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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive overview of the substance use disparities among American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth, the contributing factors to these disparities, proven and promising approaches through strengths-based methods, barriers to implementation of prevention and treatment efforts, and future recommendations for effective programs and research.

Approach – We have conducted a thorough literature review of relevant research studies, as well as a review of government, tribal, and community-based curricula and resources. This review of programs is not exhaustive but provides several examples of best practices in the field and suggestions for future directions.

Social implications – We strongly advocate that to accurately explore the true etiology of substance abuse and to respond to the concerns that AI/AN have prioritized, it is necessary to utilize a strengths-based approach and draw upon traditional AI/AN perspectives and values, and active community participation in the process. More specifically, prevention and treatment programs should use methods that incorporate elders or intergenerational approaches; foster individual and family skills-building; promote traditional healing methods to recognize and treat historical, cultural, and intergenerational and personal trauma; focus on early intervention; and tailor efforts to each Native nation or community.

Value – Ultimately, to reduce substance abuse disparities in AI/AN youth, we must find better ways to merge traditional Native practices with western behavioral health to ensure cultural competency, as well as to develop mechanisms to effect system- and policy-level changes that reduce barriers to care and promote the well-being of AI/AN youth, families, and communities.

Children experience trauma more often than many early childhood educators realize. As many as 26% of children experience multiple trauma events such as abuse, neglect, parental substance abuse, parental incarceration, and so forth. Trauma impacts brain development in many negative ways that may have serious consequences on the child’s ability to learn, grow socially and emotionally, and develop physically. These brain changes also change how the child will play in the early childhood classroom, and information is given to help recognize the signs of trauma in children. The early childhood educator can make trauma-sensitive modifications in the classroom to assist the traumatized child’s ability to play out the problem. School counselors can be a resource for assisting early childhood teachers when working with traumatized children. A brief description of the importance of play therapy as a developmentally appropriate method to help traumatized young children is provided.

Both research and child protection practice are still far away from having uniform definitions of violence against children. The different disciplines involved in the sectors of national child protection systems rely on separate discourses and terms; definitions are sometimes rather general or implicit, and operationalizations of important elements are rare. The various terms in use – child maltreatment, child abuse and neglect, child endangerment, children at risk, children in need, etc. – speak of the variety, not only of concepts, but also of practices. With respect to the latter, definitional issues are also issues of the scope and thresholds of intervention. This chapter provides an overview of major terms and definitional approaches to violence against children and identifies eminent differences between them. Findings from several studies on the Swiss child protection system, including the first multi-sectorial national survey on agency responses to child maltreatment, illustrate how professionals use definitions and the consequences of having multiple definitional concepts for documenting reported cases. We conclude by advocating for a consensus-based interdisciplinary process of developing shared definitions of violence against children.

In face of global deinstitutionalization policy, some aging parents find themselves confronting violence and crime in the family due to abusive behavior from their adult child with mental disorder. The aim of this paper is to explore and understand the meaning given by aging parents to this deviant behavior and the different ways in which they cope with a lifetime in the shadow of violence.

Data collection was performed through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 16 parents, followed by content analysis.

Three themes that expressed the meaning attributed to life with ACMD in the shadow of violence: (1) constructing parental identity in a shared reality of violence, (2) social and family networks as a resource in coping with ACMD, and (3) keeping a daily life routine as an anchor in a vulnerable, abusive relationship

Intervention with such families should focus on the life review process as a therapeutic tool. Interventions should also provide a “safety belt,” including health services, public social networks, and knowledge regarding their right for self-protection.

Old age becomes an arena for redefined relationships combining increased vulnerability, needs of both sides, and its impact on the well-being of the ageing parents. This calls for better insights and deeper understanding in regard to intervention with such families.

In this chapter we reinvigorate socialization as a theoretical framework for studying gender and sexuality, and we do so by focusing attention on the sexual socialization of young children. We provide an overview of the literature on the sexual socialization of young children. We discuss why researchers should be interested in childhood sexuality, and the role of parents, peers and schools, and the media in sexual socialization. We also address three overarching issues: methodology, the hegemony of heterosexuality, and child sexual abuse. Throughout, we suggest and organize some of the empirical questions that form a research agenda for those interested in this topic.