Brief Interventions

The following is the text of an abstract submitted for presentation at the ALAC Conference in May 2010:

A collective of youth/alcohol-related agencies acting under the YATA network in Tauranga pulled together a pilot project with the Police to offer brief interventions to youth (aged under 18) who had come to notice for alcohol and other drug-related offences over the Christmas and New Year period. This replaced the proposed project with the Tauranga Hospital Emergency Department.

The brief interventions were one component in a multi-faceted social marketing campaign “A Summer to Remember” delivered by Tauranga Safe City that focused on parental risks and responsibility when providing alcohol to teens.

With funding from ACC and ALAC, the Police youth referrals received single sessions of assessment and counselling (brief interventions) delivered by a team of DAPAANZ registered counsellors. The team endeavoured to contact youth (and/or their families) within a 72 hour timeframe to offer an immediate response to the circumstances that led to them coming to Police notice, and their substance use.

The project was based on the model successfully implemented by Dr Paul Quigley at the Wellington Hospital Emergency Department; and supported by a growing body of evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of the brief intervention approach.

Since the start of the project 37 youth have been referred with a contact rate of around 95% and an intervention rate of around 75%. This is due to Counsellors adopting a tenacious ‘we will get hold of you’ approach which seems to have been effective.

In most cases Counsellor contacts were openly received by the young people, with many families expressing both surprise and gratitude that there had been a response to their young person’s offending behaviour.

We believe this is the first time the brief interventions methodology has been used in a Police setting and indications are that it has been sufficiently effective to warrant further exploration and on-going evaluation.