The government has embarked on an ambitious project to reintegrate street families into the community as the world marks International Day for Street Children today.

The State Department for Social Protection announced that it’s shifting its focus on the rehabilitation of street families from children’s homes to family and community care.

Mary Wambui, the chairperson of the Street Families Rehabilitation Trust Fund (SFRTF), said the programme will solve the problem which occurs when those placed in the homes attain 18 years.

“Giving them a house is not enough, they also need psycho-social support, income-generating activities and education so that they can stay off the streets,” Wambui said while commissioning the initiative during a capacity-building workshop at a Nakuru hotel.

“To succeed in addressing the increasing number of street families, we should first address the root causes. These include poverty, rural-urban migration, broken societal and domestic violence,” she added.

Wambui revealed the Fund had set aside Ksh50 million for a national census of street families in a bid to obtain an actual street population which will help in planning how to manage street persons in the country.

It’s estimated that there are more than 46,000 people living on the streets, according to the 2018 National Census of Street Families Report.

Nairobi leads with the highest number of street families at 15, 337, followed by Mombasa 7,529, Kisumu 2,746, Uasin Gishu 2,147 and Nakuru 2,005.

According to the report, most of the street persons were males at 72.4 per cent and females at 27.6 per cent with the youth accounting for nearly half of the population at 45.3 per cent followed by children at 33.8 per cent and adults at 2.4 per cent.