Troubled Teens Resources

You already have a troubled teen that you have successfully placed in a boarding school with an excellent drug therapy program. You are reassured of her progress and grateful that you were able to find a boarding school, or in this case, a brat camp that met your teens emotional needs and academic requirements.
But you are now thinking ahead to when your two toddlers enter into the higher grades and become subject to the influence of drug abusing peers. There wasn’t much in the way of community support available for you when you were seeking placement of your older child and you want to see that change.
There are many programs to explore. One such interesting program is Parent Corps.

“The Parent Corps is a new, national effort dedicated to helping parents prevent their children from using alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Modeled on the same principles as the Peace Corps, it harnesses the power of parents working together to keep their children drug free. The Parent Corps recruits, trains, certifies, and pays part-time or full-time salaries to Parent Leaders for two years of service. It institutionalizes the parent movement of the late 1970s into the early 1990s. That movement proved it could change social norms and get results, cutting past-month drug use by two-thirds among adolescents and young adults between 1979 and 1992.
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Drug prevention programs have been around for a long time. Some are aimed at parents, most are aimed at children. Nearly all provide short-term courses on the dangers of drugs and ways to avoid use.

The Parent Corps is an ongoing process that offers parents a strong peer support network grounded by a Parent Leader. Like the neighborhood of yesterday, where everyone looked after every child on the street, Parent Leaders alert parents to the marketing machine behind drugs and help them immunize children against it. The vision is to have Parent Leader in every school in the country by 2014.”

What do Parent Leaders do?

• contact all parents in the school
• educate them about how drugs affect children
• teach them about how children are at risk
• persuade them to believe research showing that they are the most powerful influences in their children’s lives
• mobilize them into groups that stop the marketing of drugs to children
• create a support network that fosters the growth of healthy children capable of reaching their full potential

You can find out how to start a Parent Corps for your community here.