Troubled Teens Resources

Some school districts are dead serious about teen crisis intervention in the area of teen alcohol consumption. Police are tired of scraping bodies off the road and parents are fed up coming home to trashed homes where unauthorized teen parties have spun out of control.

“Recent suburban drinking parties attracted 70 teens on Grand Island, another 34 in Evans and 22 in Clarence. Eight students in Sloan showed up drunk at a homecoming dance.

Those four incidents all occurred over two weekends.

Once again, alarm bells are ringing across the region about the prevalence of underage drinking.

The alarm has sounded many times over the years, but now the public is starting to learn what educators and advocates for alcohol treatment have been shouting for years:

Teen drinking, always a serious problem, is getting worse.

“They’re drinking younger, they’re drinking more, and they’re drinking for the purpose of getting drunk…”

Schools have formulated a three-pronged plan. All athletes sign a contract agreeing to a code of conduct. Many school districts never enforce the agreements. This school did - over 3 dozen athletes will not finish their season.

“I think the bottom line from youngsters who watch the situation is ‘Oh my gosh, they’re serious. The school district does what they say they’re going to do…”
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They are demanding compliance from parents, even going so far as to mandate that they attend an alcohol-ed class if they want their teenager to be granted permission to attend dances and proms.

Last, help and or therapy is sought for troubled teens found to have an alcohol or drug problem.

Teen crisis intervention is very often conducted via community supported programs, school interventions and other efforts. Then sometimes, an intervention occurs one on one. Sometimes it is a story that turns teens at risk away from the temptation of drugs. Especially in a time when media and the culture suggest that getting high has no consequences.

The following is excerpted from a father’s post who wants very much to make an impact on the teens in his community.

“I heard the news Tony Parham had committed suicide, Then Howard Larsen tried to kill himself by jumping out of a car on the fwy, There were two more suicides that year. Monte Burlingame freaked out on acid. He was running in the middle of the street screaming …He was never the same after that.
[…]
Mark michaels was found attached to a Basket ball pole at the school one morning with one arm around the pole walking and spinning around and around he had been there all night. mumbling incoherently…

Mark Morisson was pulled over by the cops he had a bag on him. he swallowed it and started to fight with th cops, the bag broke and he died in Huntington Beach jail of a heart attack from all the Coke in his system.”

The parent is utilizing a website, Parent Team, that was created by a community of parents who are using every tool they can to stop the devastation teen drinking and drugging have wrought in their town.

“I’m here because I’ve been down your road and I know what’s coming around the next corner for you. There is a fatal wreck waiting to happen with your or some of your friends name in it.”

(Source)

Rivaling teen age drug abuse in it’s destructive impact on our nation’s teenagers is teen age alcohol abuse. It is a scourge that parent of troubled teenagers have to vigilant about at all times, but summer is when the dangers seem to multiply.

With more time on their hands, troubled teenagers are more likely to engage in drinking at the beach or pool side. There are always fatalities on our nations lakes and rivers from drunk teens careless use of jet skis and speed boats.

“According to SADD statistics, every 32 minutes of every day, a life is lost as a result of an impaired-driving crash.”

Before school let out for the summer, students from SADD demonstrated those statistic to their fellow teens in hopes of painting a graphic picture of how those statistic would decimate their class. Teen help is essential in the battle against teen drinking.

“This empowers kids to reach out to their own peers, and that has a powerful effect,” Petrone said. “They expect parents or leaders to say this, but they are not expecting it from a student — it’s all about empowering students.”
[…]
“It was a normal sunny Thursday morning for Meredith Fall, a junior at Juan Diego Catholic High School. But at 9:09 her day changed. From then on she was a “ghost” in the halls of the school.

Students at Juan Diego Catholic High School walk the halls dressed as ghosts during an activity to show that every 32 minutes a life is lost in an impaired-driving accident…”

White-faced and silent, no one spoke to Fall or more than a dozen other students who were plucked by the school’s Grim Reaper throughout the day to represent sobering fatality statistics linked to drunken driving”.

(Source)

Teen help does not mean supervising your teenagers’ “kegger”. Teen help does not mean collecting all the car keys at your kid’s pool party and then going inside to settle in for a movie. What should be patently obvious is apparently a point of contention in the ongoing battle to prevent teens at risk from drinking.

Many parents feel that allowing their teens access to alcohol under controlled conditions will teach them responsibility. However, the prevalent word from the experts is that is just a comforting, but spurious notion.

“In many cases parents do this under the false assumption that they are protecting their kids. They make the assumption that they won’t drink elsewhere and that’s not true,” says Robert Lindsey, director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence.

