Unitas is an outreach therapeutic program serving Hispanic and African-American children in the South Bronx. It is a complicated institutional structure based upon philosophical, psychological, and sociological views of how interpersonal relations can be shaped in the interest of a child's healthy social and emotional life.

To achieve what Unitas calls the healing of the child's "brokenness," the program has created a network of symbolic families composed of children and teenagers living in the same neighborhoods. The teenagers play the roles of symbolic and surrogate parents and become the caretakers and indeed therapists of the younger children. This symbolic family provides a sense of nurturance, discipline, and group belonging that is often missing in these children's lives.

This volume is a look inside the Unitas program provided by its principal participant, Dr. Edward Eismann. Eismann, founder and former director of Unitas, provides the reader with a rich, first-hand account of how he went about mobilizing the youth who would later become the core of this successful program. He also provides some of the ideas in the social sciences and therapeutic literature which influence the shaping of Unitas. UNITAS includes a series of training modules for persons interested in replicating this type of therapeutic program.

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