For the Homeless, a Childhood Finally in Reach
Playtime Program Brightens Shelter

By Theola S. Labbe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 5, 2006

Homeless children bounce from place to place, get sick frequently and have more mental health problems -- including anxiety and depression -- than children living in a home.

One thing they often lack is something money can't buy: the opportunity to play. Something so simple can be difficult for homeless children to achieve.

That's why each Sunday since June, a group known as the Homeless Children's Playtime Project has brought fun and games to about 125 children staying at D.C. Village, a cluster of low-slung brick buildings on a sprawling campus near Bolling Air Force Base at the city's southwestern tip.

There are programs in the District that serve homeless children through tutoring and day-care services, or with one-time special outings or donations. But the playtime project, which survives on contributions and has no paid staff, marks the first sustained effort to serve the need of District homeless children to be carefree by creating a time and space for them to play.

Research from the National Center on Family Homelessness shows that life is more difficult for homeless children. They are ill twice as often as other children, have to move more often and have more emotional issues. The goal of the playtime project, said co-founder Jamila Larson, 32, a District school social worker, is to preserve children's opportunity to play, even if they are in a stressful or traumatic environment of a homeless shelter.

"I feel like if the city agrees to take children, it needs to serve them. You can't just feed them and find a bed for them," Larson said. "I want to give them a weekly outlet to have one-on-one attention from caring adults and give them access and a variety of materials to play with."

More children are in need of that attention as more families become homeless. Since 2000, the number of families applying for emergency shelter in the District has more than doubled, echoing a nationwide trend of increasing demand for shelter. Families with children are a fast-growing segment of the homeless population, according to the Center on Family Homelessness.

Across the country, other groups have addressed the issue of homeless children and recreation. Horizons for Homeless Children, a program in Boston, installed play spaces for families in homeless shelters that included books, art supplies and toys.

The Toy Industry Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of the Toy Industry Association, has been bringing play to homeless children through a program called the Power of Play. The New York-based foundation has given about $400,000 annually since 2002 to nonprofit groups in 11 cities for play programs for children, said spokeswoman Terri Bartlett.

For example, in Oklahoma City, families living in homeless shelters are given toys to play with together, Bartlett said. The adults learn about the importance of play through a hands-on curriculum that develops stronger motor skills and better hand-eye coordination. The curriculum also recognizes the importance of art and music in the lives of children.

"There are many organizations paying attention to the survival needs of children -- food, clothing, education -- but we felt that no one has really taken on the mission of bringing them play," Bartlett said. The foundation delivered more than 130,000 toys to children affected by Hurricane Katrina.

The Tennessee-based Bright Horizons Foundation for Children has created a national program called Bright Spaces that has installed 100 play spaces for homeless families and children across the country. In January 2005, the foundation opened a playroom at D.C. Village and the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center, the office on M Street SW where families apply for emergency shelter.

The goal was to have a play space for homeless children living at D.C. Village and for children who were waiting while their parents went through the shelter application process. But the D.C. Village play space isn't fully used because it is needed for other uses and because of too few volunteers.

At D.C. Village there are two Bright Spaces areas, a sunny corner in each of the two television rooms. In one of the spaces, cheerily decorated with stenciled walls and a toy stove, no pots and pans or other toys were visible. The toys were locked up, Larson said. At night, the television rooms often double as an overflow area for families when there are no more beds available in the shelter. The families that slept in there had stored the cots and their personal items in the play space, which was not separated by a curtain or any other barrier.

At the shelter intake center in Southwest, director Omega Butler said the play space sometimes goes unused because the center does not have enough volunteers. Children and parents sometimes go into the play space and may throw around a ball, sit in the rocking chair, or play make-believe games in a toy kitchen, Butler said. But when a parent's name is called, the child often stops playing to accompany the parent to the appointment, especially if no other adult is present. The original goal of the play space at the center was for children to get lost in a child's game, oblivious to the intake process, while the parent handles the appointment.

"Volunteers would be good to get the full effect of that area," Butler said.

Karin Weaver, executive director of the Bright Horizons Foundation, said she had not been in contact with District officials for months and had thought that all of the play spaces were in full use. Later, after speaking with city officials, Weaver said some families had had positive and memorable experiences using the play space at D.C. Village with the help of volunteers from the Job Corps and AmeriCorps programs, which share part of the campus with the shelter.

Weaver said one of the foundation's goals in 2006 is to concentrate on sustaining play spaces already opened by the foundation to ensure they are being used regularly.

Department of Human Services Director Yvonne D. Gilchrist, who attended the Bright Spaces ribbon cutting a year ago, said she was unaware that the play space specifically designed for homeless children had been used for storage. Agency officials later said she would look into it.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, volunteers arrived at D.C. Village carrying laundry baskets of arts and crafts supplies, toys and sports equipment. A voice crackled over the shelter's announcement system. "The playtime activities is now here, going on outside."

