Children with PTSD trapped in poverty by policy?

As a theme throughout “There Are No Children Here,” the idea that LaJoe poses about children growing up in the projects/urban ghetto not having childhoods rings true still today. Children are forced to live their lives, as opposed to their childhoods, with anxieties and fears that no one-let alone children-should have. Some of the older children are forced to become parents for their younger siblings, as seen in the book-the time taken from this automatically rules out time for friendships, sports, television, and probably even education beyond (hopefully) attending school. Children facing poverty are also usually subject to community violence (accidental shootings), food insecurity, and abuse.

While population density plays a large role in fostering these negative living conditions, situations like Chicago’s projects are just one case study in the role that poverty plays in creating these conditions. When I think of all other situations where children have similar experiences, violent conflicts first come to mind. The stories told about Pharaoh and Lafayette sound exactly like stories of young Samer and Omar in Syria or Innocent and Patrice in Rwanda. Poverty is often at the root of both domestic and international conflicts. While we are studying urban sociology, some of the same conditions for children are created by poverty in rural areas, such as the story of children in Rwanda who were left with one or no parents after the genocide, and do not have access to child care for their siblings or proper nutrition. They exhibit similar cognitive and emotional ‘disabilities’ as the stuttering and emotional suppression of the children in There Are No Children Here. The cause of this issue is not living in too close of quarters or urban planning, but the fight over limited resources and other by products of poverty. The poverty in refugee camps causes similar phenomenon, and can even lead to PTSD (as can be argued for the children in the story after having seen so many violent deaths from gunshot wounds.)

These international connections solidified poverty as the root cause of the social problems, while the lecture on Wilson’s chapter shows how the issue has continued in America due to the failure of the “War on Poverty.” While poverty does need to be eliminated, the projects that have been created to alleviate the problems did not look deeply enough at the root of the problem to develop effective solutions. Looking at inner-city Black disenfranchisement, while poverty is the root problem, one of the better solutions than throwing money at the problem is to create meaningful change and useful infrastructure. Just as with the World Bank, creating aid programs to help people that truly just keep them trapped, often bureaucratically, often keeps them dependent on the programs. Giving money to people to meet their basic needs only while making those conditions incredibly resitrctive, without offering ways to come out of the situation, is not the fault of those who need social welfare problems-it is the fault of those who develop the programs and their lack of insight which should be criticized. While there are studies that show those who get on welfare remain on it for 8+ years on average, there are also studies showing what small percent of that population is trying to abuse the system. If social welfare is such a thorn in the side of politicians, and children are robbed of their childhoods and given PTSD and adult responsibilities, there should be a larger push to question the system as it is in order to solve the root problems of poverty. 

Al-Jazeera America on the treatment of mental illness in children in poverty:
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/ptsd-mental-healthgunviolencetrauma.html