Underage drinking has received a great deal of publicity lately.  The topic is often framed as a ‘youth binge-drinking crisis’ or ‘epidemic’.  This article by Clarissa Hughes in the July edition of Of Substance briefly outlines the social norms approach to supporting young people to make healthy choices about alcohol - by affirming the fact that most young people are already making healthy choices about alcohol.

The Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies (TILES) and the Department of Rural Health at the University of Tasmania have recently conducted the first major Australian trial of the ‘social norms’ approach to health promotion. The results are outlined in a briefing paper by Clarissa Hughes and they provide some useful insights into the application of the Social Norms approach.

Download the Social Norms Analysis Project Results, insights and future priorities from http://tinyurl.com/4vgdc9 (PDF).

Nominations are now open for the annual Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards. The awards are a joint initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments and include monetary awards totaling up to $130,000.

Vanessa Kennedy and Netzach Goren of the Centre for Youth Drug Studies at the Australian Drug Foundation recently published a paper that explores the types of prevention programs that practitioners in the prevention sector believe are effective with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities. Other areas of interest were the prevalence of substance use in CLD communities, obstacles to prevention work and the extent to which the evidence-base is used in the design of prevention initiatives.

The paper is available online at DrugInfo's website: Issues Paper 1 (PDF 975KB).

Source: DrugInfo Clearinghouse. 

At a recent meeting of the QLD Child Protection Taskforce, a director from the Office for Children and Families Services in the Department of Human Services in Victoria talked about their Family Support innovations project. In that State, the Department has funded community sector organisations in 25 regions in the State (approximately 175,000 people in each region).  Each region receives $3-4m to provide flexible family support.  A number of community sector organisations in each region plan and work together to deliver whatever supports are necessary to reduce child protection notifications. The support is not restricted to parenting programs and counselling.  If major issues for the family are, for example, financial management, drug and alcohol, paying the rent - they work first on these issues, then move on to specific family support activities. It looks like it is working.  Notifications are being reduced, even though the State continues to grow.

If you want to read more about their programs, visit the Victorian Government's Office for Children website.

Source: QCOSS News, April 5, 2007.