Getting It Right on Substance Use Disorder

Nationally, about 12% of children live with a parent who abuses alcohol or other drugs, and about 80% of parents in the child welfare system have substance use disorder.

Margaret Lloyd Sieger is an Assistant Professor in the UConn School of Social Work who teaches courses in substance use disorder, research, program evaluation, and social policy. Her professional and practice background includes clinical work with children and adolescents affected by parental addiction at the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and as a civil litigation paralegal. She now studies mothers and infants with prenatal substance exposure, child protection policies and systems, and family treatment courts.

Professor Lloyd Sieger is leading Connecticut's evaluation of the implementation of the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, known as CAPTA, which requires states to collect notifications when infants are born and found to have been exposed to certain drugs in utero. 

In this episode, she talks about Connecticut's national-model data gathering system on substance abuse disorder, how to help make social workers' lives easier, and what it's like to be part of drafting a new law. 

On this month's visit to Tom's History Corner, we talk about some big anniversaries for UConn, involving intra-university lawsuits, an especially momentous day in the life of Charles Lewis Beach, and the last class in University history who could truthfully say they earned their sheepskins.