Addiction Prevention in Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Addiction Prevention in Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

The seven partners in the strategic partnership project of “Addiction Prevention in Schools” (APS) planned to combine their efforts, competence and knowledge to develop new knowledge on how schools and educators work to prevent young people’s addiction problems. The partners wish to focus on how teachers and school leaders can improve their knowledge concerning addiction prevention, detection and treatment. The aim was to develop relevant skills needed to meet students who are in danger of developing addiction problems or who have already done so.

The partnership consists of three schools, three local authorities and one addiction treatment centre. They form as disparate countries as Italy, Belgium and Norway, spanning almost the entire length of Europe, thus giving the opportunity of combining knowledge and competences from very different angles both geographically, culturally and professionally. A transnational project gave each of the partner’s new perspectives. The three partner countries are diverse and have different approaches to addiction related work and to education. There is also a marked difference to what extent the family and public bodies interact in these fields. The partners believe that by combining knowledge from Italy, Belgium and Norway this has resulted in better ways to meet the challenges that addiction among students present.

The partnership cooperated to create tools that can assist educators in facing challenges caused by youths’ addiction problems. We hope that the tools we have developed should have a form and function that makes them relevant, adaptable to the individual situations that are faced, as well as “attractive” alternatives in the busy and demanding daily school life. The tools are made available to the public through the project website. Examples of useful tools that were developed in the project are a survey that can be conducted to reveal existing or lack of competence among employees regarding addiction, routines and flowchart that can be used by teachers and school leaders in their work whit students as well give a common ground and understanding for professional discussions and reflections on which means are the most useful for handling addiction related challenges in schools.

Increased knowledge among employees at the schools was as mentioned, one of our main objectives with the project. Participants organizations also achieved this through increased cooperation with local, regional and national partners.
Even though the focus of the project is to improve the skills of educators, the aim of APS is to help students avoid developing addiction problems and to improve the outcome of their education and the quality of their lives. The focus of the project is primarily students in their late teens.

The project work was done through six transnational project meetings, two for each year of the three years that APS lasted. The aims of these meetings were to learn from the work done in each country/region and to see how this work could be combined in order to create new and improved ways in which to handle the addiction related challenges educators meet in their work with students. The partners did also commit to following up the work agreed upon between the transnational project meetings and to cooperate by the use of online platforms throughout the project period.
The project partners did during the project prepare reports and other documents describing the processes, knowledge, competences and tools developed though the three-year partnership. All tools and results of the project are made universally available without restrictions for use by anyone who find them useful in an electronic version as well as paper based.

At the end of the project period, the partners did organize three national conferences, multiplier events, to spread the knowledge, competences and tools acquired through the APS project. These conferences were open to educators, students, parents and other relevant stakeholders, such as local and regional authorities, prevention services, competence and treatment centres, health institutions and administrative personnel on both national and European level.

Attachments:
– A more detailed description of the project’s transnational meeting and intellectual output
– Manual
– Declaration of Honour

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 153490 Eur

Project Coordinator

Fosen videregående skole & Country: NO

Project Partners

• L’ARCOBALENO Società Cooperativa Sociale
• Sport- en Handelsschool Turnhout
• Ørland kommune
• ISISS Luigi Scarambone
• Stad Turnhout
• Azienda Sanitaria Locale Lecce