Parental Substance Misuse and Child Welfare

Foreword by Professor Jane Aldgate 1. Parental Substance Misuse and Child Welfare. 2. The Dynamics of Substance Abuse. 3. Attachment and Reinforcement: Maintaining the habit. 4. The World of the Child: Vulnerability, risk and resilience 5. Parental Substance Misuse and Child Maltreatment. 6. Growing Up with Parental Substance Misuse. 7. The Impact of Substance Misuse on Parenting 8. Parental Substance Misuse and Child Development 9. Mind the Gap: Dilemmas for Practice 10. Towards a Holistic Approach to Assessment. 11. From Assessment to Intervention: A family perspective. 12. The Way Forward? Appendix 1. Appendix 2. References. Index.

This individual study resource should be of interest to staff and managers who deal with child welfare and with the causes and impact of drug and alcohol problems of parents. The material is laid out in three main sections: the dynamics of substance misuse, including the role of parenting, and the effect of misuse on parenting; the effects of parental substance misuse on children, including key issues such as risk and resilience; the obstacles to effective joint working across children's and adult's teams, and the practical ways of overcoming them, including holistic assessments. This is a fairly dense text, which provides the reader with much authoritative information. But it also includes a useful amount of practical advice.