventions directly with children on the streets and social workers who offer shelter, food, counselling and protection whilst we endeavour to return children home or look for long term care.

The most effective and efficient way of achieving this is to work through locally based organisations who understand the context in which they work and are able to identify quickly any new children arriving on the streets. We work in close partnership with these organisations, and look to – Inform them on best practice, Improve their current working practices, Initiate and fund innovative work, Influence local stakeholders and governments and Inspire everyone to both understand the needs of street children and offer what support they can.

Our work does not end there, we also fund social research, to ensure Governments and policy makers listen to our voice. We founded and chair the UK coalition for young runaways that gives both small and large projects across the UK a voice and an opportunity to influence Government policies.

4. How will you change the current situation for street children?

We undertake change at three levels:
i) Meeting the immediate needs of the child. This is where we are working directly with the child at grass roots level.

ii) Creating change in the local context. This means sensitising the local community where we work. It is crucial that the children who live or arrive on the streets are not seen by society as a commodity to sell, or abuse – but as children in need of care and protection.

iii) Influencing key policy decision makers in government to create safeguarding provisions within their policies and budgets for street children. This is extremely time consuming but vital if we are to achieve long term, sustainable change.

5. Why are you called Railway Children?

As former Head of Safety at British Rail, our Founder, David Maidment, was visiting India and was approached by a young girl, begging and whipping herself outside Mumbai Station.

This inspired David to dedicate the rest of his life to finding ways of helping this girl and the millions like her. In India, millions of children use the trains to run away and railway stations become a natural place to congregate and survive. The rail network in India is the primary means of transport for the 1.1 billion people who live there and so the stations become a hive of activity and opportunity for street children. David saw a natural link between this cause and his peers in the rail industry and was able to call upon his many friends and contacts to rally a team of dedicated supporters. To this day a large proportion of our support still comes from the rail industry but the goal of our organisation is to work with children on the streets however they get there…

6. What happens to the children you don’t or can’t reunite with family?

Wherever possible, we work towards reuniting children with their families, however sometimes this isn’t the right thing to do, if they are fleeing violence or abuse at home. In these instances we bring them to appropriate children’s organisations and ensure that we offer them protection from the harsh realities of life on the streets. Here they will continue to receive food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and also education and training for the future.

7. Why do Railway Children work in partnership rather than owning our own projects?

Since we began our work Railway Children have always strongly believed that local people and communities are very often best placed to understand and respond to the individual needs of children and young people within their own areas. With our experience working with many partners in many locations we can help provide ongoing support, advice, training and best practice to ensure that each partner project really does reach its true potential and the chance of this having a really sustainable and long term impact, is vastly increased by working with local partners.

In working with numerous partners over the years, Railway Children has also been able to continually build and evaluate best practice and as such help projects to continually improve the services they provide and be ever more effective in helping street children and runaways.

8. Why shouldn’t I donate directly to the project?

Railway Children conduct incredibly comprehensive assessment and ongoing monitoring of all of our existing and potential partners. We highlight the ways in which we can work together in ensuring that we deliver services which always have the child's best interests at heart.
In donating to Railway Children you are not only ensuring that each individual partner receives funds to concentrate on some of the most crucial areas of their work, but you are also ensuring that Railway Children can continue to grow further still, work with many more partners and in so doing, really start to maximise the effectiveness of many organisations who support children and young people around the world.

9. For every pound you raise, how much money goes to the children?

For each pound spent in our last financial year ending May 2008 74 pence was spent on programmes for helping children (up from 71 pence in the previous year), 22 pence was on raising funds to ensure the work could continue (down from 24 pence previously) and 4 pence was spent to manage and administer the organisation effectively (down from 5 pence).

10. Why do you keep reserves?

Railway Children keeps reserves for three main reasons:

• To cover the future costs of programmes we are currently committed to funding
• To allow us to initiate programmes which are difficult to fund from external sources
• To comply with our statutory duty to allow an orderly closure of the organization if circumstances dictate

11. How do you raise your funds?

Railway Children are supported by many sectors of the rail industry, but we also receive support from individuals through regular giving, through operating our own events and selling Christmas cards. In addition we have received support from funders such as Comic Relief and Elton John Aids Foundation for expansion of our work in India.

UK

12) Do we have street children in this country?

It’s a very confusing picture, research does indicate that children end up sleeping on the streets. Our own research due out later in the year will help us understand what it is like for the most detached.

13) Who are Railway Children working with in the UK

Currently the focus of Railway Children partners is runaways. It is estimated that there are 100,000 incidents of young people under the age of 16 running away every year* They run away because of violence, sexual abuse, problems at school, feeling unwanted and some are thrown out. On the streets they face cold, hunger, violence, sexual assault and for some death.

14) What are Railway Children doing to make a difference for the children?

We believe you need to tackle this issue in two ways. We have partner projects across England and Scotland. We fund them to work directly with children and young people providing one to one sessions, family mediation, drop-in, street work and school work.

On a national level, our National Policy and Strategy Advisor chairs a group of organisations that work with children that runaway, (its called the English Coalition for Runaway Children). They meet to discuss the best ways to work with young people and share this with the government departments that are responsible for this area.

Our strategy and policy advisor sits on a number of groups that include the police, social services and the voluntary sector. They are currently developing new guidance for everyone to use when working with children that run away. The national work is supported by our national researcher who will also launch a brand new piece of research this winter, focussing on children and young people that have become detached and exist on or around the streets for 4 weeks or over.

Railway Children are regularly asked to talk at national meetings by the Police, Government and other groups

We are a long way from having comprehensive services and responses to children that run away, Railway children will try to ensure that the Government sticks to its plans.

15) What is the government doing for children and young people that runaway?

The government department responsible for changing practice for children that runaway is called The Department for Children, Schools and Family. They launched a runaways plan in 2008. Its focus was some guidance, a way of measuring what councils are doing and a look at emergency accommodation for children who cannot return home

16) What can we do?

Firstly something that costs nothing.

LISTEN to children, whether they are related, in a church group or about the town. If you have any concerns try to get them to talk, give them the number for Childline 08001111 but more than anything give them the time to come up with their own solutions.

Talk to your local MP, ask what the Council have in place for children and young people that runaway from home or care. The more people interested in changing the situation for young people the more we will achieve.

Help fundraise it can be fun and every penny counts
*Children’s society Still Running 1999