ALTERNATIVES
FACT SHEET
Increasingly,
schools and communities are working together to incorporate recreational,
enrichment, and leisure activities into their approach to prevention.
Drop-in recreation centers, after-school and weekend programs,
dances, community service activities, tutoring, mentoring, and
other events are offered in these programs as alternatives to
dangerous activities, such as substance abuse and violence. While
many alternative approaches have not been evaluated with rigor,
researchers have learned some valuable lessons about elements
that increase an approach’s likelihood of success.
Alternative
strategies are most likely to be effective if they do one or more
of the following:
- Target youth
at high risk who may not have adequate adult supervision or
access to a variety of activities
- Target the
particular needs and assets of individuals
- Provide intensive
approaches that combine many hours of involvement with access
to related services
Researchers
conclude that alternative approaches alone are not enough to prevent
substance abuse among youth. Enrichment and recreational activities
must be paired with other strategies that have been proven effective,
such as policies that reduce the availability of alcohol, tobacco,
and other drugs, as well as social and personal skill- building
instruction. Nevertheless, certain alternative approaches have
proven to be successful in meeting the needs of young people at
risk— the following, in particular:
- Mentoring
programs related to reducing substance use and increasing
positive attitudes toward others, the future, and the school
- Recreational
and cultural activities associated with decreasing substance
abuse and delinquency by providing alternatives to substance
use
- Community
service associated with an increased sense of well-being
and more positive attitudes toward people, the future, and the
community
One way to ensure
that activities interest and meet the needs of young people is
to involve them directly in creating the activities and in selecting
community service opportunities.
ALTERNATIVES
ILLUSTRATION
An
Intergenerational Program for Middle-School Students Combines
Mentoring, Classroom Lessons, and Community Service
Across Ages
is a school-based, intergenerational program in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, that has found ways to bring young students together
with older adults and with their parents, siblings, and other
family members. Targeting sixth graders at high risk, it seeks
to increase resiliency and reduce the likelihood that students
will drop out of school, become adolescent parents, or use alcohol,
tobacco, or other drugs.
The core feature
of the program is the mentoring component: recruiting and
training older adults (age 55 and up), and matching them as mentors
with sixth grade students. Empirical evidence demonstrates that
mentoring has a positive effect on young lives. Mentors can help
youth overcome personal and social barriers, expose them to new
relationships and opportunities, and assist in the development
of problem-solving and decision-making skills. "We provide
fairly intensive in-service training for our mentors," says
Andrea Taylor, principal investigator at the Center for Intergenerational
Learning, Temple University. "Then we match them with the
students and very carefully monitor the relationships during the
course of the school year."
Trained teachers
implement the classroom component with students once a
week for 26 weeks. The Social Problem Solving and Substance Abuse
Prevention modules of the Positive Youth Development
Curriculum address such topics as stress management, peer
resistance skills, and substance abuse and health information.
The community
service component arranges for students to visit with residents
in nursing homes, in keeping with the program philosophy about
understanding people across the life span. Students become providers
of service to their elder partners in the nursing home, as well
as the recipients of service from their mentors.
The family
component, which involves parents, siblings, and other family
members of the students in regular weekend activities, is a way
of helping families support the mentor-youth relationships and
also get them involved in positive activities with their children.
Evaluations
over three years show that youth in the full program were absent
fewer days of the year and demonstrated greater improvements in
their attitudes toward school, the future, and the elderly; their
knowledge of older people; their sense of well-being; their reactions
to situations involving drug use; and their performance of community
service.
"Across
Ages is a wonderful program," concludes Taylor, "and
I think it’s had a tremendous impact on the lives of many,
many children and many, many adults. It can work in a school setting,
it can work as an afterschool program, it can work in a community
setting. It can work in a church setting, and, as such, I think
it has a very important place in a community’s prevention
plan. I also believe that it’s one strategy, and that for
a community to really address its drug prevention issues, or any
number of things that it has to, programs have to be incorporated
as part of a broader design."
