Children Exposed To Violence Current Issues, Interventions and Research

Children?s exposure to violence (CEV) in their home, their community, and our society has finally been recognized as a serious mental health, social, and public health problem. This book highlights a summary of relevant current research, practice, and policy issues. It is the third in a series to help provide current state-of-the-science information to stimulate awareness, research, and best practices in the field.

This book provides chapters concerning the physiological effects of violence on children, its effects on behavioral and emotional functioning, and differences between boys and girls. Current interventions for children and families, such as innovative programs that are both home based as well as community based, are described. Promising and evidence-based practices are presented to provide the most recent approaches to helping children recover from the trauma of the abuse.

The chapters in this book provide greater awareness of the issues involved with CEV, stimulate additional research, improve practice techniques, lead to more evidence-based programs for both intervention as well as prevention, and help initiate a national priority to eliminate violence in the home and community.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Emotional Abuse.

1 Introduction - Children Exposed to Violence: An Often Neglected Social, Mental Health, and Public Health Problem Robert Geffner, Dawn Alley Griffin and James Lewis III CURRENT ISSUES 2. The Nature and Extent of Childhood Exposure to Violence: What We Know, Why We Don’t Know More, and Why It Matters Kristin Kracke and Hilary Hahn 3. Violence and the Effects of Trauma on American Indian and Alaska Native Populations Sadie Willmon-Haque and Dolores Subia BigFoot CURRENT RESEARCH 4. Proximity and Risk in Children’s Witnessing of Intimate Partner Violence Incidents Abigail H. Gewirtz and Amanuel Medhanie 5. The Physiological and Traumatic Effects of Childhood Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence Steve Stride, Robert Geffner and Alan Lincoln 6. The Experiences of Adults Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence as Children: An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Resilience and Protective Factors Staci L. Suzuki, Robert A. Geffner and Steven F. Bucky 7. Examination of Sex Differences and Type of Violence Exposure in a Mediation Model of Family Violence Nicolette L. Howells and Alan Rosenbaum 8. Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Maternal Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms on Children’s Emotional and Behavioral Functioning Kristin W. Samuelson and Caroline Cashman CURRENT INTERVENTIONS 9. The Safe Start Initiative: Building and Disseminating Knowledge to Support Children Exposed to Violence Kristen Kracke and Elena Cohen 10. Safe Start: Promising Practices from the Evaluation of the Demonstration Project Association for the Study and Development of Community Mary M. Hyde, Yvette H. Lamb and David Chavis 11. Community-Based Treatment Outcomes for Parents and Children Exposed to Domestic Violence Kimberly D. Becker, Gloria Mathis, Charles W. Mueller, Kata Issari and Su Shen Atta 12. Ten Lessons Learned in Alaska: Home Visitation and Intimate Partner Violence Linda Chamberlain FUTURE DIRECTION 13. Children Exposed to Violence in the Child Protection System: Practice-Based Assessment of the System Process Can Lead to Practical Strategies for Improvement Serena N. Hulbert 14. Children Exposed to Violence at School: An Evidence-based Intervention Agenda for the "Real" Bullying Problem Samuel Y. Song and Karen Callan Stoiber

Robert Geffner is Founding President of the Family Violence and Sexual Assault Institute and Founding President of Alliant International University’s (AIU) Institute on Violence, Abuse, and Trauma (IVAT). He is also currently Clinical Research Professor of Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, AIU, San Diego, CA.

Dawn Alley Griffin holds a joint appointment with Alliant International University’s Center for Forensic Studies as a Research Associate and with the Center for Undergraduate Education as a faculty member and the coordinator of the criminal justice and the psychology programs.

James Lewis III is a clinical neuropsychologist and nationally certified school psychologist. Currently, he teaches program development to systems of acute response to children exposed to violence, and the effects of trauma on a child’s developmental processes. He serves as a program consultant to New Opportunities Inc.