| Abstract: | Children of drug dependent parents form a large and growing population at elevated risk of adverse developmental and social outcomes. In this study 36 children and young people described growing up in such families. Parents tried to shield children from exposure, however the majority of young people demonstrated a detailed awareness of their parents' problem with drugs whilst living with the parentally imposed fiction that drugs were not at the heart of their family dynamic. Children and young people are locked into a silence they find difficult to unburden to anyone. The policy imperative is recognition of the impact on children of living daily with parental drug dependence and means of ameliorating their living circumstances in ways that do not label them further. |
