Local Organization Reports Growing Number of Homeless Kids ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - Rochester's Catholic Family Center is reporting an increase in the number of children staying at the agency's two women's homeless shelters.

Fund development coordinator Sue Barnes says the organization is currently serving nearly 75 children every night. The children range in age from newborn to 17 years old.

"It pulls at your heart strings," she says. "Especially as a mother, I often say I see the face of God when I see these little ones coming into my office asking for a new toothbrush."

Barnes says the increase is largely due to economic pressures that are causing an upswing in domestic violence as well as job loss.

She notes many families in the community are unaware they fit the definition of homeless, which is simply not having a permanent place to stay.

"We're seeing so many people coming to us with those situations, where 'myself and my two children are staying at my aunt's house but we're not homeless, we're staying with my aunt.' Well, actually that would fit into the guidelines," she says. "The fear for many people is to jump off that couch and say, 'oh-my-god, I'm homeless.'"

The Catholic Family Center shelters have an activities director on staff to help occupy the children and the children are bused to the schools they previously attended so that life is as normal for them as possible.

Barnes says living in a homeless shelter is particularly difficult for older children.

"I think that the little ones don't understand what's happening," she says. "I really feel for those kids that are 8 to 16, they know what's happening. They are feeling the peer pressures that any preteen or teenager might feel and then on top of that to know 'I'm homeless right now' is very stressful to them." © Copyright 2010, WXXI