DOI: 10.36347/sjavs.2017.v04i12.006

Pages: 545-551

This article was prepared to measure the people’s thoughts living in the urban area of Adana province about the children who work on the streets. The aim is to provide these children with a more comfortable living environment by identifying their problems and providing some suggestions. The result of the surveys gathered from face-to-face interviews with 384 randomly selected individuals has simply tried to determine the people’s thoughts about the issue. The major reasons of children who are worked in the streets are usually to contribute to family budget, to save money, to meet their own needs, to pay the family’s debts, to learn business and professional skills, or just because they are pushed to work by their families. It’s known that; street working children problem is closely related with internal migration and irregular urbanization. According to the data obtained; the interviewed individuals emphasized that the main reason for the increase on number of street working children is migration and migration related unemployment. The individuals also emphasized, they didn’t contribute to these children in order not to encourage them to work in the streets; although knowing that the main reason is migration. Moreover, two of the aims of this study are to represent the thoughts of urban residents in Adana about street-working children; and to give advices to change the negative perceptions of individuals in the community about street children.