Posted on March 24, 2015 by Jacquelyn Simone The stress and noise of a homeless shelter make life challenging for all who reside there, but the chaotic environment is especially dangerous for newborns. A recent New School study warns that the 1,800 babies who were born into the City shelter system in 2014 face a greater risk of developmental problems throughout life. The long-term impact of homelessness on children has been documented by numerous studies, as summarized in the Coalition’s briefing paper “Voiceless Victims: The Impact of Record Homelessness on Children.” The first years of life are particularly important to one’s overall cognitive and emotional development, and so a young child’s experiences in a shelter can have devastating repercussions later on. This further underscores the Coalition’s stark warning in its State of the Homeless 2015 report: With more children than ever before going to sleep in City shelters, the future of the city is at stake. Rosa Goldensohn of DNAinfo interviewed early childhood development experts about the risks facing newborns at City shelters: Family shelters are rife with life-threatening hazards and lack security and social services, the city’s Department of Investigation found earlier this month. Such failings are particularly problematic for the 1,800 babies born into the city shelter system in 2014, according to a study released in January by The Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. “Despite research showing that the early years are crucial to lifelong brain development, children 3 and under receive little programming in shelters,” they said in the study. Shelter conditions put babies at a developmental disadvantage, according to Dr. Susan Chinitz, who runs the Early Childhood Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “Babies’ environments are recruited into their brain development,” Chinitz said, “Meaning that the brain is shaped based on the circumstances where the baby is living.” She said that babies who spend their first months in highly stressful environments fall behind their peers as early as nine months old. “When children are very overloaded with toxic stress…that’s a system on overload all the time for these children so they become less able to manage stressors later on,” she said. “There are divergences in language development early on and cognitive development.”
