Unitas is an outreach therapeutic program serving Hispanic and African American children in the South Bronx. It is a complex 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 acheive what Unitas calls the healing of the child's brokeness, 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...