This chapter of the Children’s Well-Being: Indicators and Research discusses the dangers of using categories in child welfare. This article notes that categories can close enquiry and hinder understanding rather than help it. It points out that the category ‘street children’ contains a wide variety of young people, and the streets play different roles in their lives. It also points out that the category can carry connotations of delinquency. The article states that it is necessary to enquire what precisely is the role of the streets in their lives. The study notes to focus on orphanhood in intervention can lead to missing more fundamental sources of vulnerability in children’s lives, such as poverty.
A second theme of the chapter is the limitation of survival as a focus for intervention, a focus that often results in missing important elements in young people’s lives, such as hope, love, meaning in life, and effective social relations. Children form strategies to improve their lives rather than for simple survival; indeed, improvement is often the motive pushing young people to work on city streets. The best intervention starts by listening to the children, finding out their hopes and aspirations, and trying to support their efforts to take control over their lives.