An Action Plan to Tackle Teenage Pregnancies, Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Essay Sample)

Topic: An Action Plan to Tackle Teenage Pregnancies, Alcohol and Drug Abuse
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Program Rationale and Statement of Need
This action plan proposes a program that will indulge the teenagers undertaking High school studies between the age of 13 and 16 at the high school level. It seeks to be a value addition initiative that will require the involvement of the community at large in form of information sharing. The Far Rockaway community comprises of dynamic individuals with different backgrounds, upbringing and lifestyles. Majority of the people living in this area are characterized by middle level to low incomes. As a strategy to prevent teenage pregnancies in Far Rockaway community high school, New York, it aims at exploring an effective way to help parents and guardians of teens in our community to deal with pregnancy, drug and alcohol abuse.
The students will be required to have a participative approach with the trainer and have a feel a different kind of learning that draws from real life experiences in a bid to curb the increasing number of school drop outs attributed to problems of teenage pregnancies, alcohol and drug abuse. At the end of their secondary education, they will ne issued with a certificate to show that they took part in the program and successfully completed, hence will be the pioneers of the behavioral change in the larger community.
Literature review
According to Wight, (1997), teacher and workers in the public health sector assume that sex education is an automatic way to reduce sexual behavior generally and hence reduce the risk of teenage pregnancies. More sex education can either result into more safe sex, reduced transmission of sexual infections or even reduced teenage pregnancies. An approach from a counseling perspective will give it more meaning as the counselor will seek to understand the rationale behind the increased teenage pregnancies in a community. Another assumption is that sex education will reduce the teenage abortions being done around the clinics. Some others think that sex education will contribute to an increase in the sexual activities among the youth due to the various subjects covered making them aware of the human anatomy. However, it is the hope of those involved in the design of sex education that will override many other personal and social influences on sexual behavior especially among the teenagers. Researchers in the larger USA region have identified practices that sex education need to incorporate for the successful reduction of teenage pregnancies and these include focus on issues of not taking risks, abstinence or condom use. Sex education will e successful if an approach of students being taught in groups as opposed to a lecture format, providing information on the availability of family planning services, teaching teenagers on resistance of peer pressure, including role playing and trainers receiving full training before embarking on the sex education exercise.
Needs of the youth and the community at Rockaway are numerous but this action plan will concentrate on teenage pregnancies, drugs and alcohol abuse as well as counseling. Education and academic needs of the teenagers coupled with parenting, family communication and family management are some of the aspects that will go a long way in curbing the teenage pregnancies being recorded. In the community, 13 percent of all births to teens are between the age of 14 and 16 while the teenage pregnancy rate stands at 13% which is really high when compared to the larger Queen region. Other statistics reveal that births to single mothers in the region stands at 55% while the 59% of the children are born in poor families. Child abuse and neglect is also evident in the Queens region and less than 33% of the parents report knowing where to obtain help in resolving parent/child conflicts. The education levels are low as 41% of the populations do not have a high school diploma and the rate of school parents attending events at their child school stands at a third. Taking a look at the economic conditions of the population, 65% of them live in public housing and 40% have incomes below the poverty levels, 59% of the children are born in poor families as the unemployment rate for adults stands at 8.7% being the highest in the region and 7% of the female population in Rockaway has less than a 9th grade education.
An established means of measuring the success of sex education among the teenagers will be a crucial assessment to the training offered. It needs to include an assessment of the teenagers involved in the education in terms of their understanding on safe sex, instances of indulge in sex voluntarily of due to pressure, knowledge on where to get contraceptives, expression of what they want from a relationship and a fewer instanced of sexual encounters that are later regretted. On the long term perspective, the success will be attributed to reduction of abortions of teenagers, fewer cases of sexually transmitted diseases, fewer cases of unsafe or unwanted sex, delayed first sexual encounter and more appropriate use of contraceptives.
Redman, Goudie and Taylor (1997), agree that developing the appropriate services for the young people will be a move in the right direction towards the reduction of the large number of unplanned and unwanted teenage pregnancies. A research carried out in Dundee found out that it is important that young people are in a relaxed and informative atmosphere when it came to matters to deal with sexual behavior. Valued among the teenagers is the need for confidentiality and anonymity as the counselors offer a broadly based service in a non-judgmental way and positive image so that a teenager attending the session will feel at ease to share. A counselor will understand that the teenagers also need to be in an environment they are treated as equals, where under 16s are welcomed as they see people they relate to and they are able to seek advice but allowed to make their own decisions. Teenagers will feel free and valuable in environments where young people facilities are available, the services offered from people speaking on real life experiences, the teenagers have a say in how the services are run and a venue that offers a variety of teenage friendly facilities.
According to Peckham (1997), young people will be more attracted to a facility that offers a variety of facilities as opposed to one that concentrates on sexual health advice only. Having staff members that include females will attract more teenagers due to the since of balance seen as well as allowing individual time with clients lasting longer than the normal hours. Goodrich & Simon (2005) also agree that support services are a central component in the strategies to address teenage pregnancies, promote mental health and respond to drug related concerns majorly among the youth as well as the adults. Environments conducive for the young people to promote their health will be such that they recognize the changing needs of the young people as well as their enthusiasm for technology and other spheres of life. School based health provision for teenagers is increasingly perceived as having the potential to provide comprehensive, easily accessible and confidential services within a familiar environment friendly to the growth of the young person in terms of education need, spiritual and emotional. Hence it is essential to create a link between the school curriculums and the practical support of the health of the teenagers during and off class hours.
According to Kane (2008), health education will not only involve sexual education but also indulge on risky behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse, again in line with the notion that multi-component interventions are more likely to be effective than single component interventions. Fletcher, Et al (2007), agrees that a long term outcome relating to sexual and other health and social outcomes need a holistic program of education and support for the teenagers aged 13 - 15s who are the most at risk of drug misuse, alcohol abuse and teenage pregnancies. Not only id drug use harmful to the health of the teenagers but it is among the most serious of crimes in terms of impact on the legal and the prison system in majority of the countries of the world. Hsing (1995) says it is one of the main reasons the high numbers of school drop outs are recorded in most of the states in America. It is estimated that in 1995 in the United States only, 1.5 million individuals were put behind bars, the crime being sale and/use of drugs which is prohibited by the law.
National concern made the federal government as early as 1985 recognize drugs and drug abuse hence increase its budgetary spending in the war against drugs, as a crime bill was passed in 1994 to appropriate approximately $30 billion and hire 100,000 more police officers towards the same initiative. The New York state on the other hand revised its penalties against the drug users and sellers from a minimum of 15 years to life imprisonment. It also invested in the rehabilitation of drug users through a two year drug treatment program. Better outcomes are being reported as a result of this considering the re-arrests from the vice reduced to 44% as compared to 18% of the average prisoners. Drug abuse in New York can be attributed to lack of proper parental supervision and guidance of children as they grow up especially when they reach their teenage stage. When teenagers drop out from school due to one reason or another, the chances of falling into the traps of drug dealing is high. Increased frustration coupled with relatively low chances of securing an employment opportunity may drive a school dropout into using and dealing with drugs.
Drug education and prevention among the young people’s development has a major focus as the government policy place...