Substance Abuse Prevention in Washtenaw County

Substance Abuse Prevention

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Parent Support

A Comprehensive Home-Based Substance Abuse Intervention Services

The main approach used in HDP is summarized in this statement: Information, in and of itself, does not change behavior. It is a common misconception, that once a person has been told something, that the information that has been delivered will cause change in behavior. This is not often the case. In order for any information to cause a change in behavior, several conditions must be met.

Based on the philosophy that the most effective and ethical route to help a child is through helping their families, HDP looks to the parents as the most valuable resources, even when they have multiple needs of their own. Our approach looks to youth as being involved in a network of interconnected systems that encompass individual, family, and extra familial (e.g., peer, school, neighborhood) factors, and recognizes that it is often necessary to intervene in more than one of these systems.

Home Diversion Program Brief Description

The Clean Teens, Home Diversion Program (HDP) is an effective, problem-focused, and practical approach to the elimination of substance use/abuse risk factors. HDP successfully reduces problem behaviors in adolescents, 14 to 17 years, while strengthening their familys protective factors.

The programs principles and practices help parents to (a) improve relations with their ever-changing teen, (b) decrease parent-child conflict in the home, and (c) assist in greatly reducing their child's emotional and behavioral problems within their natural settings (i.e., home, school, and neighborhood).

The Home Diversion Program is all about:

Serving people, specifically parents who are at a point of frustration with their child's emotional/behavioral problems and resultant parent-child conflict.
Providing an invaluable resource/program in the privacy of the family home
Providing youth and parents with materials that continue to grow over time by incorporating additional products and services at no extra cost

Intended Population

The HDP intervention program targets youth that exhibit school failure or problems, abuses and /or has a history of alcohol or other drug arrests, deeply involved with delinquent peers. HDP also benefits families that are affected by poor behavior management, parental discord, anger, blaming interactions, and other problematic relations.

How it Works

The program fosters parental leadership, appropriate parental involvement, and mutual support among family members to work together and improve family communication and problem solving skills, set clear rules and consequences, nurturing, and shared responsibility for family problems. Focusing on educating the family as a whole, HDP disciplines and mechanisms have been developed to help families and their child/ren "see" the need to change, to commit to the change, to develop the skills to change, and avoid the behavior that could interfere with the change. The family-facilitator collaboration allows the family to take the lead in setting goals while the facilitator provides parents and youth with effective education and coaching strategies that helps guide the family through the process.

HDP is a home-based program implemented in a family setting and is held in 8 to 12 weekly 1 to 1.5 hour educational sessions that meet with the immediate family to identify the best strategies for effective family boundaries and enforcement to decrease the childs involvement with deviant peers and promote friendships with pro-social peers, cope with the drug subculture that may exist in the school and neighborhood, reduce parent-child communication conflict, improve the adolescents academic performance.

HDP educational sessions with the child are held in 8 to 12 weekly 1 to 1.5 hour with the facilitator, a prevention specialist. The child and HDP facilitator meet either in the program office or the family's home. Sessions may occur more frequently around crises because these may be opportunities for change.

For more information regarding the Home Diversion Program, please contact Justin Bishop at cleanteens@aol.com

Prevention is Parenting!

Nothing influences a child's life more than love and nurture of those who parent her. If the foundation of prevention is good parenting, then the heart of good parenting is communication. We can't talk with our kids about drugs if we're not first talking with--and listening to--them about what's going on in their lives: friends, cloths, activities, school, even dream and ambitions.

"Teenagers today are faced with a far wider range of media influences, subcultures, and social choices than ever before. And for parents, it can be hard to determine when adolescents have crossed a line between asserting their individuality and true drug or drinking problems, depression, or acting out beyond the "norm" for their age group.", Is My Teenager OK? By Dr. Henry A. Paul.

"I know that I have talked with my teen about peer pressure and the dangers of drugs and alcohol. That is why I was so surprised to find that my child was experimenting with these, especially in middle school! I just wish I could have seen it coming and help my child, before things got so out of control...." Parent of a Middle School Teen.

You can provide accurate information to you is children about drugs. To do this, you must know something about drugs. That doesn't mean you have to become a drug expert, but it does mean having enough facts to support your views. Unfortunately, many parents wait until their children are involved in drugs before initiating a discussion. That's too late! You should talk with your children before there's a problem. As early as the fourth grade, your children may have some knowledge of the drug scene. Much of their information will be inaccurate and overestimate the number of peers that use drugs and will tend to glamorize use. That's why it is important that you be prepared to set the record straight. In addition, remember, do not make your discussion of alcohol and drugs a one-time event. Children need to be reminded often of where their parents stand on important issues such as drugs.

As a parent, we have so many questions and concerns when it comes to our child/rens health and safety. We just want to have the right amount of influence on our children without causing our children to distance themselves from us.

These are just a few questions we receive from parents at Clean Teens. We have some resources for those of you that run into obstacles when learning more about alcohol and drugs to discuss with your child. A well-informed advocate is the best advocate. You are your families best resource, the "family advocate".

What happens across the kitchen table has a far greater influence on whether American adolescents smoke pot or snort cocaine than what happens across the Mexican border. Our best hope for a drug-free society is in the kitchen, the living room, the classrooms, and the church pew.

The National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse's, The Hunt for a Drug Free America Survey of 12 to 17 year-olds, focus groups of teens and parents, public policy research and demonstration programs across the nation establish two propositions:

1. A child who gets through the age 21 without smoking, using drugs, or abusing alcohol is virtually certain never to do so.

2. Parent power is the most potent and underutilized tool we have to help our children journey through those years.

Starting a conversation about alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs with your kids is never easy-but it is also not as difficult as you may think. Take advantage of everyday "teachable moments" and, in no time at all, you'll have developed an ongoing dialogue with your child. Teachable moments refer to using every day events in your life to point out things you would like your child to know about.

Not sure what your child's needs to know? Click on the following link, Partnership for a Drug Free America)

Research seeks to promote achievement and success as well as prevent and treat health and behavior problems among young people. Drug abuse, delinquency, risky sexual behavior, violence, and school dropout are among the problems addressed. In 1979, J. David Hawkins and Richard F. Catalano began to develop the Social Development Strategy, which provides the theoretical basis for risk- and protective-focused prevention that underlies much of the group's research. Click the below "A CLOSER LOOK" button for a look at the Youth Social Development Chart: Risk & Protective Factors by Hawkins & Catalano.

Please contact your local Safe and Drug Free Schools Advisory Committee to learn more about each of the districts goals. If you have any suggestions or information that you would like to see on the site, please click.