Parental Substance Misuse the effects on Children - Essay Example

Pregnancy and parenthood are important events to all people. They can serve as the spur for substance abusers to seek treatment, to continue treatment, and/or to seek assistance for their children. Parenthood may present a major opportunity for assisting clients in their treatment and assessing the needs of their children. This review has been prepared with the intention of encouraging efforts to respond to this opportunity in the United Kingdom. The proportion of women in drug abuse treatment programs or in need of drug abuse treatment has been increasing.

During 2004, 30% of all admissions to drug treatment were female. (Rosenbaum, 2005) Much less is known and documented about the risks of child maltreatment associated with parental cocaine use. This is true despite the prevalence of cocaine use and evidence that cocaine dependency can substantially incapacitate the user (Robins, 2000). A May 2000 United Kingdom study yielded an “extremely conservative” estimate that some 2.2 million English are “hard core” cocaine addicts. Such users are reportedly over represented among the homeless and persons arrested for crimes.

(Saunders, 2002) According to a study ‘The addicts who break into our homes, turn our neighbourhoods into war zones, and spread disease by selling their bodies are not casual, once-a-month users of illicit drugs-they are UK’s hard core addicts. The children of the hard core addict suffer even more severely, often from physical abuse, and always from neglect’. (Babbie, 2001) Generational continuity in the use of alcohol and drugs is documented in a number of recent studies (Coombs & Dickson, 2001).

Adolescents are more likely to drink and use other drugs if their parents do. For example, Kandel and associates (2002) found that 82% of drinking families rise youth who also drink, while 72% of abstaining families produce