Children in families with alcohol problems are the innocent and invisible victims of our alcohol culture. These children represent a large share of the children in desperate deserted need of care in our society, risking to develop psychological difficulties and own problems with alcohol and drugs as they grow up. For more than 5 years Denmark has now undertaken a national effort to provide early discovery and support for these children. Interventions consist of bothspecialized treatment services for their parents as well as direct support for the children both in treatment programs and in their school and kindergarten. Untreated alcohol family problems lay a heavy burden on any municipality budget which is why cost-conscious municipalities have experienced that family oriented alcohol treatment services is a strikingly better alternative from a cost-benefit as well as a human perspective.

Kit Broholm, senior adviser, National Board of Health, Denmark
Kit Broholm is a MA in Social Studies and History; with a Master of Public Health. She has been preoccupied with alcohol prevention for more than 20 years; most of the time employed by the department of prevention in the Danish National Board of Health. She has been in charge of several national and
municipality model projects and for the last 7 years the national project on
children in families with alcohol problems.