Child Safety

Child safety is everybody's concern, but much professional activity is misinformed or based on a misrepresentation of the facts, and preventative action is rarely adequately evaluated. Written and edited by leading researchers with an active role in social policy, this new book challenges both our understanding of the problem of child safety and points to the impotence of "educational" approaches based on "knowledge enhancement". The strong message is that improving children's knowledge has little or no effect on their behaviour. From the physical abuse of young children to drug abuse in adolescence, this book presents a radical new perspective on a key social issue.

The past decade has seen increased awareness of the varied vulnerability of children to accident, abuse and assault. Child vulnerability is beginning to be seen as a comprehensive problem in child development--vulnerability which changes with age and associated intellectual and social skills or behavioral characteristics. It is also strongly associated with parental situations and wider aspects of the social environment.

The book covers: child pedestrian accidents; accidents in the home and at play; bullying; drug abuse; physical abuse and sexual abuse. Each chapter offers a research summary of the nature of the problem together with a summary and evaluation of intervention and preventative approaches, emphasizing what is most likely to be effective. With its focus on intervention and prevention, Child Safety From Preschool to Adolescence will be especially valuable in educational settings, but will also be useful to a wide variety of professional areas including social work, the law, medicine and psychology.