Young people and alcohol

The proportion of young people drinking has decreased sharply in recent years. However, among those who do drink, they are consuming larger quantities of alcohol and drinking more frequently. This increase is widely acknowledged to contribute to social problems such as poor health, violence and anti-social behaviour.

Some young people, such as those living in deprived areas or leaving care, can be especially vulnerable to alcohol related problems. Alcohol misuse is a significant factor in school exclusion, teenage pregnancy and youth offending.

Services for young people who have got into difficulty with drinking are patchy and often poorly funded.

Aim of the programme

We aim to fund work for young people aged 11-25 who are misusing alcohol or drinking excessively.

We will support services that aim to reduce the levels of young people’s drinking, create greater awareness of the dangers of harmful drinking and provide direct support to them. This could include individual and/or group work sessions or street-based outreach.

We are particularly interested in work targeting young people who traditionally find it hard to access services, such as those from black and minority ethnic communities and young women.

We are also keen to receive joint applications from young people’s agencies and alcohol agencies where expertise can be shared, innovative approaches developed and the added value of working together can be shown.

Outcomes

Your work will need to deliver one or more of the following outcomes:

• A reduction in alcohol consumption by young people
• Increased access to help for young people who have alcohol problems, leading to a reduction in harm
• Closer working relationships between alcohol and young people’s services
• An increase in relevant skills to deliver services targeted at young people who have alcohol problems.

Other important information

We know some organisations work with young people around a variety of substances. In these circumstances, we specifically want to fund the alcohol element of their work.

You can apply for all or some of your project costs, but we encourage you to get some of your funding from other sources if you can. We will not generally fund the full cost of applications made by charities with an annual income over £10 million. Our grants usually vary between £25,000 and £40,000 per year for a maximum of three years, and rarely exceed this upper limit.

If your work is national or provides a model that could be replicated, we may be able to fund at a higher level. Please call us to discuss this before you submit an application.

You should also read our UK Grants Strategy

This programme is open for on-line applications from 13th August until midday on 19th October 2012.