Young people can be susceptible to taking drugs regardless of their background, as recent reports about Conservative leader David Cameron have highlighted. But research released by the Home Office earlier this month highlights factors that make young people more at risk of turning to drugs as well as those that stop them from doing so (see box out).
Martin Moran, senior manager at the Eclypse Lifeline Young People's Service project in Manchester, says: "It is important to be aware of external factors that can accelerate young people into drug dependency when you are assessing young people and referring them to appropriate services." However, he believes the Home Office report contains nothing new.
Eclypse has two teams, one that carries out intervention and outreach work, and a case management team that provides treatment. Targeted prevention work is delivered with other agencies, including youth offending teams, which refer young people to Eclypse.
The outreach workers aim to engage young people on the edge of society, including black and minority ethnic groups, young asylum seekers and young people at risk of sexual exploitation.
Risk factors
Lauren Booker, under-19s drug treatment worker for Drug Education, Counselling and Confidential Advice (Decca), says using risk factors to identify young people is important but it is a "double edged sword" because identifying young people's propensity to get into drugs through risk factors could be tantamount to labelling them as a potential drug user.
"Labelling young people is not helpful, but it gets them support early on," she says. "At age 13 young people do become more experimental and drugs education should be an ongoing process."
Decca works in both primary and secondary schools in Sandwell in the West Midlands to deliver drugs education, as well as youth groups, church groups, care homes and pupil referral units.
"Any young person is at risk of taking drugs since the same cognitive processes are in place, such as peer pressure, curiosity, risk-taking and so on," says Booker.
"The predictive or protective factors, however, can influence how a young person takes drugs in the long term," she adds. "For example, a young person with protective factors might have alcopops in their teens, progress to Babycham in their twenties, and then drink red wine a couple of times a week in their thirties, but it doesn't become a problem. A young person with risk factors may end up using drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism for underlying unhappiness and end up using them problematically."
Booker believes a general improvement of the lives of young people could do a lot to help reduce risk factors and instil more resilience in young people. "The protective factors should be built into a wider strategy and the Government should look at the risk factors from an early age," she says.
Involvement
Rachel Brown, young people's worker at Inroads Drugs Project, Cardiff, says that in an ideal world all young people would be targeted with prevention work, but when a project has a finite amount of resources risk factors can be useful.
Inroads works with care homes, leaving-care teams, social services, schools, youth offending teams, youth services and anyone that works with young people in order to have those deemed at risk of drug taking referred to them.
"Drugs work is not just talking about different drugs anymore - it is talking about choices, and identifying risks with young people themselves," explains Brown. "We also direct young people to other agencies when they have problems we can't deal with and do a 'soft transition' by going with the young person to meetings with other agencies."
"When it comes to engaging young people, you have to be more inventive than with adults," says Booker. "They can text us any questions they have and we'll text the answers back.
Booker says young people should also be taught ways to refuse drugs and given alternative activities.
The Government's current drugs strategy ends next year, and drugs workers should make sure that working practices developed around drugs education over the past five years become embedded in the next strategy, says Eclypse's Moran.
"I hope the new strategy will allow some of the great work being done at the moment to continue and flourish, with future investment," he says. A consultation on the next strategy could come as soon as April, according to the Home Office.
Child welfare should be at the root of a future drugs strategy, says Booker. "The next drugs strategy needs to make drug education statutory in schools. Ultimately there should be more safeguarding of children and young people."
DRUGS FACTORS
- Identifying and exploring young people's experiences of risk, protective factors and resilience to drug use, finds eight key factors identifying 10- to 16-year-olds associated with drug taking
- These are: serious antisocial behaviour; weak parental attitudes towards bad behaviour; being in trouble, truanting or exclusion at school; having friends in trouble; being unhelpful; early smoking; not getting school meals; and minor antisocial behaviour
- For 17- to 24-year-olds the factors are: antisocial behaviour; early smoking; being in trouble at school; being impulsive; being "un-sensitive" and belonging to few or no groups
- Factors protecting young people who have been exposed to drugs but choose not to take them include: fear of disapproval; legal consequences; financial cost; fear of health effects or addiction; fear of losing control; and career aspirations.
