Drinkaware's Youth Strategy

Drinkaware’s vision for children and young people

We want to see young people:

• having the knowledge and skills to make informed choices about alcohol
• starting to drink later than they are now (government research shows the average age is 13)
• being able to access honest, accurate and relevant information about alcohol and its effects. 

Getting our messages across

We know that young people don’t always want to know about the effects of alcohol, especially from adults. We’re working on innovative ways to give young people the information they need in a way they want to hear it. When we talk to young people, our messages focus on:

• Delay – encouraging young people to wait until they’re older to start drinking
  
• Harm minimisation (aimed at 16 and 17 year olds only) – when young people do drink, we want them to do it as safely as possible.

Putting our vision into action

Here are some of the things we have done in 2009 to put our vision into action, and get our messages across:

• We are launching a campaign in December in partnership with Brook tackling the issue of alcohol and unprotected sex. Both young people and their parents highlighted this as an area of concern. 15,000 ‘party season survival’ packs with a safe drinking and sex message are being distributed to seven teenage pregnancy and alcohol hotspot areas across the UK. To find out more about this initiative for 16-17 year olds go to www.brook.org.uk/havefun from 1 December. 
• We ran a competition called the ‘Ultimate Day’ over the summer months to help tackle increased drinking amongst young people due to boredom. We challenged 16 and 17 year olds to come up with their ultimate day without alcohol. You can see the results at www.theultimateday.co.uk. 
• After feedback from professionals about what they would most like from Drinkaware, we have launched a dedicated area of our website offering help and advice to professionals working with under-18s.
• We are working towards getting our message into online spaces we know young people use – social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook and Myspace.
• A new updated leaflet full of practical advice for parents on how to talk to their children about alcohol, including the Government’s new guidance, will be available from Jan 2010. We also have a dedicated area of our website for parents.   
• We are working with the Government and curriculum providers to ensure effective alcohol education in the primary, secondary and further education settings.

For more about why and how we want to work with young people, read our Youth Strategy.

We carried out a series of focus groups with eight to 17 year olds around the country. Read the results of our research.

Page last updated by

Root User, 19 Apr 2010.

Page checked on

13 Nov 2009.