Life Education Australia

ABN 50 002 506 470

The draft

National Drug Strategy

2010-2015

Feedback

December 2010

Submitted by:

DAVID BALLHAUSEN

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Life Education Australia

LEVEL 7, 280 PITT STREET

SYDNEY NSW 2000

MOBILE: 0409 847 326

EMAIL:

Executive summary

The aim of the National Drug Strategy 2010-2015 is to build safe and healthy communities by minimizing alcohol, tobacco, illegal and other drug related health, social and economic harms among individuals, families and communities.

Life Education Australia has the capacity to make a significant contribution to the successful delivery of the National Drug Strategy. This contribution relates specifically to Pillar 2:Demand Reduction.We are an organisation with genuine national reach and local community support, working universally across the primary school population base, focused on the promotion of health and wellbeing. We are in the process of committing to a significant reinvigoration of the organisation. Under new leadership, we are focused on renewal and reform, consistent with the evidence of what is effective in achieving the outcomes we seek.

We support the design of the Strategy’s framework, in particular the 3 pillars and their balanced application, the sensitivity to age and stage of life, disadvantaged populations and settings. In relation to settings, we encourage recognition of the importance of properly utilizing schools and communities as settings for preventive interventions. We strongly endorse the commitment to partnerships across sectors, particularly in relation to demand reduction which ‘requires the cooperation, collaboration and participation of a diverse range of sectors’. We agree wholeheartedly with the statement that ‘no one strategy on its own can prevent and reduce the demand for drugs’. We also recognize the importance of evidence informed practice and innovation, and of building the evidence base to support such a process.

Introduction

Who we are

Life Education is the largest non-government provider ofdrug and health education to children and young people, and their families and communities Australia wide.

Our Mission is to empower the young to make the best choices for a safe and healthy life.

We are a registered charity, independent of both government and religion.

We are national in reach – operating in all States and Territories.

Operating since 1979, in excess of 4 million students have participated in our program over the past 30 years.

What we do

We build the capability of young people by challenging their values and attitudes, expanding their knowledge and developing their skills. We motivate, encourage and empower them to exercise real choice – and make informed healthy lifestyle decisions.

More specifically, our program assists children and young people achieve the following outcomes –

Acquire age appropriate knowledge to support informed health choices

Develop and practice skills and strategies to act upon individual decisions

Recognise the values and attitudes that may influence lifestyle choice and behaviour

We know that an individual’s knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about health influence their health behaviours, and consequently their present and future health status. The likelihood of an individual being motivated to adopt health-enhancing behaviours—rather than behaviours which are not conducive to health—is in part a function of the level of knowledge, attitudes and skills which the person has in relation to health risks.[1]

We see young people as active agents in, rather than passive recipients of, our program. We want young people to be able to draw from their own strengths – their capability – in making reasoned, well informed decisions about themselves and their own wellbeing.

We have developed a unique and innovative program – a combination of our skilled Educator, the Mobile Learning Centre and our suite of student and teacher resources as well as the use of our mascot – Healthy Harold - to complement learning in the early years.

Our sessions are designed to be age specific and sequential.

10 age specific modules (each with specific educational outcomes that align with the curriculum frameworks for each State and Territory) make up the primary school program which focuses on a broad range of issues – personal safety, body knowledge, self-assertion skills, healthy lifestyles (nutrition, physical exercise), relationships, friendships and bullying, responding to peer pressure, the safe use of medicines, the effects of smoking, and alcohol and related social issues.

The sessions for primary school children and their teachers are delivered on the school grounds in specially equipped Mobile Learning Centres by specialist Educators.

Our secondary school program offers alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs modules.

Teachers are provided with teacher and student manuals and access to other resources to reinforce and extend sessions taught in the Mobile Learning Centre.

Parents and carers are also encouraged to get involved, given the critical role they play in the development of their child’s health promoting behaviours. In addition to the opportunity to visit the Mobile Learning Centre, whilst on the school grounds, to learn more about the program, they are also invited to participate in family forums that provide the opportunity to share views with other parents and children, increase knowledge and develop strategies to support the healthy development of their children.

We work at scale – employing 100 specialist Educators and maintaining 85 Mobile and Static Learning Centres. In 2009 we worked with 3,260 schools[2] and supported 635,000 students.

How well we do it

Each of these schools self-selected to partner with us, purchase our services and make available our program to the students in their care.It would be reasonable to conclude that schools so select because the Life Education program is relevant and appropriate to their students and is delivered consistent with contemporary curriculum and pedagogical practices.

In 2009, of the 5,421 respondents (28% response rate) to our program evaluation survey completed by teachers –

94% rated the program as good to excellent in supporting their school’s drug education policy.

98% indicated they would recommend that their school rebook Life Education the following year.

We are in the process of developing the capability to more regularly and reliably measure change in student knowledge, skill and attitude – consistent with the program outcomes we seek. The objective of a project, currently underway, is to ensure we are able to demonstrate that our program is based on sound theory, has been designed and is implemented consistent with the current research on the key components of effective programs, and is regularly evaluated to determine whether it is implemented as intended, whether it is being implemented well, and whether it is achieving its stated objectives.This project involves the development and implementation of an approach, appropriately validated, that will deliver on the need to generate evidence that measures program impact, informs program development and underpins program sustainability.

