Community Action on Youth and Drugs
Building a Tāmaki Makaurau where all young people can flourish is what drives us. Reducing alcohol and other drug harm is essential for creating the healthy, safe, and thriving city young people need.
Community Action on Youth and Drugs (CAYAD) is a nationwide harm reduction initiative funded by Te Whatu Ora. In Tāmaki Makaurau, CAYAD sits within Auckland Council through The Southern Initiative. As with the rest of our work, this means we can leverage the unique role local government plays in reducing the harms of alcohol and other drugs.
Minimising alcohol and other drug harm has a positive impact on both young people’s wellbeing and society as a whole. Healthy behaviour and environments create safer and more inviting spaces where we live, play, work and learn, lowers the social and economic burden of violence and crime linked to alcohol and other drugs. Inclusive and safe environments improve education and health outcomes and a sense of belonging for young people.
Alcohol and other drug use is complex and multi-faceted. There are many systemic and environmental conditions that increase the negative consequences associated with its use. These may include the hard realities of poverty, discrimination, trauma and social inequalities, or the way substances are advertised, supplied and regulated. These can all impact young people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with alcohol and other drug related harm.
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CAYAD are committed to working in a strengths-based way that privileges and centres the positive and unique perspective young people have on the world.
We acknowledge that young people grow up in a world where alcohol and other drugs exist. We support and encourage approaches that practice empathy and work with young people to identify opportunities to use innovation and collaborative design to shift the systems that perpetuate drug and alcohol harm.
To minimise the harm young people experience from alcohol and other drugs we need to have effective local, regional, and national health-based regulation around alcohol and other drugs.
We need to have safe and inclusive environments in our schools, sports clubs, community organisations, and workplaces.
We need to have positive and accessible activities, groups, and movements for young people to connect in to.
And we need to create connections and collective impact between different people and groups working to strengthen the wellbeing ecosystem.
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Change can only happen if we activate and strengthen the environments, behaviours, and systems that promote wellbeing for our young people. To do this, we need to identify and address the underlying environmental and systemic conditions that perpetuate alcohol and other drug harm.
We recognise that not all young people live in environments that promote their wellbeing, with certain groups of young people experiencing more systemic and environmental barriers than others. For CAYAD, this means improving equity and focusing on groups of young people most at risk of experiencing harms from alcohol and other drugs. We have a particular focus on addressing the systemic conditions that perpetuate harm for Māori, Pasifika and Rainbow young people.
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There are numerous systemic and environmental issues that make it either more or less likely that young people will experience harm from alcohol and other drugs.
CAYAD work with communities and young people to understand the systemic forces at play and then address them to reduce harm and promote flourishing.
Influencing local, regional, and national decision-making around alcohol and other drug regulation
CAYAD regularly supports young people to have their voice heard in local and national decision making, including supporting them to engage in the alcohol licensing process.
Recently we worked alongside Auckland Council's governing body to generate unanimous support of a central government bill that sought to amend the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act to better serve communities. This decisive leadership by Auckland Council influenced other councils around Aotearoa New Zealand to also highlight the inequity in the legislation that needed to be addressed.
Activating healthy, safe and inclusive spaces for young people, free from alcohol and other drug harm
We work with council teams and community organisations to develop healthy policies and practices around alcohol and other drugs in the places we learn, work and play.
In a council setting, we use our relationships with community facing services to leverage opportunities to do this. For example, we’ve worked with libraries to equip staff with knowledge of how to engage with people under the influence of alcohol and other drugs, developed ways to have safe disposal of sharps, and co-designed responses to huffing and vaping in library spaces.
In community settings, we’ve worked with schools and sports clubs, for example coordinating a regional wide group of government and non-government agencies in public health and sport to look at the wider harms associated from alcohol in sport. The group are addressing systemic issues perpetuating alcohol harm in sport, from influencing national legislation around sport and alcohol advertising, to supporting local grass roots sports clubs to take a health-based approach to alcohol.
Providing safe, non-judgemental spaces for young people in Tāmaki Makaurau to share their stories and co-design shared solutions for alcohol and other drug issues
We need to be creative in the way we engage with rangatahi and support young people’s mana motuhake in designing effective solutions.
A good example is the Joyful Movement project, which CAYAD leads, that explores how movement and exercise can be used as both a prevention and treatment strategy for reducing alcohol and drug harm amongst transgender youth. After completing a youth-led research phase, the project is using the insights gathered to co-create an exercise and fitness qualification that centres Rainbow people’s needs and will address a skills gap within the exercise industry across Aotearoa.
Fostering collective impact to strengthen the environments, behaviours, and systems that promote wellbeing for our young people
CAYAD regularly partners with others to ensure accessible and positive activities for all young people to engage in. For example, working with Hoani Waititi marae and kura kaupapa Māori, CAYAD has supported kapa haka and wiki hā events, as well as an adventure based kaupapa with young people.
These types of positive activities have been shown to be protective factors for young people against alcohol and drug harm and have demonstrated the importance of investing in young people’s wellbeing in west Auckland.