Youth policy
The Youth Policy project aims to prevent and reduce harm amongst young people by raising awareness of the key issues affecting young people’s relationship with alcohol, influencing government policy nationally and improving models of service delivery locally.
The number of young people in the UK never to have drunk alcohol is rising yet average weekly consumption has more than doubled since 1990. This means those young people who are drinking are drinking more than ever before with corresponding increases in short term and longer term health harms as well as outcomes associated with risky behaviour such as regretted sexual experiences, violence and personal injury.
Project outline
The Youth Policy project is a three-year project jointly funded by Comic Relief and the Tudor Trust. The project aims to better understand how young people up to 18-years old in England and Wales use alcohol, what shapes their decision making and their access to information and support. Focusing primarily on increasing risk/hazardous drinkers, over the next year the project will be exploring how regional approaches have been developed in response to “local” concerns around young people’s drinking.
A series of six regional consultation seminars and a number of in-depth case studies will give professionals working with young people and alcohol the opportunity to share local innovative practice and to identify what could be improved at a “grassroots” level and how. These events form part of a broad research strategy designed to ensure the project content reflects the concerns of those in the sector and the views of young people themselves. The consultation and further research findings will form the basis of a report aimed at policy makers and commissioners highlighting exciting and successful innovative practice and making a number of policy recommendations.
The findings will also contribute towards the development of several practical youth-specific and service orientated resources to be launched in autumn 2010. Later in the project the focus will turn towards analysis of the influences and levers affecting young people and alcohol at a national level.
For further information please email youthpolicy@alcoholconcern.org.uk