- The attitudes of the local community are impressed upon the child, who picks up the cultural norms of his immediate environment. For example, if the community has a general distrust of law enforcement, a child will pick up on the overall sentiment. Researchers Richard Jackson and June Tester described how the environment affects a child's physical and mental health in a 2008 article in the "Journal of American Academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry." The United Way of Central Ohio points out that a child can succeed if the community wholeheartedly supports the child.
- Parents who are impoverished may lack knowledge bases themselves, so they may not able to provide adequate resources for a child's success. For example, parents may have a knowledge deficit on investing or finances, since their income is low. This translates into a child growing up unaware of how the financial world works. In order to help their child succeed, parents must be helped too. An example given by the United Way is the Young Minds Continuum program at the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio. This program provides literacy tutoring for parents and provides mobile book vehicles for children.
- It is not enough for a school just to teach children and dismiss them in the afternoon with any further thought. Educational institutions also have to integrate themselves with the family. Children, more often than not, may need help with homework. If the adult support is not there for a child, her homework simply does not get done correctly. A program called Homework Help was instituted by the Columbus area local libraries to provide after-school help with homework to disadvantaged children.
- As a child transitions from childhood into adulthood, job training and job skills come into play. An adult with no skills is destined to obtain only low-paying, unskilled jobs. As part of the effort to break the cycle of poverty, the United States Department of Labor's Job Corps program provides free skills training to young people aged 16 to 24. Some of the areas of training include automotive repair, business services, and information technology. Job Corps also assists young people with obtaining a high school diploma or GED, and has language development programs for non-English speaking students.
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