Parents play a crucial role whether young people learn to deal sensibly with alcohol. They should consistently set a minimum age limit of 16 for alcohol use for their children. This was the central message in the national prevention campaign ‘Alcohol and Parenting’.
Since early 2008 the Trimbos Institute has been appointed as the national knowledge institute for alcohol. Trimbos coordinates all the prevention campaigns conducted by municipal health services and addiction care organisations. The Trimbos Institute also runs an alcohol helpline and develops and executes alcohol campaigns.
Multimedia alcohol prevention campaign
The main goal of the multimedia alcohol prevention campaign was to change parenting patterns in relation to alcohol. Parents were given a new message: Say ‘No’ to alcohol before the age of 16. Alcohol use at a younger age can lead to poor performance at school in the short term, and in the long term it can have a detrimental effect on brain development.
Part of the campaign was targeted at prevention workers. They used to promote the message to introduce children to alcohol in a safe environment. The reasoning behind this was that the idea that children would learn to handle drink more sensibly, if alcohol was first introduced in a home setting. However, in practice this did not work. When teenagers are allowed to drink at home, they take this as permission to carry on drinking elsewhere. A great number of information sessions were organised to introduce prevention workers to the new prevention strategies.
Website with parenting tips
In this campaign the Trimbos Institute developed and used all kinds of supporting materials – from TV ads to websites, from billboards to brochures. For example the website www.uwkindenalcohol.nl (your child and alcohol) was developed to support parent information evenings. This website contains facts about alcohol, parenting tips, and suggestions how to deal with dilemmas that parents may encounter in setting bounderies.
In addition, the Trimbos Institute targeted volunteers in sports centres- and clubs, in order to draw attention to the existing alcohol policy in sports centre canteens. For this purpose, specific prevention material was developed and a training was offered to volunteers to learn to say ‘No’ behind the bar.
In collaboration with the parenting magazine 'J/M Pubers', an alcohol special was published and distributed to subcribers. The central message was that parents should actively intervene where alcohol is concerned. Parents who tacitly permit their child to drink are in fact encouraging even more drinking.
