Defending Children Exposed to Violence Scope and Recommendations

We are facing one of the most significant challenges to the future of America's children that we have ever known. Our children are experiencing and witnessing violence on an alarming scale. This exposure to violence is not limited to one community or one group of children. It occurs among all ethnic and racial groups; in urban, suburban, and rural areas; in gated communities and on tribal lands. Advances in neuroscience and child development have taught us that the trauma children experience when they are exposed to physical, sexual, and emotional violence harms their ability to mature cognitively and emotionally, and it scars them physically and emotionally well into their adult lives. We pay astronomical costs to the healthcare, child welfare, justice and other systems because we have not yet done what we know works to prevent and treat childhood exposure to violence. This book focuses on protecting children from exposure to violence and to healing those who were exposed, and calls for action by the federal government, states, tribes, communities and the private sector.