Chapter 4

The Extent and Scope of the Problem

The language authorizing this Report to Congress specifically required that we describe the extent and scope of the problem of substance abuse among families involved with the child welfare system.  In this chapter we review data available from a variety of sources.  The data available represent different and often conflicting numbers and patterns.  These differences are largely the result of the differing methodologies by which they were obtained, differences in the populations studied, and differences in how the researchers defined both what represented a substance abuse "problem" and what threshold of conduct represented child maltreatment.  In addition, the figures presented below examine the problem from a variety of standpoints:  the prevalence of substance abuse among the child welfare population; the prevalence of child maltreatment and other parenting problems among substance abusing parents; and the prevalence of children residing in families with substance abuse problems, regardless of whether specific maltreatment issues have been identified.

Our basic conclusions are as follows:

• While parents, especially mothers, abuse alcohol and other drugs at lower rates than do persons without children, there are a great many children, 8.3 million, living with substance abusing parents (Huang et al, 1998).  Few of these children come into contact with the child welfare system.
  
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