A couple of weeks ago I met up with Lovisa Liyanage, the assistant co-ordinator of Hope UK’s Voluntary Educator Training Programme, I’ve typed up my notes and thought they might be of wider interest.
For those not familiar with Hope UK, they’re a Christian drug education charity that grew out of the temperance movement, and now through their volunteer educators tries to enable children and young people to take drug free choices. They adopt a positive life skills approach which equips young people to make their own choices, whilst encouraging them to consider drug-free options. This means their educators work with young people on peer resistance, self-esteem, and decision-making as well as drug knowledge.
I’d asked for the meeting to get a better sense of how their educators work and how they are trained. At our last Forum meeting their Executive Director, George Ruston, told us how they were hoping to treble the number of trained educators they had available over the next two years.
Lovisa started by telling me about what the charity asks of those that choose to volunteer as educators and members of the organisation. They must all be Christians, have not taken illegal drugs or tobacco for the last two years and be prepared to stop drinking alcohol. She explained that this was because of Hope UK’s emphasis on peer influence, role modelling and personal example.
She said that most of the recruits had come through contact with other educators, but that Hope UK had done some advertising on Premier Radio and other Christian media.
She stressed the diversity of the educators, 50% are from BME communities and there’s a similar split between men and women. The range of backgrounds seemed similarly diverse: nurses, teachers, lecturers, youth workers, lawyers and a nun all came up in the course of our conversation.
The one area where there wasn’t as much of a spread as the organisation would like is geographical; at the moment the majority of volunteers come from London and the South East. But even this is changing with new groups starting in South Wales and Northern Ireland.
The training that the educators receive from Hope UK is 120 hours of Open College accredited training at levels two and three. Hope UK then like their newly trained educators to go out to observe more experienced volunteers deliver before taking sessions themselves, but Lovisa admitted that hasn’t always been possible.
Because the educators are all volunteers the sessions need to be at times that are convenient to them, this has meant that the majority of the education is delivered in youth and church groups and only a minority in schools. They also work with parents and other adults concerned for children and young people. The aim is for at least 50% of their activity to be outside church networks.
Lovisa told me that there isn’t a fixed curriculum that educators have to deliver, rather they adapt to the circumstances depending on whether they are working with 20 children or 200, taking account of age and young people’s knowledge, and on whether they have an ongoing relationship with he children and young people.
She said that Hope UK were also delivering training to youth workers and family support professionals, which they hope will help to foster more opportunities for drug education on an ongoing basis. These range from the two day accredited courses to basic awareness sessions.
Filed under: Drug Education Forum Members , Hope UK
