The Social Life of Street Children in Khulna City of Bangladesh: A Socio-Psychological Analysis

The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of street life on the socio-psychological problem of street children who live and work full-time on the streets of Khulna, Bangladesh. For this, the study used survey design to collect data from purposively selected 150 samples of street children aged between 6 to 17 years in Khulna City of Bangladesh. The findings of the study explicate that the street children face harsh reality and are deprived of the basic necessities of life. The study found that a large number of street children (51.3%) lived in rail station. Most of them (43.3% street children) are living alone that forced them engaging in work at early years of life. It was revealed that the street children worked for long time (on an average 10.62 hours daily) in dirty environment but their income was considerably very low (average weekly income 362 BDT). While the majority of the street children (56.7%) took meal once in a day, about one seventh (25.3%) of the children took meal only twice in a day. Drug taking of street children was found significantly associated with the person respondents living with (p< .001). Taking vitamin D and Zinc contains food of street children was found significantly associated with how much the respondents earn last week (p< .001). The study concludes that realistic steps are needed for improving the condition of street children with collaboration of GO and NGOs.