Drug prevention for vulnerable young people - Nacro

Drug prevention for vulnerable young peopleFor drug-focused prevention work, clear articulation ofaims and objectives is important. For example,information-based approaches in isolation are likely tohave a very limited prevention impact (although they mayhave a value in broader educational terms). It is essential,therefore, that projects have a clear theory about how theprevention techniques being used can achieve theirprevention aims with the intended target group of youngpeople.Mechanisms and techniquesCentral to the evaluation approach was a focus onlooking at prevention techniques and their operation inspecific contexts. It is argued that this provides a muchmore useful basis for replication of success rather thanapproaches which look at replicating whole projects(which is rarely possible). Table 1 (page 4) summarisessome of the main findings relating to four key preventiontechniques employed by the projects.Other components which the evaluation indicated appearto contribute to effective prevention interventions forvulnerable young people include:• working, where appropriate, with parents as well aschildren• utilising the skills and experience of older memberswithin communities• mobilising, supporting and building on existingcommunity-based networks and activitiesTargeting, delivering andlocating preventionThe evaluation has highlighted some critical questionsthat should be asked when commissioning anddeveloping drug prevention work with vulnerable youngpeople. These are summarised in Table 2, page 6. Theissues relate to the targeting, delivery and location of thework in both strategic and practice terms in order tomaximise the benefits of the work. They should beconsidered as a framework of questions and issuessupplementary to the more detailed guidance providedby other documents (eg HAS, 2001; DrugScope/DPAS,2002).Evidencing preventionA significant issue for translating learning into action isthe evidencing of prevention work. This evaluation hasraised a number of important aspects of this.The first aspect concerns record-keeping at project level.A number of the projects evaluated kept little or noinformation about the young people they worked with. Inextreme cases, this meant that it was not even possible tosay with any certainty how many people had been workedwith during the HAZ funding period. It is difficult to seehow any kind of case management can be conductedwithout basic records being kept. Another consequence isthat when it comes to evaluation and proving the value ofproject work, this becomes problematic which, in turn,makes securing future funding harder.A second, related aspect concerns capacity-building forcommunity-based projects. Smaller projects, which arerooted in community volunteering, do not necessarilyhave the capacity to set up proper record-keepingsystems. If funding is to be directed at non-mainstreamservices in order to stimulate innovation, then additionalsupport may also be required to enable them to set upbasic monitoring and other systems.A third aspect more directly concerns the process ofevaluation. In general terms, the evidence base forprevention is still quite thin. This partly relates todifficulties around clarifying and agreeing preventionobjectives but also, by its very nature, measuringprevention outcomes requires longer-term evaluationscompared with, for example, treatment. All of this makesit particularly important that maximum value is derivedfrom investments in prevention research and evaluation.Longitudinal tracking studies, although relativelyexpensive to conduct, will represent a good investment inthis respect.Fourthly, and related to the previous point, evaluationsshould focus on how different techniques or mechanismsemployed in different settings lead to particularoutcomes. Attempts to identify ‘successful’ projects forwholesale replication will be much less fruitful.National policy developmentsThe translation of the learning from this evaluation intoaction is going to be significantly affected in the next fewyears by recent national policy developments. Inparticular, the merging of DATs with Crime and DisorderReduction Partnerships (CDRPs), the requirement topage 5