>Surely this makes a difference in the lives of these people but on large scales, how much of a difference have you actually made?

Judging by the article, quite a large difference.

>there must be better solutions than solidifying the systematic problems which capture this segment of the population.

We're talking about poor children here. The systemic problem of this segment of the population is that they are poor. It's easy to talk about poor adults and prescribe behavioral adjustments, it's a way of assigning desert. It's much harder to talk about poor children because it's obvious that no child deserves to be poor.