Joy G. Dryfoos

Of the 33 million adolescents in the United States, almost 10 million are at risk of failing to become responsible adults. They attend schools that do not serve their needs, lack the support of caring adults, and, as a result, are alienated from mainstream society. African-American and Hispanic children, increasingly segregated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, are particularly vulnerable. In Adolescence: Growing Up in America Today, a follow-up to Joy Dryfoos's landmark volume, Adolescents at Risk (OUP, 1991), Joy Dryfoos and Carol Barkin take a close look at the lives of young people, identify some of their problems, and present solutions based on state-of-the-art prevention and treatment strategies. They examine important issues in adolescents' lives - sex, violence, drugs, health, mental health, and education. Reviewing successful prevention programs and policy studies, Dryfoos and Barkin demonstrate that we know what to do to prevent high-risk behaviours: young people need to establish relationships with adults; parents need to be involved in their children's lives; and programs need to be comprehensive, sensitive to cultural differences, and staffed by highly trained personnel. Dryfoos and Barkin argue that turning our backs on adolescents will lead to disturbing consequences: the achievement gap will grow, outcomes will worsen, school systems will struggle with the growing disparities, and we as a nation will fall behind the rest of the world in our capacity to educate our youth. If, however, we decide that we want a better quality of life for our children, we will ensure that every young person has access to an excellent education. Schools, youth workers, and parents cannot alone provide a better quality of life for our adolescents, but each must play a major role, and all must work together. Providing a roadmap for the development and implementation of sound policies for American teenagers in the twenty-first century, this volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of our nation's youth.

Children today face daunting obstacles on the path to adulthood-failing schools, dangerous streets, drug abuse, teen pregnancy. But the good news, according to child advocate Joy Dryfoos, is that there are many programs out there that work-models that we can apply to our own communities and our own children. In Safe Passage, Dryfoos helps us find them. Indeed, this book examines hundreds of successful programs, ideas that have worked in the real world-in a very tough real world at that-such as the Turner Middle School in Philadelphia, a model of a "university assisted" community school. Dryfoos examines the new trend toward full-service schools, programs that make the school the hub of the community, serving as enrichment centers and neighborhood safe havens. She evaluates programs that try to cope with sex, drugs, and violence-revealing which ones work and what aspects of these programs are most effective-and she also dissects programs that have failed, such as the highly touted drug program, DARE. Dryfoos concludes with a passionate call for action, outlining what must be done if our young people are to be assured safe passage to the future. Whether they live in a room down the hall, a house across town, or a tenement a thousand miles away, these are our children. This book shows us what we can do to give them a better chance to succeed in life, to grow up to be healthy and productive adults.

Joy Dryfoos's book looks at young people aged 10 to 17 growing up in the United States today. Most of these children have a high probability of maturing into responsible adults; however, a certain group - one in four - have only limited potential for becoming productive adults, because they are at high risk of encountering problems in school, at home, or in their communities. This book explores four problem areas that have received a great amount of resources, public interest, and social concern: delinquency, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, and school failure. In examining these problem areas, Dryfoos has three objectives: to present a more cogent picture of adolescents who are at risk of problem behaviours and where they fit in society; to synthesize the experience of programs that have been successful in changing various aspects of these behaviours; and to propose strategies for using this knowledge base to implement more effective approaches to helping youngsters succeed. For the first time, Adolescents at Risk allows us to see how risky behaviors interrelate and gives us an understanding of the size and scope of the prevention interventions needed. This book will be essential for social and developmental psychologists, sociologists, policy makers, and interested lay persons.