Re: Drug Testing in Child Protection Cases

[Sherrill Clark <sjclark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There is a series of NIDA mongraphs that may be helpful to you.
I think you can explore the titles from the NIDA web site.
http://www.nida.nih.gov./

You should know that urinalysis is very ineffective at detecting
alcohol use.  Drug testing is often a condition of substance
abuse treatment. However drug testing alone is not sufficient to
assess a person's ability to abstain from drugs/alcohol.

As someone who is concerned with improving social work practice
in the area of child welfare, I am very interested in the
overlaps and gaps between the child welfare system and the
substance abuse system.  The recent Adoptions and Safe Families
Act (Nov. 1997) in the US has mandated at least a descriptive
study of the effects and extent of parental substance abuse on
the child welfare system.  The new concurrent planning
techniques require close interdisciplinary work
Sherrill Clark, MSW, PhD
California Social Work Education Center
University of California at Berkeley
School of Social Welfare
120 Haviland Hall
Berkeley CA 94720-7400
(phone 510-642-9273)