Sharing Best Practice: Substance Misuse, Internet Safety and Safer Relationships


Flash is required!

Conferences to Update Teachers on Current Welsh Trends and to Promote Best Practice Personal and Social Education (PSE)

Did you know?

  1. 412 new legal highs have been identified in the last 2 years with 4 times as many being found in the UK than in any other country
  2. In Wales, in 2010, 4,782 children and young people were involved in cases of domestic abuse
  3. Online 1 in 8 young people ages 8-18 discovered that someone they were communicating with was an adult pretending to be much younger

In January, 143 secondary teachers attended 3 conferences across Wales, funded by the Welsh Government. The conferences focused on best practice education in substance use and misuse education, domestic abuse and internet safety as part of the PSE curriculum.  Each day was organised as a round robin to raise awareness of the rapidly changing nature of substance use and misuse, safe personal relationships and internet safety within Wales.  The training was delivered by the All Wales School Liaison Core Programme, the Welsh Network of Healthy Schools, the NSPCC, Hafan Cymru and Wise Kids with the support of CEOP the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency.

Topics such as the growth of the use of legal highs, drug identification, domestic abuse legislation, how to empower young people towards safe and positive online experiences and the methodology and resources to assist with teaching these sensitive topics in the classroom were all explored during the day. The days proved very successful with 100% of the delegates rating the overall training as excellent or very good. Teachers stated they were going back to school with the intention of updating their PSE schemes of work and policies and feeding back to other members of staff as part of a whole school approach.