Our work in schools

More than 40% of children who start drinking before the age of 13 will go on to abuse alcohol or to become alcoholics at some point in their lives. Of these children the majority will have family members who have a history of alcohol problems.

In a year 9 school class of thirty children (13 to 14 year olds), an average of 10 will already be drinking, making this more than just a statistic!

10 will steer clear of alcohol altogether as it holds no attraction for them and the remaining 10, in the middle, have the potential to get involved in abusing alcohol. These young people are arguably the most vulnerable to outside influence and peer pressure.

Our Alcohol Awareness Programme is specifically designed to arm those young people with facts surrounding the harsh reality of drinking to excess.

We actively promote our ‘2BRITE2BINGE’ initiative. We also participate in the local delivery of the national ‘Crucial Crew’ (year 6 ) "Be Smart" (year 8) and ‘Reality Roadshow" ( year 9) programmes that aim to deliver information, advice and guidance on a wide range of topics and issues to children and young people aged 10 – 14. We also deliver bespoke programmes on demand for older children and young people and produce information booklets for parents and teachers.

To find out more about the types of programmes delivered, please CLICK HERE to read an article on alcoHELP's work in The Medical Council on Alcohol's (MCA's) newsletter, Alcoholis

Below are just some of the many positive comments we receive when we go into schools - these were fed-back to us from Maldon District Council's Crucial Crew:

"Extremely interesting, especially having an ex alcoholic facilitator not sure if all the children realised severity of alcoholism and how early it can start"

"Good knowledge and able to get children's opinions and ideas through relevant discussion"

"The children maintained attention - think they were quite shocked at some of the video clips and really thought about alcohol after wearing goggles"

"Used shock value and repetition to drill into the children, worked well"