A bit of the beaten path for us, but of potential interest to our wider audience are two abstracts from Drug and Alcohol Findings:
Testing children pointless but arrest referral offers early intervention opportunities
This refers to research for the Home Office and found:
Testing on charge along similar lines to the adult programme netted about 100 children a month but only 5% of tests were positive for opiates or cocaine and these children were often already known to services. Comparison with non-pilot sites revealed no evidence that testing curbed the youngsters’ substance use. With the unit cost of a positive test ranging up to over £2000, one worker saw the process as a “very intense way of trying to throw money at an issue with very little result” while the evaluators found “insufficient evidence … to support wider rollout”.
These verdicts might have been mitigated if, regardless of the test result, the testing process had brought more services to the aid of children who, if not using cocaine and heroin, were using other substances. However, very few – perhaps 3%2 – accepted and acted on a referral to an arrest referral worker.
Most promising’ alcohol prevention programme tried with poor black US families
This looks at further evidence from the US of the effectiveness of the Strengthening Families Programme:
As implemented in the new study, over seven weekly sessions parallel groups of parents and their 11-year-old children from about ten families develop their understandings and skills led by parent and child trainers. In the second half of each session parents and children come together to practice what they learned. Based on the counties they lived in, over 300 families were randomly assigned to be invited to participate in the programme or to carry on as usual. Two years later 19% of programme-assigned children had started to drink compared to 29% of the controls, a significant difference.
A companion paper tested whether this was due to the intended effects on parenting and on the children’s attitudes. The programme’s designers reasoned that enhanced parental monitoring and collaborative but clear rule making and implementation (in particular about alcohol) would curb growth in children’s active intentions to drink. There remained the possibility that the children would still drink if the opportunity presented itself. To protect against this, the designers addressed the children themselves, aiming to foster less attractive images of young drinkers. As anticipated, it was through these mechanisms that the programme exerted its restraining effect on age-related increases in drinking.
Filed under: drug prevention, police , drug testing young people on arrest, Strengthening Families Programme
