TOBACCO EDUCATION CONTINUES THROUGH LOCKDOWN.

Project Officer, Laura Sharp, draws on her learning of adapting her work during Lockdown.

We are delighted to announce that funding by NHS Lothian’s Health Promotion Service of the Tobacco Education Project delivered by Fast Forward within Edinburgh, East Lothian and Midlothian has been continued until March 2021.

Since our last update which briefly outlined how we have adapted to school closures allowing us to support schools to deliver tobacco education via home schools in relation to health and wellbeing. Feedback from teachers has been very positive

I think the toolkit is a great idea for highlighting the risks of smoking to children and encouraging them to think about how smoking/second hand smoke affects them and their immediate surroundings. It also focuses on the benefits of leading smoke free lives which is an important message for the pupils. The toolkit gives the children a voice to speak up about how they feel about people smoking around their school. There is a good mix of activities to maintain the pupil’s interest.

          Class Teacher, Primary School, Edinburgh

 The context was appropriate and challenged the children. It was clear throughout learning was taking place and the children were engaging with the content. At P6 stage, CFE 2^nd level, the content was mature and the children clearly recognised they were being treated more as young adults. This is a strength of the programme.

         Class Teachers, Primary School, Midlothian

 

 

Further developments have been taking place as we set out to support schools to complete their projects with preparations taking place ahead of the new school year. We are hopeful that we will able to work with school by delivering face-to-face sessions however, if this is not possible we will be ready to deliver sessions digitally!

Like all youth work organisations adapting to COVID-19 is something we have had to do quickly whilst being guided by our partners and funders. It’s fair to say from the increased volume of partnership zoom meetings “we are all in this together”.

I personally have sat ‘in’ on meetings which have brought together practitioners from all over Scotland and it’s been a great opportunity to share practice – I hope these continue and the relationships are not lost when services return to some sort of normality.

Another exciting project, we have been working on is reaching out to support the youth work sector by delivering tobacco education sessions digitally. The response so far has been great with Youth 2000 Project (Y2K) based in Mayfield, Citadel Youth Centre based in Leith and The Ripple Project based in Restalrig keen to take up the opportunities of tobacco education sessions for their young people, whilst also exploring training opportunities for their staff in tobacco education.

If you work in Edinburgh and the Lothians, are engaging with your young people digitally and keen to introduce tobacco education to your programme contact Laura on: lauras@fastforward.org.uk or via twitter at @lorzFastForward

Laura Sharp