People are turning to alcohol to relieve the stress caused by redundancy, according to new research launched by alcohol charity Drinkaware. One in 10 British adults, the equivalent of nearly five million people, has either been made redundant or knows someone who has been made redundant in the last six months and is drinking more as a result. Being out of work also affects people’s drinking patterns with almost half (49%) of this group drinking more during the day.
It’s a bit off our normal path, but given that many of the adults being made redundant are likely to be parents it may be of interest to readers here.
Drinkaware have produced a guide for coping with redundancy which you can download here.
Last week I saw that the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse had published a set of standards for school based drug prevention.
As my colleague at Mentor UK is in the process of thinking through how something similar – although not exclusively school based – might work in the UK I thought I’d ask her a couple of questions about what the Canadians are saying.
The five standards that are addressed in the document are:
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.
Each year the Chair of the Drug Education Forum writes a report for our annual general meeting.
This year our re-elected Chair, Eric Carlin says:
2008 / 2009 has been extremely productive year for the Forum, one in which we have proved our continuing relevance and seen many of our campaigning themes embraced by government.
I am confident going into this year that we will build on this success and I remain excited about the work that we will do to ensure that drug education in England goes from strength to strength.
Life Education comment on the CMO’s suggestion that there be a minimum price for alcohol. Stephen Burgess, National Director of Life Education, comments:
“We’ve seen in the past that significant increases in tobacco taxes have led to a marked reduction in use and therefore harm to young people. In contrast, the real price of alcohol is at a historic low. Beers, wines and spirits which would have been unaffordable for the vast majority of teenagers even 20 years ago are now easily within reach of the average young people’s pocket money.1 This is why the government needs to take action now.”
Via email, I’ve been asked to bring your attention to another survey that Drinkaware are carrying out at the moment. My correspondent says:
We have also launched our own in house survey, which asks specific questions on the support professionals would most like Drinkaware to provide.
The questionnaire is very quick (only 9 questions long) and all entries will be entered into a prize draw. First prize is £100 of Marks and Spencers vouchers and there are runner up prizes of £50 and £25 of M&S vouchers.
The results of this will be used to inform the Drinkaware youth strategy so we are keen for people to get a chance to have their say.
Drinkaware and the Guardian are digging beneath the headlines to discover the truth about alcohol and young people. If you work with young people and children in a professional capacity, please take part in our short survey. We would like to hear your views.
The PSHE Association (a Forum member) has a couple of videos on their site about the value of PSHE to schools. About the second video the text that accompanies it says:
The student teacher acknowledges the part that teaching PSHE education has played in widening her teaching practice and relationship with young people. The lesson illustrates the importance of active learning and the high level of engagement this engenders. The lesson illustrates the importance of respecting and building on the knowledge and understanding that the learners bring to the classroom. The school uses ‘visitors to the classroom’ to support the programme but the importance of the teacher retaining management of the learning is emphasised. There is also an example of peer assessment in action.
Eric is the chair of the Drug Education Forum and this interview was conducted as part of a short film we’ve made and which we’ll be releasing later this year.
Eric, who’s chair of the Drug Education Forum, uses his blog to talk about what’s going right:
There are some moves in the right direction in the field of drug prevention in the UK:
First of all, the move to make Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) statutory in schools which we’ve campaigned on for years as a way of raising standards;
Related to this, the DCSF’s moves to engage with the field to update and improve the guidance on sex and drugs and alcohol education and to develop a consistency across all the subject areas included in PSHE…
This blog tries to pick up relevant media and research stories about drug education. It mainly focuses on information in England as this is the geographical remit for the Drug Education Forum.
We welcome comments that are on topic.
