A neighborhood-based approach reflects the concept that both family and community factors affect socialization and that deliberately structured social support can override individual dynamics linked to violence and can buffer children and families from some of the psychological and social effects of social risk factors. Research on family and community environments at high risk for child abuse and other violence has revealed less positive neighboring, less social integration, and more stressful daily interactions among families in socially impoverished neighborhoods. Social impoverishment has rapidly escalated in many inner-city neighborhoods. Other research has identified factors that lead to resilience and coping as well as forms of maladaptive coping. The research highlights the need for special investments in neighborhoods with high stress and low resources to reverse negative social momentum. Such efforts are a precondition for relying on neighborhood-based social support efforts to address violence. Such efforts also recognize that violence is a symptom not only of individual or family trouble but also of neighborhood and community trouble, and that many children and youth living in violence in devastated neighborhoods experience a large number of risk factors that can precipitate developmental crises and impairment. 55 references