Soon more than a dozen young boys were yelling "Over here!" as a spirited touch football game got underway. At a nearby picnic table, girls drew with colored pencils and crayons, encouraged by volunteers who praised their creations. Other volunteers helped the girls, ranging from 2-year-olds to preteens, pick out colorful beads of different shapes and sizes to create bracelets and necklaces.

For the next three hours, laughter and shrieks of joy filled the shelter courtyard. Gerri Williams watched her 5-year-old son, Anthony, blow bubbles. She joked that she had a mayor on her hands, a reference to her son's shared name with Mayor Anthony A. Williams. She arrived at the shelter in August with her eight children after staying with several friends.

Her daughter Donea, 11, was trying to convince her mother that she should be allowed to wear a short ruffled skirt she had selected from among several items of clothing that a volunteer had brought to give away. Her mother took one look and shook her head. Too short.

Donea frowned, but looked happier when talking about the volunteers. "I think it's nice for them to come and play with people who are in this situation," she said. "And they bring stuff for people to keep -- that's nice."

The day ended around 3 p.m., when everyone cleaned up and the children ate a snack of nuts, pretzels and baby carrots.

The D.C. budget has $25.1 million set aside for homeless services, with about $11 million for single adults and $12 million for families. In addition, the city is working under a "Homeless No More" plan, which aims to end homelessness in the District by 2014 by building more affordable housing and bringing more mental health and employment services to shelters to help men, women and families find permanent places to live.

Although homeless children are not specifically addressed in the "Homeless No More" plan and are not a specific spending category in the city budget, officials say they have spent money on recreational and other services for homeless children. According to the Department of Human Services, the city spent $16,000 for the playground at D.C. Village and has donated books to parents and children at the shelter.

And through a surplus, the city's Early Care and Education Administration has been able to open up child-care slots to families at D.C. Village, said the agency's director, Barbara Ferguson Kamara.

D.C. Village has an activities director, Pat Brown, whose sole job is to plan fun for children and parents. Brown, who has worked in the position for two years, has brought Girl Scout and Boy Scout programs to the shelter. She keeps a list of children's birthdays, and a real estate office sends a cake for each child. Another group holds a monthly party for the children, and some of the children have been on day trips to summer and tennis camps and participate in martial arts activities.

Brown said she has a list of 120 sponsors who donate money or items to the shelter, but what the children at the shelter really need is people to volunteer their time. For example, she would like to start weekly book clubs where volunteers could read with children and parents.

"We need more people who want to come in and do things," she said.

So when Larson contacted Brown last spring, seeking to bring in a weekly play activity, Brown was interested.

"I wanted something on a Sunday because Sunday usually is downtime, but yet the children still need to do things. I think the more time families have on their hands, the more it brings to mind the conditions and where they are," Brown said.

In the waning hours of a Sunday afternoon, the most difficult aspects of homelessness are put aside, if only for a few hours.

Vince Daniels, 14, likes to play checkers, basketball and Frisbee with the volunteers. "They bring fun opportunities," the eighth-grader said.

Sherrice Evans, 13, appreciated how positive the volunteers were. "If you don't have any fun, they come over and cheer you up," she said, taking a break from making two bracelets and drawing pictures.

"I think it's excellent," said Falisa Hurt, 41, who has two sons, James Prince, 6, and Robert Lee Prince Jr., 10, with her at the shelter. "The kids don't really have anything to do."

Some of the shelter rules at D.C. Village help preserve safety, but may impede play: Children must be under the supervision of their own parents at all times. That means a parent can never take a break from his or her children; there is no baby-sitting allowed. But some parents have used the weekly playtime to organize an advocacy group pushing for affordable housing and improvements in shelter conditions.

Larson, a social worker at an elementary school in Southeast, started a weekly play program for homeless children as a college student in Minnesota. In 2003 she began Tuesday night visits to play with children at the Community for Creative Non-Violence shelter at Second and D streets NW. When the city's Department of Human Services moved many of the families out of the shelter, enforcing a long-standing rule against families living there, Larson turned her efforts to D.C. Village.

The group has about 60 active volunteers, who are asked to commit to two Sundays a month. All volunteers receive training in working with homeless children and undergo a background check, which a local law firm does for free.

Most of the project volunteers are young, white professionals, a vastly different demographic from the majority African American families at the shelter. But Larson has looked for ways to make the group more diverse. Several Gallaudet University students recently went through training, which was facilitated with a sign language translator, and the deaf students have started to work with the children. Students at the Howard University School of Social Work volunteered at the shelter's holiday party, where each child received a gift and took a picture with Santa Claus, and they plan on staying involved.

Even with the endless smiles and gushing feedback from the children and parents, Larson said, her project is a Band-Aid approach for the serious issues facing the homeless children.

"Children have a right to play -- that's why we exist -- but they also have a right to receive therapeutic services and mental health and health services and developmental screenings," Larson said. She would like to see District shelters have a separate coordinator for children's services.

"This is like dessert, but it's not the meal that they need," she said.