Donna Munro    Senior Consultant & TrainerAustralian Lions Quest Youth Institute Ltd   

As an onlooker with friends and relatives living in and around Byron I am aware of the drug & alcohol problems faced by your community.  As an educator I share your concern about supporting your young people and building the community’s capacity to deal with this challenging issue. I applaud your ‘Drug & Alcohol Forum’ initiative and regret that I am unable to attend on the day.  I would however, like to offer some input via email … from a prevention perspective. I note a focus on teenagers/youth and parents, and agree that this is where the decisions are being made, the behaviours evident; the consequences are being felt; and the worry and heartache ever-present. 

Strategies and initiatives for intervention, treatment and rehabilitation are a must, and the community must rally to provide support in these arenas. I relate Byron’s drug & alcohol situation to the time-worn ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ analogy.  It goes like this… 

A large park at the edge of town has a steep cliff along one side of it, and several people have recently fallen over the cliff.  When this happens an ambulance is quickly dispatched to the bottom of the cliff, and the injured person is whisked away to the hospital for treatment and recovery.  The Town Council decides that this approach is costly in many ways… lives, individual and family well-being and financial resources are being compromised.  So they decide to build a safety net below the cliff edge to catch people before they fall to the bottom.  This response to the problem seems OK but people are still falling… they are still being injured, and the rescue operation is still costly.  Someone then suggests another solution.  Why not build a high fence along the edge of the cliff to stop people from falling – and educate the townspeople about the dangers of going close to the cliff edge? 

I urge you to consider the vital area of prevention, and the importance of building the resilience and social & emotional capacity of Byron Bay’s primary school children. Lions Quest Skills for Growing (primary years) and Skills for Adolescence (middle school/lower secondary years) are excellent social and emotional learning programs that build skills and develop values and attitudes in children and young people in the safe and nurturing classroom environment. These highly regarded programs have been successfully implemented in schools throughout Australia since 1988 – and they offer a Drug Education unit within a broader framework of social skills education. 

I offer two links that may be of interest…www.lionsclubs.org.au/lions-quest - for information about the Lions Quest programs in Australia; and www.casel.org - for information about the importance of social and emotional learning and its relationship with academic learning, general social and emotional well-being, and life success. Lion Kerry O’Bryan, a Byron Bay resident, is the NSW Director of the Australian Lions Quest Youth Institute.  Kerry is willing to organise a local Lions Quest Information Session where representatives from schools, parent and community organisations would have an opportunity to hear about the Lions Quest programs and how they can make a contribution to your community’s efforts.  Please contact me if I can be of any assistance… if you’d like more info about Lions Quest… or if we can speak further about conducting an information session and perhaps a Lions Quest Teacher Accreditation Workshop in Byron Bay. Best wishes for a VERY successful day on the 15^th!   

Kindest regards,Donna Donna Munro  Senior Consultant & Trainer  Australian Lions Quest Youth Institute Ltd  PO Box 3223  Clontarf DC Qld 4019P: 07 3283 8611    1800 805 334F: 07 3283 8611

Byron Shire Councillor John Lazarus

Dear John  Am fully in support of the initiative, and would have attended. Unfortunately I am previously committed.  Please keep me in the loop with any resolutions or initiatives that come from the forum, and any further meetings on the subject, where I may be able to attend.   Some input that I can add - I consider that regular no drugs or alcohol events are critical to support and embed a culture of young people socialising without intoxicants. While we wait for the YACS to be bought up to an entertainment venue standard (now planned to be completed late this year), I have been working with a few community members (including Paul Spooner who is one of your speakers, and who could elaborate if you want more info) to bring a proposal to Council to do a bi weekly no drug or alcohol event on Friday nights in Railway Park with a few stalls and musicians/street performers. With all the existing entertainment venues licensed for alcohol, I believe that a no drugs/alcohol legitimate young peoples hang out space with entertainment in the town centre may help shift the culture of getting drunk and wandering the streets, to a more positive social interaction at a regular event that young people identify with and support. I wish you all the best for your forum , and look forward to identified actions coming from the conference. Any support that I can give, either through Council or for a community initiative, please contact me.  Yours

Cr John Lazarus
Byron Shire Council