Help available for children at risk, before it's too late

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In any given year across Canada, tens of thousands of children run away from home. Estimates from agencies who help to find missing children put the numbers anywhere from 75,000 to 200,000.

According to police agencies and organizations like Child Find Canada, runaways make up 75 per cent of all missing children.

Many runaways end up on the streets of major cities where it is easy for them to become statistics in crime, substance abuse or prostitution.

In many cities across the country, and here, in Alberta, street-level agencies are trying to get many children off the streets. With the assistance of Crossroads in Edmonton and Street Teams, Exit and the Boys and Girls Club of Calgary, just to name a few, the rising concern of young children getting exploited on the streets is being tackled.

The need to get kids off the streets is powered by the fact that young people are easy targets for the criminal element already operating at the street-level. Children, some as young as eight-years-old, can easily be guided by older, "street-wise" characters who only want to use them.

Although it is unclear how long this problem has existed, and some believe it has long been a problem, there has been a significant push to help children on the streets since the early 1990s.

The problem is being addressed from several different areas. There are groups and individuals making presentations to teens and pre-teens in the classroom, while others are working on young people who are at risk of leaving home, and still others focus their efforts on the youth who have already spent time on the streets.

Alberta Child Find, is one of a long list of agencies tackling the problem by trying to nip it in the bud at the junior high school level.

Margie Niven, the volunteer with Child Find Alberta's Calgary headquarters, is hoping a juvenile prostitution prevention program will make Canada's younger generation more aware of the problem and help to prevent it from spreading.

The program, an hour long presentation incorporated into a school's existing health curriculum, is getting started this year.

Niven said last year's pilot project in Calgary school was successful and starting this year, every Grade 9 class in the city's public and catholic school system will take part in the program.

The program includes definitions from the world of prostitution, information about pimps and people who recruit children to pimps, the life of a prostitute, and the warning signs to watch for if someone has been drawn into the world of prostitution.

Niven said it is frightening how many children already know many of the slang words and titles of the prostitution trade. She said television and movies like Pretty Woman and Milk Money may be giving children the wrong ideas. The program's goal is to educate the kids about the realities of a life on the streets.

It also teaches the children how easily they can be targeted by pimps and recruiters; pimps and recruiters in real life, not the ones they have seen in the movies.

"When kids see a pimp, they see him as a guy with gold chains driving a Cadillac, when in fact, the pimp can be their boyfriend, and I don't think kids think of it that way,' said Niven.

The program tells the kids to "stop and think" about a situation where they have a new friend who buys them things or buys their friends things, she said. "We want the kids to stop and say, 'Something doesn't feel right.'"

Although the program doesn't specifically talk about the dangers or running away and living on the streets, the connection is implied.

"Running away is not necessarily a pre-cursor to being involved in juvenile prostitution," she said. "(Being a runaway) may put you at risk, however."

Niven said statistics clearly point to prior sexual abuse as a leading factor when it comes to young people getting forced into the sex trade.

But despite their best efforts, the prevention program cannot reach everyone. It is caught in a grey areawhen it comes to a child's maturity of understanding the problem. Although the program has been tested as a success with 14 -year-old Grade 9 students, Niven said, it may be too complex for younger, 12 -year-olds in Grade 7.

"It would be nice to go to Grade 7, but there's such a diversity of maturity levels," she said. "It would probably go over their heads."

It is those 12-year-old children who are fast becoming the target of predators who lure children into the sex trade. Many aren't runaways and are being picked up in public places like school yards, convenience stores, arcades and most commonly, from shopping malls.

Rod Weed, the manager of The Store Front, a Calgary Boys and Girls Club drop in centre located inside the city's Marlborough mall, has seen it happen first hand.

"We've had girls as young as 12 or 13-years-old who have been approached," he said.

Those kind of incidents are what prompted Weed and the Calgary Boys and Girls Club to take action against the problem.

He has spent two years wiping away predators from the mall.

Four years ago the mall was teeming with young people. Weed said it wasn't unusual to see upward of 1,000 kids each day in the mall, "just hanging out."

Pimps and recruiters were also there, approaching the kids. Weed said he has heard from girls as young as 12-years-old who were approached.

As more and more kids came to the mall, Weed started an outreach program to keep an eye on the kids. But with no other alternatives to offer the children, he said it was easy to get frustrated.

"We saw more and more girls being approached by individuals and then we'd see the girls out on the stroll," he said.

Then, last year, with funding from the Calgary Boys and Girls Club, and the donation of a 1700 sq. ft. space from the mall, The Store Front emerged.

The centre offers kids a place to go as an alternative to "hanging out." Weed said it is important to make the centre a place where kids want to come. They offer a variety of service and activities to keep the 100 or so drop-ins they see every day occupied. The centre offers a comfortable and safe place to relax and socialize, equipped with pool tables, video games, a stereo and television, the facility also offers programs to help the users find jobs and talk about their problems.

Along with resume writing programs and personal and family counseling services, the centre is hoping to bring in a full-time employment and job training worker to help kids get back into school or find meaningful jobs.

Weed said the programs are offered to give the kids hope and confidence, and to keep them off the streets and away from predators.

"If you provide these kids with alternatives, then going out onto the stroll for them doesn't look so appealing," he said.

After only opening last May, The Store Front seems to be making a difference.

Although the number of kids hanging out has dropped and there are very few children being approached by pimps or their recruiters, Weed knows the issue hasn't gone away.

"We have by no means solved the problem. We just moved it," he said.

With more funding and more resources, he said the problem can be kept on the move, but more funding is always a problem, so he and the staff and volunteers working at The Store Front make the best of what they have achieved.

The Store Front can offer something for any child who comes in, said Weed. They provide a place for kids who are still living at home, those thinking about running away, others who have been abused at home and the "hard-core" kids who have experienced life on the streets.

"We deal on every level here," he said. "Any youth that walks through that door is going to get services."

And even after the lights go off and the doors are locked for the night, Weed said the Calgary Boys and Girls Club has secured several locations throughout the city where kids can relax, learn and play in safety.

The job of agencies like Child Find and The Store Front drop-in centre is along way from complete, and even saying there's a light at the end of the tunnel still seems premature, but the effort to keep young children out of harm's way and keep them from becoming statistics will continue.

"The overall goal is to transition the youth into more acceptable environments," said Weed. We're expanding and we keep on expanding everyday."