The Alcohol and Drug Education and Prevention Information Service (ADEPIS), run by charity Mentor UK, is set to receive a boost in funding, Public Health England has announced.
The programme takes a novel direction in discussing drugs and alcohol with young people. It moves away from ‘hard-hitting’ messages,
which have the potential to be counter-productive in trying to improve young people’s attitudes and behaviour toward drugs and alcohol. The programme instead focuses on building young people’s life skills and resilience to help them deal with the pressures they can face and develop positive lasting habits and behaviours.
‘Only by building children and young people’s resilience and life skills can we expect education programmes to be truly effective at preventing harms later on,’ said Mentor UK’s chief executive, Michael O’Toole. He stressed that it is also important to establish
local services to ensure the development of effective ‘ecosystems of prevention’.
According to PHE, while recent reports show a decline in the rates of young people smoking and drinking, instilling healthy habits and behaviours at an early age is demonstrated to have a positive life-long influence. Similarly, drug misuse among children may also be declining, but cannabis use remains the common among young people. Additionally, the emergence of new psychoactive narcotics raises new challenges for prevention work.
‘While, encouragingly, young people’s use of drugs and alcohol continues to fall, the more common use of cannabis and the emerging risks from new psychoactive substances remains a concern,’ said Rosanna O’Connor, Director of Drugs, Alcohol and Tobacco at PHE. ‘I urge all local areas to support the use of the excellent ADEPIS programme in their schools and among community prevention workers.