Afternoons R.O.C.K.

Role Players

Role Players, a division of A Better Way Services, Inc., operates or contracts for alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention programs in Delaware and 18 other counties. Since the inception of Afternoons Rock in Indiana in 1997, Role Players has delivered the drug prevention message to over 1,750 East Central Indiana youth each year.

Afternoons R.O.C.K. in Indiana, funded by the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction SAMHSA SAPT Block Grant ($800,000 per year), is an after school drug prevention program for youth aged 10 - 14 years.

The Acronym "R.O.C.K." represents the mission of the program to provide:

Recreation
Object lessons
Culture and values
Knowledge

.........via active and entertaining Focused and Supportive Prevention Activities designed to teach youth about social and media influences, conflict resolution and refusal/resistance skills, gang and violence prevention and the structuring of leisure time to be free of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use.

Born of a need for constructive, supervised activities for youth during the after school hours of 3pm to 6pm, Afternoons R.O.C.K. in Indiana provides youth with a prescribed strategy of structured and unstructured activities that promote positive social relationships and skills during these "three critical hours" of unsupervised time during which today's youth often find themselves tempted to engage in risky behaviors such as experimentation with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs as well as vandalism, gang activity and sexual experimentation.

Afternoons R.O.C.K. in Indiana programs are targeted toward youth 10 to 14 years of age, as this developmental period has been identified as a "window of increased vulnerability" when youth are more likely to begin using alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. The annual survey Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Use by Indiana Children and Adolescents, administered by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center , reveals that almost two-thirds of all new experimentation with drugs among youth in Indiana occurs between the end of sixth grade and the end of ninth grade.

The Indiana Prevention Resource Center partners with Afternoons Rock in Indiana programs to assist with the incorporation of state-of-the-art prevention research and theory into a community-level prevention practice based on "best practices" strategies for prevention.