The Roles of Parenting and Child Welfare Services in Alcohol Use By Adolescents

This study examined the impact of child maltreatment on adolescents' alcohol use, taking into account parental drinking and the involvement of child welfare services in the adolescents' lives. Nationally, in each week 60,000 child abuse or neglect reports are made; annually, there are 3 million child abuse or neglect reports, involving 5.5 million children. Two-thirds of these reports are investigated, with almost 29% of the investigations leading to substantiation of allegations.

Teenagers are the victims in some 26% of substantiated cases. Among maltreated teens, 23.3% have suffered physical abuse, 16.5% have suffered sexual abuse, and 53.6% have been neglected. Adding to the difficulty of their lives, maltreated teens tend to resort to substance use. As many as 33.6% of children who have received foster care have used illicit drugs, as compared to 22% of children never in foster care. One study reported that 50% of maltreated adolescents used alcohol, a rate exceeding 30-day alcohol-use rates for more comprehensive groups of 8th- (16%), 10th- (33%), and 12th-graders (44%) in another study