How we are governed

Life Education Australia is a company limited by guarantee. Its members include its affiliated State/Territory members. It has an independent Board. Its affiliated State/Territory members are represented on this Board. The program is owned and continues to be developed by Life Education Australia. The program is implemented, across Australia, by its affiliated member organisations in each State and Territory.

How we are financed

Collectively, across the organisation, we currently spend approximately $11.5 million per annum, 80% of which is incurred in direct program delivery costs – primarily associated with the Educator and the Mobile Learning Centre. In 2008/09 these direct delivery costs were the equivalent of approximately $13.40 per student participating in the program.

The remainder – approximately $2.5 million or $3.75 per participating student was spent on ongoing program development, program evaluation and the provision of support for program delivery as well as fundraising.

Schools, and through them, the parents and carers of the students participating in our program pay for the opportunity to do so. Approximately 40% of the organisation’s revenue is generated from this source. Government grant funding comprises a little over 25% of our revenue. The remainder is self generated through our fundraising activities.

pillar 2 : demand reduction

Initiatives to educate and empower individuals, enabling them to make the healthiest choices they can, form a critical component of the comprehensive and integrated ‘whole-of-community’ preventive approach necessary to generate sufficient behavioural change at the population level.

The draft makes reference to the ‘appropriate mix of educational and social marketing approaches’. While the value of social marketing seems to be accepted, we are seeking greater acceptance of the need to support these broad based approaches with more targeted, complementary initiatives implemented in local communities.

We strongly endorse the stated intention that ‘settings-based approaches will be a key feature of the National Drug Strategy 2010-2015’. Schools can and should play an important role in the development of health promoting behaviours in children and young people. Schools provide an ideal point of access to children and young people, particularly in the delivery of a health educational program that is preventive in orientation. The accessibility and relative stability of schools enable the delivery of such a program to peer groups across multiple grades and time points. It makes sense to leverage the many strengths that schools have to offer, particularly the learning environment they foster, the values and attitudes they promote, the role and ongoing influence of the class teacher, etc.

School based health education programs do work if they are designed and implemented well, and expectations about what we expect them to achieve are realistic. They have an important contribution to make, however they are not ‘the silver bullet’. They alone cannot achieve the outcome we all want for our children and young people – that they grow up safe and healthy. They alone cannot prevent problematic health behaviours in young people. The forces at work – that influence the decisions young people make about their health behaviour – are too complex and pervasive to be successfully countered by a school based health education program, alone. It is inappropriate to assess the merit and worth of these programs on that basis.

Schools provide an ideal social setting in which it is possible to engage and connect with other stakeholders– such as parents and carers, other local community service providers, the local business community, etc. Many of the actions associated with both Objective 1 and Objective 4 could be implemented by working with and through schools as local community hubs. For example, strategies that contribute to the development of a population culture that promotes healthy lifestyles, or community based initiatives to change the culture of smoking and risky drinking or strategies aimed at breaking intergenerational patterns of drug misuse.

Schools also have limitations that need to be recognised that impact on how much they can realistically be expected to contribute to work of this nature, particularly constraints around time (the crowded curricula) and resources (funding to more meaningfully support the implementation of programs).

Partnerships are a key to success in fully exploiting the capacity of schools. As the draft strategy indicates, ‘multidisciplinary and flexible strategies are needed to meet the many and varied needs of individuals and communities’. While schools have a role to play, it is unrealistic to expect them to lead and coordinate the processes required to design then implement such multidisciplinary strategies. If we to make progress in working together at local community levels then the capacity to lead and coordinate such shared endeavour needs to be addressed.

Life Education should be of considerable strategic relevance in this regard, with this relevance best demonstrated by reference to the following –

Our Mission – which is to empower young Australians to make the best choices for a safe and healthy life.

Our Scale – in 2010 we will partner with, and deliver our program in, approximately 3,300 schools across Australia.

Our Infrastructure –our team of trained educators (100) and network of mobile and static classrooms (85) together with our program curriculum and other supporting resources.

Our Credibility – at the grass roots level in local communities, demonstrated by the fact that so many schools self-select to partner with us, purchase our services and make available our program to the students in their care.

In emphasising these features, we are encouraging policy makers to think about Life Education in terms of the unique set of capacities it has to offer. From a policy implementation perspective we provide access to a discrete, specialist, population wide ‘distribution system’ with direct access to students and schools and with the capacity to engage parents and carers and the broader local community.

Life Education’s independence is also a significant strength.At the same time, as an outsider to education systems and schools, it can only work at optimal effectiveness when the right sets of alliances are in place. At present, alliances are strong at grass roots levels (as evidenced by the continued level of demand from schools), but are less strong at policy maker levels. More pointedly, relationships with school systems and other professional agencies concerned with drug education at present are at best lukewarm, with Life Education tolerated as a player in the field of drug and health education rather than embraced as a valued and credible partner. We understand the critical importance of these alliances and are committed to their development.

[1] See Australia’s Health 2008. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Canberra. Chapter 4. Health Determinants : the keys to prevention. Section 4 (page 129) regarding the relevance of knowledge, attitudes and beliefs.

[2] Across Australia there are approximately 6,900 Primary Schools, 1,900 Secondary Schools and 990 Combined K-12 Schools.