Helpless and homeless. There’s the sad description of children who, with their families, move from shelter to shelter, with no roof, no address, to call their own. In Wake County alone, there are about 330 parents and children in shelters on a given night.

We know that, and we’ll know more thanks to Project CATCH (Community Action Targeting Children who are Homeless), which is coordinating efforts to find out what homeless children need, how they might be helped.

With a grant from the John Rex Endowment, the Salvation Army, the Young Child Mental Health Collaborative and Wake County SmartStart are gathering information on the homeless children in the area. They and homeless shelters are the core of the CATCH project.

By getting information (health, special needs, etc.) together, CATCH then can refer kids to specialists they might need. In effect, CATCH is offering not one but several helping hands. This is noble work.