In addition to drunken-driving accidents that too often end tragically, teen-drinking parties can spawn sexual assaults, stabbings, brawling and neighborhood vandalism. “We all know we’re fooling ourselves if we think underage drinking is fine,” says Stacy Saetta, a legal policy researcher at the Center for the Study of Law and Enforcement Policy in Felton, Calif. “Simply to say it’s a rite of passage isn’t good enough.” Even when parents think they are doing the right thing by gathering car keys of partiers, “kids still get away and still drive drunk,” she said. “These parties are very, very dangerous.”

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(via Save Our Youth)

Teen crisis intervention programs developed across the nation represent millions of dollars and man hours dedicated to diverting teens from the often fatal consequences of underage drinking. Parents who fail to see the immensity of the problem are failing their teenagers first and foremost.

Teen help often is initiated when one parent in a community has “had enough”. Teen crisis intervention designed to circumvent teenage drinking are often subverted by parents who have the misguided idea that if a teen drinking party is under “adult supervision”, that there is little damage done.

Well one parent in Lafayette has had enough with that mentality and has started an online petition to deal with it.

“Joan Grimes has decided to turn her outrage into action. She has written a petition asking the Lafayette City Council to “prohibit the hosting of private parties or gatherings where alcohol is consumed by minors.” Typically, these are called “Social Host Ordinances,” and they are becoming increasingly popular across the country. Berkeley just passed one, Orinda and Moraga have them on their books, San Diego and Ventura Counties have them, Marin County passed one unanimously last fall, and Alameda County was expected to pass one in May. Also, the Contra Costa Alcohol and Other Drugs Advisory Board is collecting information for an ordinance for unincorporated Contra Costa County.”

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It is all too true that we will all be reading headlines this summer of this or that teen who lost their life because of drinking and driving. For the teen whose foolishness might cost the lives of their friends, they face a life forever shadowed by the guilt of that tragedy. Yet there are those parent who shrug off the dangers of alcohol and actions by concerned parents, such as the petition above, are needed when such irresponsible parenting brings harm to the community at large.

Teen crisis intervention programs are typically spearheaded by community groups who want more safeguards and effective solutions in place when dealing with out of control teens. Some very innovative programs have sprung up across the country by groups of parents who have become alarmed over the prevalence of teen drinking and drug abuse.

In the past, such programs have primarily targeted teens. Unfortunately the laxity of many parents around teen drinking have caused some communities to create laws that hold parents as accountable as their teens if a drinking party goes South. Such as this ordinance recently introduced in a California town that targeted parents who host underage drinking.

“The city is revising its “unruly party” ordinance to make it easier to crack down on teenage drinking — including a provision that changes the definition of a party from five underage revelers to two. The new ordinance will eliminate the current $1,000 cap on the amount the city can recover from party hosts — or their parents — when police respond to gatherings.”

The changes in the ordinance were due to a letter sent out by a parents that described the vandalism and excessive drinking that occurred at an unauthorized party held in their home.

“Local high school parents responded by forming healthy choices committees that promised to work with the schools and community to cut down on teen drinking and drug use and come up with alternative activities for teenagers.”
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As a parent, you have more power in your community than you may realize. Be pro-active in teen crisis intervention in your neighborhood, It can be as simple as circulating a letter and approaching your local officials for support.

“We’re building a reputation that if you’re having a party, you’re probably going to see us,” Prevost said.”

Such is the determination of a group of Vermont law enforcement officers that take part in a teen crisis intervention program known as START, or the Stop Teen Alcohol Risk Team.

Developed to combat the scourge of underage drinking, SMART exists to prevent parties from ever starting, breaking up ones that they find and educating adults on the risks they incur if they facilitate a teen drinking party.

“The START team can be activated anytime, anywhere. Officers will even get called out from home.

Team members said each underage drinking party police find out about is investigated, and the adults responsible for providing the space — whether they are aware of the party or not — and the alcohol can be charged criminally or civilly.”

Instead of facing criminal charges, teenagers discovered drinking are put through a diversion program that includes counseling if an alcohol screening test indicates any signs of alcoholism.

“If they satisfactorily complete the requirements laid out by diversion (that are individual, based on screening) they have a clean slate,” said Montpelier Police Sergeant Facos.”

Though alcohol and drug abuse are a concern throughout the year, the approach of prom season and summer have communities gearing up to make underage drinking as difficult as possible, both for the teenagers and the misguided parents who allow the parties to go on.

“Although the underage drinking ethic hasn’t changed, as more parents become educated about the hazards of underage drinking, their attitudes seem to be changing.

“I don’t get yelled at or hung-up on anymore by parents I call in the middle of the night,”

(Source)