Parents and Drug Education: parents' concerns, attitudes and needs

Parents play a key role in their children's education and social development and therefore can be very influential to their children's learning about drugs. Despite this there has been little research done to date that explores parents'; perceptions. This paper reports research from questionnaires, which sampled 947 parr!nts of 14-16-year-olds telephone interviews of 60 of these responses and six focus groups of primary and secondary school parents. The issues explored included parents' concerns, needs and knowledge of drugs issues in respect to their children as well as parents' perspective on drug education. The results show that parents are concerned about drugs in relation to their children, and report that drugs are easily available to young people and very much part of today's youth culture. The study revealed that parents are largely misinformed about the drug situation and request accurate and up-to-date information. They are unaware of their children's school drug policies and programmes and feel the need for easier access to relevant services. Parents rate drug education Its important and report it should begin at late primary school age. Parents predominantly want their children to be taught the 'Just Say No' message. Finally, issues of communication about drugs, between parent(s) and their child(ren), were raised. A number of implications of the results for drug education are presented.