It is the system - or governments - that have failed, not you. You have done what you could, and continue to do what you can. I'm sure you have been a positive force in many lives, whether you see it or not.

I teach school, and most of the kids I teach live in the kinds of circumstances we've been talking about. For most of them, all I can do is haul myself out of bed in the morning and be there for them when they come dragging in late and sleepy and hungry. Beyond that, it often seems I don't have much to offer them - but for many of them, despite their angry outbursts or displays of indifference, it seems to mean a lot that someone's there who's going to treat them with a measure of respect, and who cares enough to push them to try to accomplish something, whether they do or not. And mostly they don't, by the usual standards, anyway. Most of them will still quit school by grade eleven, most will have troubled lives. But maybe their lives would be worse without having had the experience of being treated with respect and being cared about by a few people who were paid to respect and care about them. I imagine this is analagous to the situation you work in, to a degree ...