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Boston Sunday Globe
Letter to the Editor
November 5, 2006
AT FIRST, the two seem unrelated: your recent series on soldiers returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder and your editorial calling for steps to end homelessness. As an organization serving homeless children, we see a connection.
Children are one of the largest segments of the homeless population in Massachusetts. For young children, the trauma of homelessness is equivalent to the trauma of witnessing war.
Scientific evidence shows that the disruption homelessness causes harms the brain development of affected children. These delays are permanent -- unless, that is, someone intervenes to give the homeless child the same opportunities to grow and learn that children with homes get. We applaud your editorial, and urge our leaders to work toward ending homelessness. In the meantime, we urge them to support proven approaches to reversing the harmful effects of homelessness on a child's development.
SUE HEILMAN
Executive Director
SUSAN WHITEHEAD
Chairwoman Horizons for Homeless Children
Roxbury
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company
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