Chosen areas begin to test new ways to tackle underage drinking

Underage drinking is linked to antisocial behaviour, health problems, poor educational outcomes and risky behaviour. Now attempts to address the issue have been given fresh impetus, as a result of a £1m government fund to tackle the problem in 10 areas, championed by Baroness Newlove, whose husband Gary was murdered by young people who he challenged outside their home.

Newcastle is one of the areas to benefit from a slice of the funding. Liz Robinson, lead officer for the project at Newcastle City Council, says efforts will be focused on two areas in the east and west of the city that statistically have the highest levels of binge and underage drinking.

The plan is to spend two-thirds of its £90,000 funding using “participatory budgeting”. This will allow community groups, residents’ associations and youth groups to propose ideas and vote on which ones should be adopted.

“It’s taking us, as council staff, out of making decisions and gives those people the opportunity to come forward with ideas and decide what they think will work,” Robinson says. “Young people themselves have told us that they want diversionary activities and things that will help them learn about the issue through the process of art and drama. Some of the young people are quite hard to engage, so you can’t have adults making all the decisions.”

Evidence of the success of the work in Newcastle will be used to create a case for additional funding for services in the future.

“We are keen to link into any sort of funding locally,” Robinson says. “We also want to share our learning with the new police crime commissioner and community safety partnership and share information with similar areas.”

Chelmsford is using a different approach, with the funding spent on employing a specialist alcohol outreach worker, who will deliver a range of education and community interventions and have access to young people in police custody.

Educational intervention
Spencer Clarke, community safety manager at Chelmsford Council, says the work, which will focus on 16- to 21-year-olds, will involve “educational intervention” at the point of arrest.

“If people get arrested for an offence involving alcohol, the outreach worker will sit down with them and go through a brief educational intervention,” he says. “We are also looking at taking a neighbourhood resolution approach for some of the offences, particularly if they are minor. There is no point criminalising a young person if it is a minor offence.”

Education is at the centre of current efforts to tackle the problem nationally. Lizzie Jeans, campaigns manager at charity Drinkaware, says supporting parents to help their children make the right decisions is key.

“The earlier they start, the higher the risk they will be heavier drinkers when they are older,” she explains. “It’s difficult to reach that age group directly, so we try to do it through parents and through schools. They are the biggest influence on children’s views of alcohol. Parents are also the biggest supplier of alcohol to children, so we look to support them to delay the age of first drink.”

Drinkaware is currently trialling a free teaching resource in 36 schools – with evaluation results due in August – which it hopes will eventually go out nationally. “We know through research that the best approach is to focus on life skills,” Jeans says. “Not necessarily hammering home the health harms, but providing coping strategies and decision-making skills so young people can make the right choices.”

As well as Newcastle and Chelmsford, the other funded areas are Bury, Cornwall, Durham, Lincoln, Maidstone, Moseley, Shropshire and Wakefield.