Street children are children and adolescents under 18 who work or live in public areas and often have to set up informal or itinerant paid activities to survive. Estimating their prevalence worldwide is challenging due to a lack of official statistics. Because of the death of a parent, a family breakdown, a war, a natural disaster, or socio-economic difficulties, they had to leave their home to get money to survive or to search for a better daily life. Violence, a deficit of education, as well as drug and alcohol abuse often characterized their living conditions (Bruyninckx et al., 2017 ; Bruyninckx et al., 2018).

Our study focuses on educational teams working with street children in Mexico City. It aims to understand how they face their daily challenges and try to identify the educational strategies they use with these children and adolescents. To collect our data, we used an anamnestic questionnaire, a semi-structured interview, and three other tools: the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14 - Cohen et al., 1983), the Quality of Life Scale (ProQOL-IV - Stamm, 2005), and the State/Trait Anxiety Scale (STAI - Spielberger et al., 1968). Our sample consisted of nine subjects (7 women and 2 men) from educational teams working with street children in Mexico City; 8 got a bachelor's degree, and one has a master's degree.

Our results show that these professionals mainly adopt informal psychoeducational strategies to reduce the impact of various risk factors associated with working in public areas, such as school drop-out, lack of parental support, poverty, malnutrition, hygiene deficit, and access to psychoactive substances. They also seek to improve the social skills and academic acquisition of these children. By participating in these educational activities, children develop autonomy and a sense of responsibility which, in turn, boosts their self-confidence and self-esteem. These aspects gradually prepare them for an autonomous and responsible adult life.

Overall, professionals express satisfaction with their work even if they face emotional challenges, such as exhaustion, emotional overload, and frustration. While they did not score highly on the anxiety and stress scales, they did achieve high scores on the compassion satisfaction scale. These results indicate that the educative team members are still motivated to pursue the work they have begun in their organization. Concerning the work with the children, our research underscores the necessity of a three-pronged approach that integrates educational, medical, and psychological elements while also involving family members in the interventions.

Keywords: Street children, Mexico, educational strategies and challenges.