Parents of Lawrence junior high school students will have a special package in their mail by late October.

They’ll be receiving a DVD encouraging them to play active roles in their children’s lives by asking questions about issues critical to teens, including substance abuse and violence.

The DVD is part of a campaign financed through a $9 million Safe Schools/Healthy Students federal grant received three years ago through the efforts of Lawrence public schools, Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center, Lawrence Police Department and Douglas County’s Success by 6 program.

The initiative is meant to prevent violence and substance abuse among youth.

Safe Schools/Healthy Students director Chris Squire said delivery of the DVDs would overlap with a billboard advertising campaign already under way.

“The social marketing campaign is a big part of what the grant is about,” Squire said.

Some of the funds received from the federal grant are required to be spent for marketing, she said. In the past two years, about $30,000 has been spent on marketing.

The focus of the outreach is junior high school students, because that is the age group officials thought they could most influence, Squire said.

“It’s an age at which kids begin to stretch and look out there to see what they can do on their own,” she said. “They are pushing their boundaries and so this is a point at which parents oftentimes have questions about how much control do they continue to have with their child, how many guidelines should they provide their child?”

The campaign encourages parents to keep asking questions and setting limits and boundaries for their children.

According to research by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, children with parents who ask questions about their activities are less likely to smoke, drink or use illegal drugs.

“All of our research suggests that,” said Lauren Duran, communications associate for the center.