Violence prevention: you can never start too early. (National Youth Services).

For years, Kathy Ross had been looking for a violence-prevention program to use in her Morris County, N.J., child and family resources center. Most of the programs and curriculum she came across fell short in one important way-they didn't focus on the adults who spend time with children every day and have a strong influence on them.

"Research shows if you change adults' behavior, you also change children's behavior," Ross says. In November 2000, Ross heard about a new program aimed at adults who work with young children. Called ACT (Adults and Children Together) Against Violence, the program is both a community-training program and public awareness campaign. Its goal is to prevent violence by teaching adults to demonstrate how to solve problems without resorting to violence. The program is sponsored by the American Psychological Association and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

Ross became one of the first professionals to incorporate ACT into her work and community. She raised funds locally and formed a coalition of leaders from different parts of the county to figure out how the program could make the biggest impact. So far, Ross has trained nine groups of facilitators, or nearly 100 people, who have used the curriculum in places like prenatal classes, school cafeterias, child care centers and schools. One facilitator trained 200 high school students as mentors in violence prevention for elementary school children. "What people have done with the information has exceeded every expectation I've had," Ross says.

ACT is the brainchild of Jackie Gentry, of the American Psychological Association, who thought that, although the association's programs on violence prevention were useful, they weren't reaching the public with an important message: Violence is learned, and it's very often learned during the earliest years of life. "The learning environment is set up by adults," Gentry says, "particularly for the youngest kids. We need to speak to adults through mass media and their communities, educate them by saying, `You can teach young children the kinds of skills that will make their lives better and protect them from violence, not only when they are children, but when they are adults.'"

The goal of ACT is to make young children a focus of all violence prevention. According to research, the majority of violence-prevention programs directed toward teenagers and upper middle-school students may be too late. "It has been shown scientifically that habitually aggressive behavior starts before that," Gentry says.

ACT looks different in each community. Lynette Poolman, who took the lead in Kansas City, received funding from the Kauffman Foundation for her local ACT program. In her community; the program has been incorporated into training for men in fatherhood court who have been delinquent in their child support payments or have histories of substance abuse. It's also part of the training for adoptive parents, and has been incorporated into a school safety program.

For more information about ACT, or for eight ways to put ACT into action in your community, go to www.actagainst violence.com/about/involved/eightways. html.