Toolkit for alcohol workers

   Introduction

This set of toolkits has been produced to attempt to improve professionals’ abilities to meet the needs of children of problem drinking parents. Despite the well-documented effects that parental drinking can have on children’s lives and well-being, professionals who come into contact with these children often take little action to support the child unless there are immediate presenting issues requiring child protection procedures to be invoked. Although there may be a number of reasons for this, there are actually relatively simple steps that can be taken to support the child.

Although most of these toolkits are targeted at generic professionals with little experience of dealing with alcohol-related issues, alcohol workers also find themselves feeling limited in their capacity to consider the needs of the children of their clients. This toolkit aims to help them, within the limits of their role and resources, to understand how they can contribute to preventing harm and enabling support to be given to the children of problem-drinkers.