During a TRAIN workshop at Jackson’s Mill, Frankie Tack, an associate professor at West Virginia University, prepares eight WVU Extension Service faculty to offer their workshops that support individuals working with children and other groups affected by the disorders of substance use at home.
(WVU Photo/Jessica Troilo)
One in four children in the United States has a parent who struggles with drug or alcohol addiction, based on national data, and is at risk of developing a substance use disorder later in life.
To begin to break that cycle and give the adults in those children’s lives the tools to make a difference, West Virginia University The TRAIN project has expanded its program, originally focused on helping K-12 teachers support students affected by addiction, to youth camps nationwide.
TRAIN provides camp staff with an overview of addiction as a disease, including signs and symptoms, and engages them in discussions about how stigma affects people with addiction as well as their families.
Workers learn common ways children adapt to caregiver addictions, combined with specific scenarios for important conversations and practical child support tips.
Frankie Tack, Jessica Troilo AND Lauren Prinzo‘s Project TRAIN – Teacher Resources for Impacting Addiction Now – launched with $486,819 in funding from Westat. The program is based on surveys of approximately 2,500 teachers and 100 youth camp workers and has now trained nearly 500 teachers to support children affected by substance use disorders by caregivers. Through county Extension partnerships, TRAIN’s coverage extends to at least 35 counties in West Virginia.
This summer, in response to demand from the camp community, it was all hands on board for youth camps as Project TRAIN launched a tailored training track for camp staff.
Troilo and Tack are associate professors at WVU College of Applied Humanitieswhere Tack coordinates the program in mental health and addiction studies and Troilo serves as associate dean for graduate academic affairs.
With Prinzo, a WVU Extension Service community and economic development specialists, they are finalizing a contact list to help Extension agents make connections with “any kind of camp you can think of,” according to Tack — “church camps, STEM camps, music camps.”
WVU Extension has taken the lead in providing training, preparing their agents to become “TRAIN Conductors.”
Tack emphasized that “Extension agents who are participating in TRAIN are doing so voluntarily. Because they chose, anyone in the state who wants the training can call their Extension agent or a neighboring agent to do it.”
“Extension’s TRAIN leaders commit to this work because they are passionate about supporting children and families in their communities,” said Prinzo.
She added that additional new songs designed for high school students and community members, also launched this year, help “build resilience to addiction and reduce the stigma associated with addiction by expanding the program to diverse audiences.”
TRAIN participants learn how some children dealing with substance use disorder in the family can adopt a “hero” persona, presenting themselves as serious and responsible. TRAIN recommends that workers praise these children, limit their placement in charge, and make time for them to engage in age-appropriate fun.
Other children may take on the role of scapegoat, who needs positive attention and healthy friendships; the shy lost child who benefits from emotional checks with a caring adult; or the mascot, often the camp clown, who needs attention for pro-social behavior in addition to humor, such as to be given the chance for a leadership role.
TRAIN enables workers to recognize these adaptations and look for other indicators of problems at home, such as “erratic attendance, or showing up needing breakfast,” Troilo said.
Like the TRAIN teacher track, the camp track emphasizes staff self-care, avoiding burnout and setting boundaries. However, for camp staff, training pays more attention to the potential for confusion and over-involvement in campers’ lives and spends less time on burnout.
Tack said that’s because many staff members only get to spend a week with the kids, compared to “teachers’ heavy exposure to kids who may be affected by substance use disorders every day, every day.”
“Some participants have told us they weren’t even sure they could discuss substance use, or they didn’t have the words,” Tack said. “They avoided it and then were left with all this worry, feeling helpless and hopeless.
“If you feel like you have some efficacy in a situation even in a small way, it helps tremendously. Then you might think, ‘At least I’m taking some action. I’m not just sitting in my worry pool.’ This is very true for people, so TRAIN gives them some specific things they can do.
“Our role, once we understood the things they needed, was to put something in their hands that would allow them to do something about it.”
(Note: This is one of a series of new stories published during National Recovery Month highlighting initiatives at West Virginia University to combat the overdose epidemic. Additional stories can be found at health.wvu.edu/addiction/news.)
–WVU-
mm/19/09/2022
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