Center gives homeless kids a healthy environment

This story is part of a series about homelessness in Albuquerque.

New Mexico is currently listed 46th in the nation when it comes to homeless children, but one Albuquerque organization is doing what it can to combat the issue of homeless families.

Cuidando Los Ninos, or CLNkids, is a homeless child care and family resource center that has been working with homeless families in Albuquerque for 25 years, said executive director Angela Merkert.

Merkert said the organization was created when the city began noticing the problem of homeless families in Albuquerque.

Single mothers, who account for 90 percent of homeless families, were in need of day care assistance so they could pursue jobs or further their education during the daytime, she said.

One single mother was a woman named Nolanda, who struggled to find stable housing for her and her children.

“Me and my family slept in shelters — when we were homeless, we went from shelter to shelter,” she said. “Some of the struggles that I faced were being tired and just trying to keep my kids safe.

CLNkids was able to help Nolanda and her children find temporary housing, and with the stability it provided, she has made significant steps to improve her family’s lives, she said.

“Since I have gotten help from CLN I have stabilized my family and gone to school and also have a roof over my head for me and my three children,” she said. “Things are going really good right now, we are all happy.”

The goal of CLNkids is to identify safe and affordable housing for families and make sure children receive early childhood education that goes beyond daycare, she said.

The organization runs a five-star rated early childhood education program for children from six weeks up to five-years old in three separate classrooms, she said.

“It’s about helping the children be less at risk when they go into kindergarten,” Merkert said. “We have identified issues and we have backup support for them, like in language de velopment or any physical development issues they might have.”

A statistic released recently by The National Center On Family Homelessness lists New Mexico at number 46 when it comes to child homelessness, putting the need for additional assistance into glaring perspective and showing the work being done by CLNkids as all the more necessary, Merkert said.

Carmela J. DeCandia, director of The National Center on Family Homelessness, said there are 22,000 homeless children in New Mexico with 29 percent living in poverty and 8 percent lacking health insurance.

Kids need stable living environments for their physical, emotional and mental health, where they are able to play and have important experiences in a safe environment, DeCandia said.

“Every mother and every family that I have ever worked with wants that for their child. So being in unstable situations, moving from place to place, living in shelters or overcrowded situations, this is not good for kids’ development,” DeCandia said. “If we don’t address the problem now and these kids continue to develop and grow up in these unstable situations, their very development is at risk and we as a society will pay a high price if we don’t act now.”

According to the official report, the ranking is compiled based on four factors: the number of homeless children within the state, that population’s overall well-being, the risk for child homelessness in the state and the state’s policy and planning efforts to combat the issue.

Merkert knows the recent findings display the daunting nature of the task at hand, and the problem is hard to address due to the near invisibility of homeless families to the general public.

“It’s one more statistic that’s hard to see and hard to accept — and yet we see it here everyday with the circumstances that our families are addressing,” she said. “Because (homeless kids) are not visible and because they’re not standing on the corner like individual adults are, doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

The assistance CLNkids gives is strengths-based and trauma-informed, she said, addressing what is known about the effects of trauma and instability on the early years of brain development in children.

CLNkids emphasizes health and well-being for both the parents and children, with children receiving developmental screenings along with nutritional meals and an on-site therapist for play therapy in older toddlers, she said. Parents receive case management and education on parenting skills and health and nutrition information, along with life skills classes to help with such things as job interview prep and time management.

The organization tries to help parents be more self-sustaining and break the cycle of homelessness, she said, an important step considering that housing accounts for 50 percent of stability in a person’s life.

“They feel safe, they’re not moving around, they’re not looking over their shoulder about ‘am I going to get kicked out of here? Am I couch-surfing?’ They’re not walking so much on eggshells,” Merkert said. “They can stabilize there and go on and make goals and take care of next steps in further strengthening their family.”

To accomplish this, CLNkids goes beyond child care and education and tries to help families find homes through collaborations with various organizations, including Joy Junction, Barrett House and Family Promise among others, she said.

A mother named Triva managed to find a permanent home with their help.

“The Cuidando program has actually helped my family a lot to achieve some of our goals,” she said. “They give me resources to look for a job and resources to where I can find food and clothing. It really has helped a lot.”

Further ensuring the physical health of the families they work with, Health Care for the Homeless comes in every week to conduct wellness checks and physical exams, assisting parents as well as children, she said.

In addition, once a month The Southwest Valley Public Health provides vaccinations to members of enrolled families.

“There’s no one agency that can address all the issues of homelessness. There just isn’t. It’s a community issue and it’s up to us to address the problem together,” Merkert said. “When the community wants to enhance its sense of well-being for the whole community, then more people participate in that and help make that happen.”

CLNkids relies on the city and state government for about 50 percent of its funding, down from around 70 percent when Merkert started working at CLNkids three years ago.

This shows that the organization doesn’t need to depend solely on government funding as it survives largely thanks to support from the community and various donations, she said.

“It takes a lot of different pieces to come together to make it work, but at the same time there has been a strong commitment for this length of time to be able for us to stay strong,” Merkert said.

CLNkids has a capacity of 44 children due to state required teacher-to-children ratios, she said. With around 7,000 children identified as homeless in Albuquerque, there is a long wait list to get in.

CLNkids and Merkert said they find that the holidays bring an overwhelming reality to the struggle these families face.

“They give us wish lists that tear our hearts out because at the same time we have all of the surrounding marketing toward the holidays, we have families and parents requesting clothing and maybe one toy per child,” Merkert said. “They’re not asking for big ticket items.”

Matthew Reisen is a staff reporter at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com, or on Twitter @DailyLobo.