Substance Abuse Among Adults of Varying Social Classes - Essay Example

Abstract
While most can use substances such as alcohol on a limited, social basis, there is evidence that a significant component of the population regularly misuses or abuses this and/or other substances to a point at which it may affect the family unit. Children being raised in homes where substances are abused or misused often share similar characteristics that may include withdrawal, depression, eating disorders, or tendencies toward violence or acting out. Because these effects within the children have a strong potential to be carried into the next generation as well as to impact the public health, it is necessary for the social worker to learn how to recognize these signs and develop means of providing the children with the needed elements they are missing within the home. While this seems a nearly impossible task without the investment of vast resources and time into each family unit, there are some tools and practices that may help.

Why is it important for social workers to understand the impact that substance misuse can have on parenting capacity and child development?
However, children living in these types of situations may not have any experience at all with the concept of violence within the home. But they may definitely have numerous other issues to deal with as a result of neglect or other forms of abuse. Parents engaging in substance abuse are least likely to have enough time or attention to provide their children with the necessary skills and attention they require in order to thrive while the parents may also be spending much-needed time and money away from the home as a means of supporting their habit. Children living in this sort of environment may find themselves needing to survive without adequate clothing, food, or housing. In fact, they are thrust into such situations that they find no other way but to raise themselves without the benefit of proper parental guidance or support. This situation can have serious public implications as teenagers, having grown up in this sort of environment, tend to have little or no respect for authority, tend to gather together in gangs as a means of filling their needs for support and ‘family’ and can cause a great deal of trouble for themselves and their community. Furthermore, these teenagers, after having received no help or guidance from the family unit, tend to grow into adults who also engage in substance abuse or misuse and thus pass this poor behavior on to their children as they model the behaviors they grew to expect from their parents. Thus, an abusive or neglectful cycle is established that has the potential to perpetuate itself for generations into the future. Therefore, it is necessary for the social worker to be trained in recognizing the signs of substance abuse within the home and to work with the children and the parents to discover ways in which the children’s needs, once they’ve also been identified, can be met.

Aims and Objectives
The purpose of this research will be to discover the impact that substance misuse or abuse and sometimes the associated elements such as domestic violence and mental health can have upon an individual’s ability to parent effectively. The primary objective of this study is to discover the importance of social workers to recognize when a person’s abilities to parent are being affected by substance misuse/abuse so they may effectively introduce support programs that will supplement the unmet needs of the children.

Methodology
To discover the impact of substance abuse/misuse on the individual’s ability to parent, this study will investigate some of the ways that domestic violence and mental health might affect parenting, recognizing these issues as common effects of substance misuse/abuse, by looking at how these issues affect the growth and development of the children and the importance of such knowledge base for social workers. This will be accomplished through a comparison of the available literature, understanding how substance abuse/misuse has been documented to affect the individual and how this extends outward to affect the family.