Our latest newsletter, about what we have been doing during the pandemic, is here! Newsletter Spring 2021
One of our Generation Hope (GH) members is at university, and has been doing all learning online since last March. The other day she had to go out to get some food. It happened to be the day before practical courses were allowed to go back to ‘in person’ learning, so many students had returned to their halls and rented accommodation.
As she walked to the shops, she had to go through a crowd of several hundred students who had all met up in a park area to celebrate. In the words of the GH young person, ‘The main activity was drug taking – there were empty bottles, nitrous oxide cannisters and some syringes all over the place. Even as the police arrived to break up the crowd a group of girls continued to inhale nitrous oxide, hidden away from, but close to, the police.’
Of course, we absolutely understand that as people come out of lockdown they want to celebrate and have fun. But alcohol charities have already expressed concern about the increase of alcohol problems since the start of the pandemic, and we are concerned that young people may now take risks with drugs that could lead to later problems.
As you can imagine, schools currently need to concentrate on helping their pupils to catch up with their core subjects. Drug education was meant to become a compulsory part of the national curriculum last September, but for now it remains optional. We hope that churches, youth organisations and schools will remember the importance of preventative, skill-based drug education and will, as soon as possible, invite Hope UK’s highly trained staff and voluntary local educators to help them deliver high-quality bespoke sessions and activities, both to their young people, and to the adults who work with them.
To find out more about what we have been doing during this lockdown – and ways we have been able to keep our work going, while developing new teaching methods, click here: Newsletter Spring 2021