Children in Danger

Childhood is ideally a time of safety, marked by freedom from the economic, sexual, and political demands that later become part of adult life. For many children, however, particularly those who live in our inner cities, childhood is increasingly a time of danger. In the urban war zones of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., children grow up with firsthand knowledge of terror and violence. This book examines the threat to childhood development posed by living amid chronic community violence. Most importantly, it shows caregiving adults such as teachers, psychologists, social workers, and counselors how they can work together to help children while they are still children--before they become angry, aggressive adults.

"Children in Danger is a triumph of compassionate scholarship, alucid application of state-of-the-art trauma research to thechallenges faced by children growing up in our urban battlefields." --San Francisco Chronicle "A stunning, must-read book for anyone interested in how communityviolence affects children's and teacher's development. Even better,it's a road map for school administrators and teachers on what theycan do to help these children deal with the chronic violence intheir lives." --Bill Harris, founder, KidsPac, a political actioncommittee for children "This valuable book offers insight and guidance to the professionalwho must help children cope with the cruel challenge of violenceand death in their daily lives." --Edward Zigler, SterlingProfessor of Psychology, Yale University "[Children in Danger] is such a compelling account of the ways inwhich children are affected by living in communities where dangerand violence are a way of life, that one hopes it will be read bypolicymakers at all levels of government who are concerned aboutthe fate of an ever-growing number of children in our society."--Contemporary Psychology

JAMES GARBARINO is co-director of the Family Life Development Center and professor of human development at Cornell University. Author of fifteen other books, he formerly served as president of the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development. NANCY DUBROW is director of the International Child Welfare Group of the Taylor Institute in Chicago. She is also a consultant to international organizations, including UNICEF and the World Health Organization. KATHLEEN KOSTELNY is director of the Project on Children and Violence and senior research associate at the Erikson Institute for Advanced Study in Child Development. For more than a decade, she has been conducting research on the impact of violence on children. CAROLE PARDO is a child development specialist with a concentration in the area of "children at risk for developmental harm." From 1990 to 1995, she worked as a program associate on the Children in Danger project at the Erikson Institute.