The Mission

The Family Life Development Center was established
by New York State in 1974. Its mission is to improve professional and public
efforts to understand and deal with risk factors in the lives of children,
youth, families and communities that lead to family violence and neglect.
It focuses on strategies and programs to help vulnerable children and youth
by strengthening families and communities. As an interdisciplinary unit
of the College of Human Ecology,
the Center accomplishes its mission through research, training, outreach
and education. It carries out its mandate through program development, implementation
and evaluation projects serving New York State, the nation and the international
community. The current areas of special interest are programs to guarantee
children’s rights, the role of emerging technologies in training, and childhood
violence prevention.

Contact our staff!

Directors

James Garbarino Center Co-Director
John Eckenrode Center Co-Director

Current Programs of the Family Life Development Center

The Center receives core funding from New York State and
currently operates over $3 million in programs funded through competitive
grants and contracts at the state and federal levels. The Center occupies
offices on the Cornell campus at Ithaca. The College of Human Ecology is
one of four New York State statutory colleges at Cornell
University. Its legislated purpose is to improve family well-being and
human welfare, human development and the quality of the human environment.
Its education, research and outreach missions include human development,
nutrition and health, economic and social well being, and environmental
design and technology.

The Child Protective Services
Training Institute is in its 19th year of providing training to the
professionals who investigate, manage and treat the more than 100,000 annual
cases of child abuse and neglect in New York State. Nearly all child protective
workers and supervisors currently active have been provided core training
on the attitudes skills and knowledge needed to do protective work. In 1995,
over 200 participated in core training and 1,000 in 50 offerings of advanced
courses.
Principal Investigator: Michael A.
Nunno Project Director: Marylu McPheron

Collaboration and Community Building
is a federally funded initiative to develop and test a curriculum that will help child
welfare and other human service workers to collaborate in protecting children and
building safe and supportive community environments for childrearing.

Contact:Frank Barry

The Child Abuse Prevention
Network provides a national computer network for the field of child
abuse and neglect. Building on results of a national survey of 1,000 professionals
in child abuse and neglect, the project created an Internet presence to
meet the needs of the field. Prototyping and and demonstations of Internet
applications in child abuse prevention are being developed as a major aspect
of the project. The Network has a private sector partner, LifeNET, Inc.,
and has formed special alliances with key national and international child abuse organizations.
Contact:Tom Hanna

The Residential Child Care Project
has reached workers in 40 states, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom
with its ongoing program of institutional abuse prevention and investigation. Its
acclaimed and widely disseminated training in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI)
is offered in special Institutes at Cornell University, or at arranged sites anywhere in the
USA or abroad. Tested and proved in hundreds of residential child care institutions, TCI has
also been adapted for other congregate care settings as well.
Project Director: Michael A. Nunno
Contact: Martha Holden

National
Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) acquires, preserves
and disseminates high quality datasets relevant to the study of child abuse
and neglect. The Archive facilitates secondary analysis by distributing
data in ready-to-use formats for microcomputers and mainframes, providing
technical support to data users, and sponsoring training programs for researchers.
Contact: John Eckenrode

Strong Families,
Strong Soldiers is a program with the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps to identify key family violence
prevention strategies, develop operations manuals and implement initial
training efforts for the U.S. military’s Family Advocacy Programs at installations
and bases around the world.
Contact: Marney Thomas

Prenatal/Early Infancy Program (PEIP)
A Follow Up Study is assessing the long-term effects of a landmark nurse-home
visiting program 15 years after the initial intervention. The study will
measure the enduring impact of the intervention on both the mothers and
their children.
Contact: Jane Powers

Violence Prevention in Childhood
is a research and program development initiative to redirect violent beliefs
and respond to violent trauma in childhood.
Contact: James
Garbarino

Protecting the Rights of Children
focuses on efforts to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Current efforts include an international project in collaboration with advocacy
groups in Costa Rica and Canada, and a two week training institute dealing
with “The Child’s Right to be Heard” in legal, child protection
and mental health settings based upon research on memory, perception, and
adult-child communication.
Contact: James
Garbarino

“Just
For Kids!” addresses the issue of psychological maltreatment
as issue for protective services, prevention, community awareness and parent
education. It responds to the needs of professionals and the general public
for information and consultation.
Contact: James
Garbarino

Visit Children’s House!

Contact our staff!

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The Mission

Directors

Current Programs of the Family Life Development Center

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