Families and alcohol - Alcohol Awareness Week 2009

What was it?
Family was the firm focus of our campaign to support Alcohol Awareness Week back in 2009. Alcohol can affect families and relationships in many different ways, even influencing a child’s future drinking habits. North Easterners were urged to think about the impact that their drinking habits could be having on loved ones and encouraged them to complete a drinks diary for a week.

What we did
We launched a focused media campaign to raise awareness of the issue – through advertising, newspaper articles, literature and our website. We also utilised Alcohol Awareness Week as an opportunity to engage face-to-face with local people across the North East.

We sent out our Balance ‘on street’ teams to speak to residents by visiting local shopping centres in Durham, Teesside, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear.

Vital stats
Relationships:

• There is double the risk of divorce in marriages where one or both partners drink heavily.

• More than 50% of domestic abuse cases handled by the police in the North East are alcohol-related.

Children and young people:

• The North East is the region with the highest number of Year 10 pupils consuming seven or more units of alcohol in the last seven days.

• Children of problem drinking parents may be more likely to have psychiatric or emotional problems which lead to anti-social behavior or contribute to learning difficulties.

• Nearly a third of children feel scared when they see adults drunk or drinking too much.

Influence:

• A teenager who has seen his or her parent drunk is twice as likely to get drunk themselves.

• Children of problem drinking parents are also more likely to drink at an earlier age and in a risky fashion.

The impact

• We reached an audience of 5.5 million people through our media campaign.

• Our on street teams spoke to thousands of residents.

• We achieved 43 pieces of media coverage which highlighted the issues, informing and educating North East drinkers.

What people said
Professor Simon Hackett of Durham University has extensive experience of working with children and young people whose parents have misused alcohol. He welcomes this research as a way of raising awareness of the potential impact of parental alcohol abuse on families.

“Children often live with parental alcohol abuse in silence. Although many such children show remarkable courage in trying to cope with, or even regulate their parents’ drinking behaviour, for others a parent’s abuse of alcohol means unpredictable and inconsistent care, confusion and isolation. Children living in these circumstances need understanding and better support from professionals around them.”