Hope UK supporters gathered in central London on Wednesday to hear about the charity’s three-year Government funded Family Drug Prevention project.

The project, which ran from April 2006 to March 2009, saw Hope UK partner with Care for the Family’s ‘How to Drug Proof Your Kids’ course in bringing drug education and training to parents, teachers and professionals working with drug or alcohol abusers and their families.

Over the course of the three years, more than 470 talks were given by Hope UK volunteer educators to parents and other family members in the community, reaching 10,500 people with drug awareness education.

In a final evaluation published last December, the Charities Evaluation Services found that 99 per cent of people who had provided feedback on the talks rated them as good or excellent, and three-quarters of the 325 parents to give feedback said the talks had increased their awareness of drug issues. Parents also generally agreed they were better equipped to tackle drugs and alcohol issues.

Paul Coppeard, Hope UK’s Parents’ Project Worker, told the conference of how teachers had contacted Hope UK to have educators speak at their school after they found out drugs were being sold outside their school gates.

Many teachers, he said, needed help in knowing who to contact and how to respond if they spotted a child in school taking drugs. In another instance, he said London City Mission had Hope UK educators spend the day training its workers to help them spot drug abusers in their projects.

“It just opens your eyes to things you might have ignored because you didn’t know what you were looking at,” said Mr Coppeard.

Andrew Brown, Coordinator of the Drug Education Forum, reaffirmed the recent statement from the Chief Medical Officer, that an alcohol-free childhood is best.

“It was a bold statement because it jars with many young people’s views and many parents’ views about when we should introduce alcohol into the lives of young people,” he said.

Sarah Brighton, Hope UK’s Deputy Director, said it was “startling” how little help there was for the relatives of drug and alcohol abusers, citing the example of three sisters she had encountered, none of whom had received any support in coping with their father’s alcoholism.

All vulnerable children needed, she said, was “good support, discipline, a good education, and a good adult to just to take a little time to steer them and help them choose a slightly different course”.