The new program seeks to help youth quit drugs and drug abuse and it will offer recovery training as well as self-management skills. The program will be a self-help program that enables youths to work together to address and change behaviors that are dangerous like drinking, smoking and drug use among others. In application, it will incorporate 4-steps and utilize an assortment of techniques and tools which include developing and sustaining motivation, putting up with urges, managing behaviors, thoughts and feelings and lastly living a healthy life. Youths will have an assortment of resources from the program to help them quit drugs and drug abuse through avenues such as online youth meetings, message board discussion groups as well as recovery youth handbooks.
It can be confidently stated that this program will be effective since it entails 4-stages that are intensive and well structured for effective drug abuse intervention. The first step entails developing and sustaining motivation and it helps youths to evaluate reasons for transformation as well as the inspiration to continue. The second step helps youths put up with urges and will help the youths understand why urges occur and help them deal with those urges. Consequently, it will help them discover how to manage their reaction to urge or even disregard them totally ("Drug Rehab Programs for Teens and Young Adults," 2018). The third step entails managing behaviors, feelings, and thoughts where youths will learn new techniques of tackling anger, sadness among other upsets, rather than using. The last step entails helping the youths live a balanced life. The approach used here will help the youths uphold their sobriety by thinking what matters to them, setting objectives and discovering interests.
The format of the group program will be self-help programs since the youths under drug influence have different needs. However, the program will unite the youths to work in unity to address behaviors or issues like drug and drug abuse. Completion certificates and incentives will be incorporated in the program to motivate, reward and incentivize program participants. Food will also be provided under the program and the youths will be motivated to work hard to attain their objectives since they will get rewarded when they make some improvements (Monsen, 2017). Also, the completion certificate and incentives will motivate the youths to follow the program up to the end since every time they feel to quit the program, they will remember about the rewards and the certificate they will get upon successful completion or improvement.
There are various ways of measuring the effectiveness of the program. However, measuring the effectiveness of the program can be difficult for the participants as well as the associations. The initial aspect is to understand the meaning of “effectiveness” of the program and the second aspect is to ensure that every goal is measurable (Scheier, 2015). Measuring programs becomes easy when utilizing objective indicators like graduation rates. The measuring is predominantly factual when there is a target objective for the indicator. For example, if the program set as an objective that 90% of the participants will graduate from drug taking, it is exceedingly easy to establish whether the program attained or did not attain the target objective.
The fundamental aspect of the program is tactically helping and support youths understand bad behaviors like drug use, its impact and the prevailing interventions involved. The program focus on helping and supporting the youths understand, recover and treat drug use and its impact. The following are the strategic objectives of the program:
1. Discover the environmental, social, behavioral, and biological causes and impacts of drug addiction and use across a lifetime
2. Create new and advanced approaches to curb drug use and its impacts
3. Create new and advanced treatments to assist youths with substance illnesses attain and sustain a momentous and unrelenting recovery
4. Enhance the public health impact of the program
The specific activities to be conducted under the program will be facilitated by resources and tools. The mission of the program is to help the youths leave baggage and hassles of drug addiction behind, and labor to maintain their own lives. The online youth meetings will be facilitated by compassionate and skilled volunteers who will guide the youths as they discuss matters concerning drugs as they offer them welcoming and safe settings for youth to labor on recovery (Scheier, 2015). Also, messageboard discussion groups will be facilitated by trained and experienced volunteers to help youths overcome drugs, recover, and share strategies and ideas to deal with upsets urges and peer influence. The discussion group offers a safe setting for peer guidance and support to the youths. Lastly, the youths will benefit from recovery youth handbook. The handbook provides the youths with the new program recovery 4-step program and tools in an enticing approach, including increased visual appeal and graphics.
The anticipated challenges when undertaking this initiative is lack of adequate funds fall-back from quitting drugs, lack of a precise method to assess the effectiveness of the program, lack of adequate trained and experienced volunteers, and lack of collaboration from the community and relatives. The success of this program also depends on the contribution from other agencies and stakeholders like the government. Also, different youths affected by drug abuse have different needs, thus requires trained and skilled volunteers to help them.
References
Drug Rehab Programs for Teens and Young Adults. (2018, November 12). Retrieved from https://americanaddictioncenters.org/rehab-guide/teens
Monsen, K. A. (2017). Tools for Intervention Effectiveness Research, Quality Improvement Activities, and Program Evaluation. Intervention Effectiveness Research: Quality Improvement and Program Evaluation, 41-52. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-61246-1_4
Scheier, L. M. (2015). Handbook of adolescent drug use prevention: Research, intervention strategies, and practice.
