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The Child Safety Booklet
Based on a publication by the New Orleans Violence and Children Intervention Project

This has been created with special emphasis on children's developmental needs around exposure to violence. We believe that parents are the first line of defense for children and this article will offer some concrete information about how a parent can assist a child who has been exposed to violence.

A Day in the Life of American Children

Children's Defense Fund, 1995

  • 9 children
    are murdered

  • 30 children
    are wounded by guns

  • 3 children
    die from child abuse

  • 27 children
    die from poverty

  • 2,350 children
    are in adult jails

  • 307 children
    are arrested for crimes of violence

  • 5,703 teenagers
    are victims of violent crime

  • 2,355 teenagers
    drop out of school

  • 2,868 babies
    are born into poverty
  

Joy D. Osofsky, Ph.D., Principle Investigator: Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Louisiana State University Medical Center.

Marva L. Lewis, Ph.D., Project Coordinator, The New Orleans Violence and Children Intervention Project.

Crime among children is growing at an alarming rate. The youth of our country seem more deeply and more causally involved in numerous acts of violence. Children are killing other children, committing suicide and participating in the deadly world of drugs and distribution.

Attorney General Janet Reno has called youth violence 'The greatest single crime problem in America today." Among youth 15 to 24 years old, homicide is now the second leading cause of death in the United States. FBI statistics show that arrest for violent crime among people under 18 rose 47 percent from 1988 to 1992. Juvenile arrests for murder increased by 128 percent in ten years.

Many factors contribute to violent behavior and a good number of those factors are within our power to change. According to a major research project conducted by the American Psychological Association's Commission on Youth and Violence, "there is overwhelming evidence that we can intervene effectively in the lives of young people to reduce or prevent their involvement in violence."


Early Head Start National Resource Center @ ZERO TO THREE
2000 M. Street, NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20036
202-638-1144 Fax 202-638-0851

This Web site was developed for the Head Start Bureau by ZERO TO THREE: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, under contract No. 105-98-2055 from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families; Administration for Children and Families; U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, to operate the Early Head Start National Resource Center.