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Interventions should include strategies that stabilize home placement and improve parent-child interaction. One means of accomplishing this goal is to increase the understanding of the disorder among parents, teachers, law enforcement personnel, and other professionals who might become involved with the affected person. Children with FAS often need specialized parenting techniques because of their difficulty with cause-and-effect reasoning and other executive functioning skills. Caregiver education should highlight and explain differences in the thought processes of children with FAS compared with typically developing children and children with other developmental disabilities. This knowledge would enable parents to avoid potentially difficult situations (e.g., overly stimulating environments) and better manage problems when they do arise. Overall, a better functioning family that results from caregiver education promotes the stable, nurturing home that has been demonstrated to be a protective factor for children with FAS.

Professionals who work with persons affected by FAS could benefit from better understanding of the disorder and services available for affected persons and their families. These professionals can help link families with needed community resources and ensure that affected children receive maximum benefit from services provided. Interacting with social and educational service agencies can be overwhelming and confusing, and each agency typically uses a specialized vocabulary (i.e., jargon) that is difficult for nonspecialists to understand. In addition to being able to diagnose FAS, clinicians should help parents and caregivers identify available services, determine which ones are effective for their children, and understand how to work productively with service providers.

Prenatally exposed infants and children often enter the foster or adoptive care system at an early age. The prevalence of children with FAS or a related disorder in the foster care system is estimated to be 10 times that of the general population. Although PSAs might have information regarding a child's prenatal history, PSA staff generally do not know about FAS, understand how FAS affects the child, or communicate with other service systems regarding the child's FAS status. As a result, foster and adoptive families typically are not educated regarding the long-term effects of FAS and are unprepared to meet their children's needs.

The majority of PSAs require foster parents to take a specified number of educational courses annually. These courses should include education regarding the effects and developmental needs of children with FAS because the majority of foster parents will encounter at least one child with FAS or a related disorder during their time as a foster parent. Projects funded by CDC have developed FAS curricula for parents, educators, and juvenile justice systems.

The assessment process is integral to both the FAS diagnosis and the development of an effective treatment plan. Such a treatment plan minimizes risk factors for lifelong negative consequences and promotes protective factors that maximize developmental potential. Clinicians and service providers must ensure that assessments include communication and social skills, emotional maturity, verbal and comprehension abilities, language usage, and, if appropriate, referral for medication assessments. Finally, the health and development of children with disabilities, including children with FAS, can be promoted by public support for programs that provide access to school, recreational, and social activities.

Alcohol Use During Pregnancy

Because no safe threshold of alcohol use during pregnancy has been established, CDC and NTFFAS/FAE recommend that women who are pregnant, planning a pregnancy, or at risk for pregnancy should not drink alcohol. Women of childbearing age who are not pregnant should drink no more than seven drinks per week and no more than three drinks on any one occasion.

Federal, state, and local agencies; clinicians and researchers; educational and social service professionals; and families should work together to educate women of childbearing age and communities countrywide regarding the risks of drinking alcohol during pregnancy. Women who have had at least one child with FAS are at especially high risk for giving birth to a second affected child. Universal screening for alcohol use among all women of childbearing age might help identify women who drink above recommended levels as well as those who drink and might become pregnant. Screening can be performed in clinicians' offices or in community health settings. Screening techniques that include measures of quantity, frequency, and heavy episodic drinking, as well as behavioral manifestations of risk drinking, have proven to be most beneficial; simple questionnaires have been developed to screen for problematic alcohol use among adults in multiple populations and settings.

Effective prevention programs frequently employ a multicomponent approach that combines cognitive-behavioral techniques with norms clarification, education, and motivational enhancement interventions. For women who screen positive for hazardous alcohol use or abuse, brief interventions that use time-limited, self-help, and preventative strategies to promote reductions in alcohol use in nondependent persons and that facilitate referral of dependent persons to specialized treatment programs are low-cost, effective treatment alternatives. The acronym FRAMES is used to encompass six key elements of the majority of successful brief interventions as follows: 1) feedback of personal risk, 2) responsibility for personal control, 3) advice to change, 4) menu of ways to reduce or stop drinking, 5) empathetic counseling style, and 6) self-efficacy or optimism regarding reducing or stopping drinking. Preconception counseling of women of childbearing age who are at risk for an alcohol-exposed pregnancy and who are not using effective contraception has been demonstrated as a promising method of prevention. Project CHOICES, funded by CDC, is an example of a brief intervention that has been effective.

Tags: Alcoholism

About the Author

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is one of the 13 major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the principal agency in the United States government for protecting the health and safety of all Americans and for providing essential human services, especially for those people who are least able to help themselves.