This document comes from the summary of a research project and contains links to useful resources.

Parental substance misuse and its effects on children co-exist very often with a variety of other problems, such as poverty, mental health issues and unemployment. These other issues most often cannot be disentangled from the substance misuse. This means that much of the evidence around the impact of parental substance misuse is unable to determine a directly causal relationship between substance misuse and specific impacts on children (i.e. it is not clear whether substance misuse is the main or only reason for negative outcomes). There is a general lack of rigorous evaluation of interventions, which are often short-term pilots without sustainability, and as a result it is extremely difficult to identify which approaches work the best. However, we have identified several studies and reviews of studies that indicate positive outcomes.