NCJ Number
142122
Date Published
1993
Length
123 pages
Annotation
Written for practitioners, health officials, government officials, and family members, this volume provides an overview of the problems that exposure to drug abuse can cause for preschool children and explains prevention and treatment strategies for preschool-age children of drug abusers.
Abstract
The text handles drug abuse as a community and societal problem rather than as an individual problem, emphasizing intervention and treatment strategies that address the problem itself as well as how it affects children and families. The discussion also promotes the preschool age as the ideal time to apply strategies that will aid the family in building the self-esteem, trust, autonomy, and initiative necessary to protect the child from further problems caused by addictive parents. The authors describe the harmful results of alcohol and other drug abuse affecting preschool children, including violence, child sexual abuse, fetal alcohol syndrome, and intrauterine exposure to drugs. They also present policy recommendations, including increased research, drug abuse training for child care workers, increased outreach and education for expectant mothers, and community-based outreach programs to ensure ethnic or socioeconomic sensitivity and appropriateness. Index, list of State prevention contacts, appended bibliographies and suggested readings, and 167 references