Essay Sample on Drug Abuse Among the Youths

The Innovative Idea

Many youths face a lot of challenges while growing up. For them to reach adulthood, they tend to have undergone a lot of life crisis. Drug abuse is the leading challenge that adolescents face in their lives. Studies show that one in five families have a young person who abuses drugs in one way or the other. There is a need to address the problem of drug abuse because the number of young people who use illegal substances has been on the rise. Some of the reasons why young people abuse drugs in the peer pressure, absence of parents most of the times, media influence, availability of the drugs, and youths having lots of pocket money.

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The parents need to be on the lookout to notice if their children are using drugs. Most of the substances that young people abuse include marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. Some of the signs that are easily noticeable easily include; withdrawal from responsibilities, verbally or physically abusive, the smell of marijuana or alcohol, drastic weight loss or gain. According to Minority Service Institution (2013), drug abuse affects the user in many ways. First, the health and mental health of an individual deteriorates. Drug abuse does not affect the abuser alone but to the whole family and community. Some People who use drugs tend to be violent, and other family members might be at risk of being attacked by the drug victim, hence creating a family crisis.

Therefore, there have to be ways to help curb the problem of drug abuse among the youths. I have decided to write a proposal for a program that will help young people to stop abusing substances and rehabilitate those who are already addicted. The crucial purpose of Drug-Free Youth Program is to support the adolescents involved in drug abuse by providing guidance and counselling services, coming up with recreational activities that will make the participants occupied, and equip the addicts with necessary skills that will enable them to gain an income once they have reformed. Among the people that will participate in the Drug-Free Youth Program are youths who are between 16 years to 21 years of age, both males and females.

The program will apply knowledge of human behavior, social environment, and person-in-environment frameworks with assistance from therapists, psychologists, and the reformed drug addicts. The specialists will help the victims of drug abuse to know their thinking errors, and then help them understand how the errors may lead to deeds that will get them in trouble. The Drug-Free Youths Program will apply strategies like involving the drug addicts in the specialized therapeutic community. The experts will help in the elimination of criminal thinking by using cognitive-behavioral group interventions. The other approach will be the use of self-monitoring exercises by the victims by keeping a journal.

Feedback Systems That I Will Use to Monitor Service Provision, Outcomes, Resources, and Efficiency

First, I will involve the stakeholders in the program. For this case, the participants are the parents to the youths taking part in the program, the community members, local administration and volunteer workers. The stakeholders will ensure the communication of the benefits and rehabilitating the substance abusers. The program will provide an opportunity for willingness to participate. The program will put measures that will ensure that the stakeholders are free to access information to increase credibility.

The second feedback system I will use is to review the progress of the program in the provision of services to the clients. The reviews will tend to pay attention to operational concerns, the efficiency in governance and the controlling of the program organization. The continuous review gives rise to findings and recommendations which will be used to improve the implementation process.

Additionally, the program will ensure the evaluation of outcomes. The appraisal will determine the degree to which the planned and unplanned program desirable changes are attained and the manner in which they have influenced the stakeholders. Preparing for evaluation will help to detect essential data and ensure that the continuing access to information resources will be obtainable through constant reviewing of the program. The managers in charge of the program will be required to emphasize worthy questions to assess the collected data.

Another feedback system will include having an internal monitoring system. The structure will determine if the program if efficient and effective. The performance monitoring will involve coming up with criteria, conducting interviews, and assessing the documentation to determine the carrying out the process of reforming drug addicts.

How I Will Evaluate the Program’s Continuing Effectiveness

The primary method of evaluating the program's effectiveness is to identify the program's objectives and the outcomes. The desired change in the substance abuse youths should be measurable like the achievement of behavior and attitudes of the participants in the program. Also, the program leadership will conduct the collection of data of the practices. The gathering of information will be through tests, interviews, willingness to take part in the program, and obtaining feedback from the stakeholders. I will put into priority development plans to address challenges that will arise. With the help of an evaluation program guide, I will develop annual objectives, and action plans to attain the program's goals. There will be reporting and maintaining of assessment data. The stakeholders in the project will evaluate to improve the standards and desirable change in clients. The obtained data will be used for the improvement of service delivery.

Importance of Evaluating the Program

The progress of Drug-Free Youth Initiative has to be determined through evaluation. The process of appraisal will help in identifying what works and what does not work. It will enable the stakeholders to know if the clients are benefitting from the rehabilitation services or not. Assessing the program will help us to find out if some other subgroups that are benefitting more than others (Vedung, 2017). Identifying what works will help the leaders of the program to allocate more resources on the significant elements of the program that benefits both the clients and the stakeholders.

Evaluation exposes the effectiveness of the program to the people involved. In this case, it will demonstrate that the rehabilitation program is worthwhile to the community members and donors. Findings from the assessment process can be shared among the community members to play a role of good outreach instrument for bringing cooperative associates, recruiting more participants and volunteers, and creating trust with parents, community members, and the program initiators.

How to Monitor Daily Activities and Impact of the Program

There are many ways in which the managers of the program can monitor what is happening daily. The project manager will make unexpected visits to the rehabilitation center and have face to face meeting with the participants. Also, the leader of the program might go through written reports to have a glance at the daily activities recorded. There will be planning of periodic group meetings where the leader of each group will present the daily routine of group members. The program manager will conduct interviews and a survey to analyze the impact of the program.

How I Will Consider the Appropriateness and Utility of Various Sources of Information

I will actively engage the stakeholders in this stage. The stakeholders are the people that will approve the methods of data collection, sampling, analysis, and presentation. They will be the people to determine if the procedures to be used are appropriate and that the data collected is credible. Besides, the stakeholders will determine if the evaluation results will be used in the continuation of the program. Therefore the stakeholders will inform the selection of appropriate procedures in the assessment process.

References

MSI, M. S. I. (2013). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Vedung, E. (2017). Public policy and program evaluation. Routledge.