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LifeSkills Training Program substance Abuse Council of Indian River County Indian River County CSAC C. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION (Entire Section C, I — 6, not to exceed two a es) 1. List Priority Needs area addressed. Mental Wellness Issues 2. Briefly describe program activities including location of services. The LST program is a three year prevention program designed to be conducted in school classrooms. Based on Theoretical framework, the LST program was developed to impact drug-related knowledge, attitudes and norms; teach skills for resisting social influences to use drugs and promote the development of general personal self-management skills and social skills. Consistent with this, the LST program can be best conceptualized as consisting of management skills. The second component focuses on teaching general social skills. The third component includes information and skills that are specifically related to the problem drug abuse. The first two components are designed to enhance overall personal competence and decrease both the motivations to use drugs and vulnerability to drug related social influences. The problem specific component is designed to provide students with materials relating directly to drug abuse (drug resistance skills, anti-drug attitudes, and anti-drug norms). Services are provided in Indian River County Middle Schools. This year we propose to serve high school students also. The LST program is a primary prevention program that targets individuals who have not yet developed drug abuse problems. The goal of the program is to prevent the use of gateway substance use among adolescents by making an impact on risk and protective factors associated with tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use, particularly occasional and experimental use. Simultaneously a systematic community awareness campaign is conducted. It is designed to impact community norms and educate the community regarding the incidence of substance abuse. On the FYSA Survey, Indian River County scored higher than the State and other like Counties in the following risk factors areas: • Poor Family Supervision • Poor Family Discipline • Family History of Antisocial Behavior • Parental Attitude Favorable to ATOD use • Parental Attitude Favorable to Antisocial • Friends Use of Drugs Behavior • Peer Rewards for Antisocial Behavior • Youth Attitude Favorable to ATOD use • Youth Attitude Favorable to Antisocial • Perceived Risks of Drug Use Behavior • Early Initiation of Drug Use • Sensation Seeking According to Center for Substance Abuse prevention (CSAP), Selected Findings In Prevention, A Decade of Results from the Center For Substance Abuse Prevention, 1997, the findings indicate that the proposed strategies above are effective with this target population. They demonstrated repeated documentation that adolescent risk perceptions were favorably impacted by reducing favorable parental, peer and community attitudes towards ATOD. We must take these facts and information and as with all knowledge, empower ourselves and educate our youth and community. The LST program is a research based, proven effective curriculum in the reduction of adolescent drug usage and has been endorsed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The LST program was selected by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV), University of Colorado at Boulder as a Blueprint 2000 program and OJJDP selected the LST program for replication nation-wide and is 1 of only 11 programs that is considered "exemplary" by all program evaluators. 6 113