New Forum Website

I’ve been working on a new website for the Drug Education Forum which I hope you’ll want to go and take a look at.

As you’ll immediately see the new site includes video that we shot asking young people to talk about their sense of the value of drug education as well as other resources that we’ve produced over the last few years.

The idea is that we’ll also integrate this blog into the main site which will I hope will make the rest of our site more accessible.

Anyway I’m hoping you’ll like the site and if you have any feedback you’ll let me know.

Filed under: Drug Education Forum Members

A School-Based, Family-Centered Intervention to Prevent Substance Use: The Family Check-Up

Mike Ashton has been kind enough to alert me to another paper that he thinks could interest this audience.
This one looks at the Family Check-Up intervention, which as the abstract to the paper points out is a "selected intervention model that can be delivered in contexts such as schools that serve at-risk children and families."
It aims to influence risk factors which are associated

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Social norms interventions to reduce alcohol misuse in university and college students

We’ve been interested in social norms education for a while now, so this paper, from the Cochrane Collaboration, on the impact of campaigns directed at university students drinking is very interesting.
In their ‘plain language’ summary the authors say:
This systematic review was based on 22 controlled trials involving 7275 college or university students randomly assigned to the social norms

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Drug Test Your Kids?

The Times has a story about a drug testing kit that appears to be being marketed at parents.
The paper allows Martin Barnes from DrugScope to make the case against testing:
"Many parents are understandably anxious about drugs, but it is important to be informed, remain calm and keep communication open if they suspect a child is using them.
"Parents need to build up a degree of trust

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Preventing Drug Use – NIDA Guide

NIDA, the National Institute for Drug Abuse in the USA have produced a guide for parents, educators and community organisations interested in preventing drug problems in young people.
The whole thing is worth looking at but I thought I’d focus on the principles they enumerate, each of which is sourced back in the pamphlet to the research which they’re drawn from. 

Prevention

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Dutch Advisory Committee call for changes to drug policy in Holland

As regular readers will know while the normal geographical remit for the Drug Education Forum is England we like to keep an eye on what’s going on internationally. So I was interested to see what the Advisory Committee on Drugs Policy in the Netherlands has been saying about drug policy in that country.
Amongst the policy recommendations they make to the Minister of Health there is a call to

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Friday Night and Saturday Morning – working with young people at weekends

Children and Young People Now have been asking youth workers about their thoughts about the plans to extend youth provision to the weekends.
The magazine reports that 69 per cent thought that it would be possible to increase the number of weekend activities for young people. They also found that 46 per cent of respondents reported that young people had asked for more facilities to be

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links for 2009-07-09

• CBBC Newsround | UK | Call to ban smoking in cars
  Smoking in cars where children are passengers should be banned, according to an expert in children's health.

  Professor Terence Stephenson says that cigarette smoke is made more dangerous in cars, because people breathe it in, in a small closed-in space.

  (tags: tobacco)
• Making smoking history for our children : Nottingham City Council
  The number of smokers in Nottingham is the third highest in the country, but a new study reveals that many young people in the City don't like smoking, don't like seeing other young people smoking, and want adults, particularly teachers, to set an example by not smoking.
  (tags: tobacco Nottingham)
• Young people drink just for 'something to do', Drinkaware survey reveals. | Drinkaware
  One in four (25%) young people drink alcohol just for ‘something to do’ according to new research launched by alcohol charity Drinkaware*. Drinking alcohol ranks highest in preferred activities over playing sports, reading and going to the gym or pool and more than two thirds (71%) of 16-17 year olds drink once a week or more. The same survey also revealed that three fifths (59%) of professionals working with under-18s don’t have the support and information they need to provide education about alcohol.
  (tags: alcohol)

Filed under: Delicious

Treatment Figures for Children in England

A number of the papers are reporting figures on children and young people’s drug treatment.

The Metro says:

figures, from the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, show 11,294 under-16s were receiving help for addictions.

Of those, 4,005 – 57 of whom were under 12 – were treated for alcoholism.

A further 232 were being treated for cocaine misuse, 36 for crack, 165 for ecstasy and 93 – including ten under the age of 12 – for heroin addiction.

There were also 22 under-12s who were treated for solvent abuse.

The Daily Mail says the figures come from questions raised by the Conservative health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, who acuses the government of failing to prioritise this issue and calls for action to be taken.

In March this year the NTA published a report into their treatment of young people; at the time we pointed out they had told us:

there are more young people in treatment, 23,905 under 18s in 2007/08, up from 17,001 in 2005/06.’

So, what we’ve learnt from today’s stories is that more young people are in treatment between 16 and 18 (12,611) than under 16 (11,294).

Back in March the NTA argued:

There is growing public concern about young people’s use of drugs and alcohol.’ Though this concern is understandable, there is little evidence to support the perception that drug and alcohol use is spreading among young people.

Filed under: treatment

Youth workers and teachers lack alcohol education support

Children and Young People Now:

Three-fifths of professionals working with under-18s do not have the support and information they need to provide education about alcohol, according to a report by charity Drinkaware.

The Telegraph also have the story:

On average, teenagers said that they had their first drink at 13 and were just 14 the first time they became properly drunk.

The teenagers were less concerned about getting drunk than about leaving education without any qualifications, having unsafe sex or taking recreational drugs, the survey, by the charity Drinkaware, which is funded by the alcohol industry, found.

Drinkaware have a press release and a number of videos, one of which I’ve embedded below.

Filed under: alcohol

Young People’s Development Programme evaluation

Research into the Young People’s Development Programme, which aimed to reduce teenage pregnancy and substance misuse amongst vulnerable young people aged 13-15 concludes:

No evidence was found that the intervention was effective in delaying heterosexual experience or reducing pregnancies, drunkenness, or cannabis use. Some results suggested an adverse effect. Although methodological

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