The Kids is collaborating with government agencies, parents and school representatives to trial an innovative intervention delivered through schools to increase parents’ knowledge and skills to delay and reduce teenage alcohol use.
The Institute received a $328,539 Healthway grant from the WA Government to develop and trial an intervention over a two-and-a-half-year period.
Whilst similar approaches have been found to be successful overseas, this is the first time such an intervention will be tested in Australia.
The intervention will be developed and trialled with parents of year 7 students in 26 schools in metropolitan and regional WA. Comprising family events and online information for parents, the intervention will be delivered together with existing student curriculum.
The objective is to design an intervention that is sustainable, meets parents’ and schools’ needs, is flexible enough to encourage school uptake and supports parents to adopt evidence-based parenting strategies in relation to alcohol.
Researchers are hopeful that the intervention will:
- Decrease the number of parents with permissive attitudes to adolescent alcohol use;
- Increase parent-child communication regarding rules and expectations of non-use;
- Reduce supply of alcohol by parents to their children; and
- Ultimately, reduce alcohol use by adolescents.
The impact of the intervention on parents’ attitudes and behaviours will be assessed using data from parent surveys.
The Kids researcher Dr Therese Shaw said parents are key to reducing alcohol-related harm in young people.
“It’s been shown that permissive parent attitudes and alcohol supply to children are contributing factors in adolescent alcohol use.
“We hope that increased knowledge and parent-child communication around parental expectations of their child’s behaviour will delay and reduce teen drinking,” she said.
In 2016, approximately 43% of 16-17 year olds consumed at least one standard drink of alcohol and 8% of 12-17 year olds reported drinking five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous year.
The Kids is collaborating with researchers from the University of Newcastle and Curtin University on this project and partnering with School Drug Education and Road Aware to develop and deliver the intervention.
Read the Health Minister's release here.
