Children and Families Working Group

The KCBA Drug Policy Project is hosting a multi-disciplinary working group looking at some of the key issues related to “kids and drugs” – drug use and misuse and the norms around them; the health effects, both mental and physical, and treatments; the effects of both drug use and drug policies on our families and communities. This is done by examining the various domains with which children come into contact, including the civil and criminal justice processes, the schools, social services, the health care system and so forth.

Task Groups

School Discipline
Drug/alcohol Education in Schools
Forensic Assessments
Drug/alcohol Education in Parenting Classes

Helpful Documents

• "What is the Relationship between School Health Policy and Learning?” Julia Dilley, Ph.D., MES. Presentation given at the Washington State Healthy Schools Summit on May 2008 with even more details on the links between health and education.
  
  
• “Investing in Health: Is Basic Education Better than Medicine?" Maxine Hayes, MD, MPH, State Health Officer, Washington State Department of Health. Presentation given at a legislative conference on December 11, 2007 documenting the link between health and education.
  
  
• “King County Six-Year Strategic Plan for Prevention-Intervention-Treatment-Aftercare Support Services (2007)," King County Department of Community and Human Services' Mental Health, Chemical Abuse and Dependency Services Division. The King County Six-Year Strategic Plan is designed to address the issues of prevention, intervention, treatment, and aftercare/support services (PITA). It looks at county-specific needs to implement the most effective substance abuse services. A great resource for King County, filled with statistics as well as charts and graphs that clearly identify many substance abuse aspects of the county.
  
  
• "Preventing Drug Abuse Among Children and Adolescents," Second Edition, National Institute on Drug Abuse. A good introduction for people new to the field of drug abuse prevention, focusing on research-based prevention. The "in brief" pamphlet is very concise and informative, focusing on fifteen principles that may help parents and educators think about and plan for drug abuse prevention programs.
  
  
• "How to Make Prevention More Powerful," U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' SAMHSA and Oregon Department of Human Services. A basic pamphlet about what is effective and what is ineffective in providing drug education. This would be a good resource to print and hand out to teachers and parents. It gives good advice and concrete examples of activities and programs that could be beneficial.
  
  
• "Caught in the Net," American Civil Liberties Union. Advocates for fair drug laws and policies that adequately take into account the needs of women and their families, and addresses the root causes of women's involvement with illegal drugs.
  
  
• Kids & Drugs Powerpoint summary of the key issues that helped start our discussion.
  
  
• DASA Adolescent Strategic Plan. Put out by Wash. State Department of Social and Health Services, Health and Recovery Services Administration, Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse. Three-year project funded by CSAT.
  
  
• Alcohol, Tobacco and Substance Abuse and Washington Children, January 1999. Prepared for DASA by the UW Human Services Policy Center.
  

Other Helpful Links

• "Healthy Schools Network" UW School of Public Health Nutrition. Tracks school health policies and provides tools to parents, students, teachers and administrators about many aspects of school health. It is organized according to the CDC's Coordinated School Health Model's eight components.
  
  
• “Some Progress on Kids and Jails,” New York Times, August 19, 2008. Discusses the recent study conducted by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency showing the benefit to society in the decrease of juveniles tried as adults. When minors are convicted as adults for drug crimes and sentenced to adult prisons with rapists and murderers, they are more likely to become career criminals. This article suggests that treatment would be the better solution.
  
  
• "Promoting Healthy Families in Your Community: A Resource Packet," Child Welfare Information Gateway. Focuses on protective factors that contribute to healthy families, and identifies several key components that research has shown decreases child abuse and neglect, including nutrition, parent education, and social connections. All families, not just the ones at risk, can benefit from using protective factors because they create positive relationships within the family and can attribute to long-term success.
  
  
• "Prevention Education," (The role of schools, policy recommendations from educators, and what teachers and parents can do), Join Together (a program of the Boston University School of Public Health). A great resource for community organizers, parents and teachers. Not only does the website allow the viewer to select the state in which they would like to learn about drug education, but the survey of educators put out in 2006 is informative and easy to follow. The report identifies five recommendations that formed through discussions with teachers on what was effective in the schools and what could use more help. Join Together believes that it should not be the sole responsibility of the schools to teach drug education but rather that there should be a comprehensive approach including families and communities.
  
  
• "Developing Healthy Communities: A Risk and Protective Factor Approach for Preventing Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse," Developmental Research and Program, Inc. An article focusing on the risk and protective factor model, a model which identifies the many factors that attribute to substance abuse and helps prevent them by providing programs can be used to reduce risks of drug abuse and to enhance protective factors. It is a collaborative program that looks at many risks including community, family, school, individual and general risks.
  
  
• School to Prison Pipeline Project, American Civil Liberties Union. Working on changing the current system that funnels children out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal court system. Many of the children affected by this pipeline are students of color and have a learning disability or a history of poverty, abuse or neglect.
  
  
• Oprah Winfrey episode, “High School Challenge,” that highlighted an interesting program being tried in high schools. http://www2.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200611/tows_past_20061109.jhtml. The episode focuses on the “Challenge Day” day-long school program. http://www.challengeday.org/our_program.html
  
  
• Reclaiming Futures is a juvenile justice project started by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that is in its 6th year in King County.

School Discipline

• School discipline section of the TeamChild Education Advocacy Manual. TeamChild is a Washington state organization devoted helping troubled youth get the services they need to change their lives.
  
  
• The ACLU of Washington has two brochures covering school discipline: a Parents’ Guide to Public School Discipline in Washington providing advice to parents whose kids are facing disciplinary proceedings, and a Guide for Public School Students in Washington to better understand their rights as students.
  
  

Drug/alcohol Education in Schools

• Teaching teachers to just say “know”: Reflections on drug education. Kenneth W. Tupper, Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008), pp. 356–367.
  
  
• Healthy Youth Survey fact sheets about current substance use among King County students from AskHYS, an on-line system designed to help analyze and disseminate HYS data. Sponsored by six Washington state agencies: CTED, LCB, DASA, OSPI, DOH and the Family Policy Council.
  
  
• A list of the prevention services funded through the King County Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention Program.
  
  
• Principles of Effective Substance Abuse Prevention. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP) list of scientifically-defensible principles that can help service providers design and implement programs that work. The principles are divided into six domains: Individual, Family, Peer, School, Community, and Society/Environmental.
  
  
• Preventing Drug Abuse Among Children and Adolescents. National Institute on Drug Abuse’s (NIDA) list of prevention principles intended to help parents, educators, and community leaders think about, plan for, and deliver research-based drug abuse prevention programs at the community level.
  
  
• King County Six-Year Strategic Plan for Substance Abuse Prevention-Intervention-Treatment-Aftercare Services. Document intended to advise the county on local and substance abuse policy and guide expenditures on chemical dependency treatment and substance abuse prevention services.
  
  
• University of Washington's Social Development Research Group fact sheets on: Strengthening Families, Guiding Good Choices and Life Skills.
  
  
• Benefits and Costs of Prevention and Early Intervention Programs for Youth. Washington State Institute on Public Policy, July 2004.
  
  

Forensic Assessments

Drug/alcohol Education in Parenting Classes