Summary - Department of Health and Ageing

Adolescence is a time when young people become increasingly independent and mobile
and are subject to a widening range of social influences 1 . Social changes over recent
decades, including technological advances and free market competition, have meant that
many more young people have to obtain higher educational qualifications than in previous
years in order to enter employment. These changes underlie the current trend to spend
more years in education and to delay—often until the late twenties—the transition from
living with parents to independent living.
Parent education—that is, information or instruction delivered to parents with the aim of
encouraging healthy family development—may range from one-off messages using social
marketing strategies to self-help books or self-completed computer programs and through
to sequenced curriculum packages involving professional contact over a number of
sessions. Programs for this age group include generic parent education and programs for
those people assisting parents concerned by their children’s illicit drug use.
While the model of sequenced parent groups is emerging as a useful approach, alternative
models such as phone counselling are also being trialled with positive results and future
investment should encourage innovation in service delivery models. Among the
approaches reviewed, the Australian Parenting Adolescents a Creative Experience program,
delivered through secondary schools, shows promise as a way of reducing early youth
drug use. There has, to date, been insufficient research to know whether parent education
can reduce adolescent tobacco, alcohol or cannabis use, but there are good grounds for
thinking that it might be effective. There is evidence, however, that parent education may
assist families facing a high number of risk factors for harmful youth drug use.
More intensive parent education has been investigated for delivery in settings such as
juvenile justice and youth drug abuse treatment. This approach appears feasible but more
research is needed to establish whether it can prevent harmful drug use.
Family intervention programs involve work with one or more parents, adolescents and
other family members together, to encourage healthy family development. There has been
limited research into the effectiveness of these programs in reducing adolescent tobacco,
alcohol or cannabis use, although it is known that drug use is influenced by family factors.
Family therapy models are used in Australia to assist families facing difficulties with youth
cannabis use, and some family therapy programs in juvenile justice or drug treatment
settings appear to be effective. These interventions, however, are not well developed in
Australia.
1
Adolescence, for the purposes of this paper, may be understood as the age when children in Australia
start the transition from primary school into high school and continuing until the establishment of
economic independence.