Lithgow was recently announced as one of the few towns in Australia to trial the internationally renowned alcohol and drug prevention program 'Planet Youth'.
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Planet Youth is an evidence based program from Iceland known for reducing alcohol and other drug use among young people.
The model relies on key stakeholder commitment between local government, schools, parents and other community stakeholders.
Some of the practical examples of Planet Youth actions and activities are:
- Youth encouraged to participate in supervised youth clubs, arts programs and sport during social hours
- Parents encouraged to spend more time with adolescents
- Parents encouraged to supervise adolescent parties and to discourage alcohol use
- Schools encouraged to provide links between school, parents and community organisations
The program has now been adopted in more than 50 cities across the world and 20 countries, according to LINC hub manager Leanne Walding.
"Planet Youth is proof that long-term investment in prevention can lead to significant reductions in alcohol and other drug use," she said.
Lithgow's local drug action team recently reformed and initially started with a consultation with the community on what they should focus on.
"We found out that alcohol was a high one, then followed by nicotine and then it got into the drug groups," she said.
The group then used this information to do some service mapping to see what services Lithgow offers, should people need them, according to Ms Walding.
Ms Walding said it was such a long trial that it would be hard to measure outcomes.
"We do one lot of surveying and then another lot, so outcomes don't happen overnight," she said.
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"I am hoping that there is more engagement from kids to do activities in Lithgow."
The Alcohol and Drug Foundation has identified the Planet Youth program as a way to strengthen existing work of Local Drug Action Teams to prevent and reduce alcohol and other drug-related harm.
"We are doing this in Lithgow because we won't know if the Planet Youth model is transferable to Australia unless it gets trialled here first," she said.
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