Drugs and Alcohol Assignment | Online Assignment

Review the handouts “Talking with your Teens About Drugs” and “Talking to Youth About Drugs.” Give three prevention and treatment approaches for child and adolescent substance abuse and explain why you selected those approaches. You are required to post your initial substantive response as well as respond, in 50 words or more, to two other students’ posts. This discussion is worth 15 marks. You will be evaluated with the

Family-Based Risk
and Protective Factors
and their Eff ects on
Juvenile Delinquency:
WHAT DO WE KNO W?
Available scientific knowledge indicates that, depending
on context and circumstances, families can be both a risk
factor and a protective factor for juvenile delinquency.1
Risk factors
Some of the risk factors associated with family are static,
while others are dynamic. Static risk factors, such as
criminal history, parental mental health problems or a
history of childhood abuse, are unlikely to change over
time. However, dynamic risk factors, such as poor
parental behaviour, family violence or parental drug
addiction, can be modified through appropriate prevention
and treatment programs.
Risk factors have a cumulative and interactive effect: a
family exposed to several risk factors is considered a
high-risk family. Furthermore, children and adolescents
exposed to several risk factors will also be considered at
high risk of embarking on a life path that will lead to
delinquent behaviour.2 This is because not only do the
effects of risk factors accumulate, but the factors also
interact with each other: the effects of one multiply the
effects of another and so on. For example, parental
alcoholism causes family conflicts, which then increase
the risks of substance abuse.
Risk factors associated with family
dynamic and functioning
Ineffective parental behaviour
• An inadequate family dynamic caused by poor parental
practices, such as a lack of supervision,3 rules that are
too permissive, discipline that is inconsistent or too
strict, a weak bond, and the inability to establish clear
boundaries, were identified as strong risk factors for
delinquent behaviour,4 drug use,5 poor academic performance6
and membership in youth gangs.7
• Adolescents from families characterized by a lack of order
and discipline are four times more at risk of engaging
in delinquent behaviour as adults than children from
structured families.8
• According to the International Youth Survey (IYS),
56% of youth who stated that their parents never knew
who they were with had engaged in delinquent behaviour
during the past 12 months, compared to 35% of youth
whose parents did not always know who they were
with and 12% of youth whose parents always knew who
they were with.9
Parental criminality
• The Pittsburgh10 and Cambridge11 longitudinal studies
show that having a father, mother, brother or sister who
displays criminal behaviour is a significant risk factor for
delinquent behaviour in boys.
• Among the risk factors related to parental criminality,
criminal behaviour by the father is one of the most
influential: 63% of boys whose fathers are involved in
criminal activity are at risk of doing the same, compared
to 30% of other boys.12