Oahu’s homeless community — long caricatured and saddled with a stigma that can be brutally unfair — is far more diverse than most people know.

Homelessness results from financial distress, sometimes suddenly striking people who had held down stable jobs, even professional careers. There is disability through illness and drug or alcohol abuse that pose additional hurdles. Some adults simply prefer the unsheltered existence as an unconventional life choice or one that’s suited to their culture. Some are migrants who come to Honolulu from places that don’t frown on subsistence and to whom the city’s crowded apartment life seems far more foreign.

But whatever the reason adults find themselves living on the streets, they at least are the adults. The children, sadly, have no champion here. The children are brought to these circumstances by others. They are especially powerless, and vulnerable, and more needs to be done to keep them safe.

Some of their stories, told last week by Star-Advertiser writer Mary Vorsino, are heartbreaking. The cover photo depicted 6-year-old Morgan Leialoha, near the spot against the Kakaako fence where her pregnant mother had pitched the tent where they slept and hung the tarp that kept their belongings dry. Her mom said she believes her daughter is better off in the family tent than in a shelter, but is she? Newspaper pages are full of horror stories about what happens to children on urban streets.

Too often, adults charged with advocating for the homeless accept a parent’s insistence that their child is OK. These families frequently move from place to place, so even if social workers want to check up on them later, they don’t always get another chance. They need to argue more forcefully against allowing children to stay in such places, devoid of security, open to the elements. How can this be better?

Another parent, Vito Leha, has finally tired of this lack of stability after four years and is moving his wife and three children to the nearby Next Step shelter. Good. Living on the streets or in filthy hillside encampments is no way for a child to grow up. We can only hope others like Morgan and her mother follow them before too long.

There is a glimmer of hope that service providers are sharpening their outreach; peer intervention is one tool. Utu Langi, who manages Next Step, said his staff is enlisting some of the shelter’s residents to conduct neighborhood patrols, going up to families on the street and sharing their experience at the shelter. Yes, combating bug infestations is an unending chore, they say. Living in the sectioned cubicles such facilities offer is more institutionalized than many families prefer.

However, shelters are becoming more hospitable to families, with the help of the community. A gated play area in Next Step, for example, was built with donations. Such gestures provide models for the rest of us who sometimes want to help but don’t know how. Donating simple things — toys, toiletry kits that children can claim as their own — can mean a lot to families who have so little.

But it’s really government leaders who need to drive the search for short- and long-term solutions. As these solutions emerge, it’s critical that leaders see that children rise to the top of their priority list. Providers and law enforcement need to strongly coax families in from the cold — and just as forcefully, enact a system of monitoring with consequences.

Bob Walker, who works with the Central Union Church ministry, sees homeless families each week.

“In 12 years I have seen things that would make you cry,” he said. “Pregnant women sleeping on the ground. Babies sleeping on the ground. I have seen it all.”

The rest of us don’t have to see it ourselves to know that homelessness is a scourge and, above all, the children must be protected from it.