Oct. 11 2024

Found: Zealand Greece Norway Australia Portugal Canada Estonia Czechia Slovenia France Netherlands Scotland Iceland

S6W-30216

Asked by: Eagle, Tim (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - Highlands and Islands)

Question

To ask the Scottish Government whether it is able to directly attribute any decline in rates of teenage (a) smoking, (b) drinking and (c) drug-taking to either (i) the Planet Youth pilot scheme or (ii) pre-existing anti-substance abuse health campaigns.

Answered by Gray, Neil - Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care

No. We are investing in Planet Youth over 2 years, from 2023-2025. Planet Youth, sometimes referred to as the Icelandic Model, is an approach to prevention which empowers communities to support their young people to reduce the risk of substance use and harms. In Iceland, this approach instigated a decline in teenage substance use. Whilst Planet Youth in Scotland is in its early stages, Winning Scotland who lead on this initiative, are currently developing evaluation tools to measure outcomes.

S6W-30221

Asked by: Eagle, Tim (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - Highlands and Islands)

Question

To ask the Scottish Government how many successful reductions of substance abuse have been produced by the Planet Youth pilot scheme, compared with the rates of reduction produced by pre-existing anti-substance abuse campaigns.

Answered by Gray, Neil - Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care

Planet Youth is a long term, upstream preventative approach and as such we would not yet expect to see a reduction in the substance use. The purpose of the pilot, which only started last year, is to build capacity in local communities to allow them to better use and understand data directly from their young people. There is significant evidence from Iceland that the approach works to reduce the number of young people engaging in health harming behaviours, and in increasing the age of first use. The pilot should allow us to ascertain the challenges and opportunities in transferring this model to Scotland, thanks to the 6 local areas who are pioneering the approach. There is an ongoing learning evaluation which will be published after the pilot ends in March 2025. Preliminary findings indicate there has been progress so far both in terms of taking a whole systems approach and at a community level. We are also seeing increasing interest in investing in prevention at a national and local level. It is clear from the numbers that pre-existing campaigns on substance use among teenagers are not as effective as we would like, hence the investment in a longer term, more systemic approach. There may be a misunderstanding about what Planet Youth is and colleagues from national charity Winning Scotland, who are facilitating Planet Youth in Scotland, would be happy to provide more information to interested members.

Oct. 04 2024

Found: delegates from all other Parties (Canada, Denmark in respect of Faroe Islands and Greenland, E.U., Iceland