The Alcohol Education Trust

Newsletter June 2019

Can you believe that we’re half way through the year already? For those of you with children taking exams, GCSE’s and A levels, we wish them luck. Please find an update below of just a few of the training and activities we’ve been delivering across the country this year. Read on to find out what our regional coordinators are up to as well as more about our hoped for office and training space!

Update from South, West and West Midlands

As our newest member of staff, Karen has been busy contacting schools, youth and sports clubs across the region. In support of parents she has delivered a seminar at Redmaids High School for Girls in Bristol as well as for foster carers at Bristol Young People's Alcohol and Drug Project. Parents at Sherborne School too have learnt about how to support their children when facing parties, festivals and peer pressure.

Karen delivered teacher training at South Devon College, Paignton to help staff support their students who are aged 14+. Comments included “My confidence in discussing alcohol has increased” and “I’m more aware of the importance of initiating conversation.”

Karen has also delivered a series of workshops to students at Yeovil College on some of the issues they may face around alcohol, such as drink spiking and looking after each other.

Developing our work across Scotland

One of our exciting new projects is to extend the work of The Alcohol Education Trust into Scotland over three years. This has involved adapting  the ‘Talk about Alcohol’ suite of resources to include Scottish law, academic details and appointing Brian Gibson to take our work forward in earnest across Scotland.

Brian Gibson was formerly Director of Tomorrow’s People (a charity helping disadvantaged young people with working life) and his outreach began in November 2018, making great strides since then. In January we sent letters to all schools across the 32 Local Authority areas.

To date we have supported young people in over 40 schools and via a further 11 supporting organisations with the Scottish resources, which you can view here:
https://alcoholeducationtrust.org/download-teacher-workbook-scotland/

Brian has been travelling the length and breadth of Scotland and has trained teachers at a number of schools across Scotland including The Queen Victoria School in Perthshire, Kilsyth Academy in North Lanarkshire and Erskine Campus in Renfrewshire.

Presentations have also been delivered to Peebles and Galashiels High Schools in the Scottish Borders, in the Highlands as well as to Lochend Community School in Glasgow.

We are thrilled that NHS Grampian have ordered our newly adapted workbooks to cover all secondary schools across Aberdeenshire as well as the 'Alcohol & You' guide for teenagers and the 'Talking to Kids about Alcohol' guide for parents.

Partnership work has also been developed with FARE, a fantastic grassroots charity supporting young people in the East End of Glasgow with 6 family support officers working in schools. These key workers are now trained and equipped with the fun, engaging and effective Talk about Alcohol programme. All in all it has been a flying start for AET in Scotland!

The North

North Yorkshire

Kathryn has been busy delivering training and resources to York schools. The schools found the training very beneficial and both said it was great to have such ‘exciting’ new resources and were looking forward to planning their lessons. Kathryn is also working with North Yorkshire Scouts and Police Cadets to help support them in keeping their young people safe around alcohol.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority

Four centres attended a teacher training session for Bury PRUs and we were able to supply them with our wonderful new activity packs and Teacher Workbooks. We received excellent feedback and they were delighted to receive the resources. We will be supporting Manchester PRUs in the future.

English Football League Trust

Kathryn has been working with a number of football clubs in the North. She delivered a session to youth outreach staff at the Sheffield Wednesday Academy which several other clubs from the EFL (including Sheffield United, Rotherham and Barnsley) also attended. We were able to deliver the session from funding we have for SEN projects and Local Alcohol Action Areas. The community trusts attached to the clubs deliver wonderful projects to some of the most deprived young people in their areas who have SEN or who are Looked After, or who may be at risk of offending. It is a privilege to work with such wonderful organisations!

Supporting Rock Challenge 2019

Rock Challenge is a fantastic performance competition for school children across the UK. Its primary goal is to encourage young people to make positive life choices and be their best without the use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs.

We have enjoyed supporting Rock Challenge for the past few years and this provides us with a great opportunity to engage with parents, teachers and the pupils themselves. We also thoroughly enjoy the incredible shows put on by the students and the standard of the performances is outstanding!

Kathryn has been supporting the participating children with quizzes, games and activities at the events in York, Wakefield and Hull, Karen at the Portsmouth event and Brian is supporting Rock Challenge across Scotland.

An office at last for the Alcohol Education Trust, with a community space and café, helping ensure our future sustainability

We currently support over 2,100 schools and organisations across the country with our free resources, training and activities from a humble garden garage! It is so exciting therefore that plans are developing well for our 'Pavilion in the Park' (PiP's), a new build which includes an office and training space to enable us to host training for teachers and youth workers across the South West as well as host diversionary activities for young people locally.

The park itself will soon host a mile running track, parkour equipment for teenagers, an outside gym and be planted with 1,000 trees making it a hub for local people, including the 5,000 children and their families in the five schools close by. We have raised £133,000 to date with wonderful grants from The National Lottery local communities, The Pocket Park fund, The Dorset County Council Youth Opportunity fund, The Alice Ellen Cooper Dean Charitable Trust, Dorchester Rotary and Round Table as well as through an astounding crowd funding campaign to ‘raise the roof’ to which over 100 people generously donated both on and off line. If you are able to help us in any way to raise the additional £60,000 that we need, please do contact us via helena@alcoholeducationtrust.org .

You can learn more via: https://alcoholeducationtrust.org/pavilion-in-the-park/

Auction of Promises

We have an online auction of promises that is live from now until the 22nd June. Please do take a look via: https://app.galabid.com/midsummer and bid generously if you can. The auction will close at midnight on the 22nd June at our 10th Anniversary Ball. We are so grateful to the generous sponsors of the Ball, those who have given promises, donations and raffle prizes and we are overwhelmed by the generosity of  both the people and companies in helping us reach our goals!

The Better Society Awards

It is always humbling to learn about the great work that charities and businesses do across the UK to improve lives. The Better Society Awards were no exception with our hosts Ansvar insurance being the sponsors of The Charity Times run awards. For us as a small charity it is great to share best practice with the other guests including Coram Life Education and Life Skills Education who are sitting with our CEO Helena Conibear together with Ansvar CEO and senior staff.