Alcohol Talk in Tāmaki

The challenges around young people and drinking were widely discussed and talked about in this conversation. Sadly, for some of the parents in the current environment, the choice is not whether to supply alcohol to young people or not, but to let them drink at home and supply them alcohol or they go out on the streets to drink and find alcohol. This is a hard space, and parents expressed that when placed in that situation not knowing how to deal with it and always worrying if they are doing the right thing or not.

We supported the Family Centre and the Tamaki College to host a conversation for parents with Peter Thorburn around “Alcohol Harm Minimization for young people”. This event was at Tamaki College, and hopefully is the beginning of further work with the school and it's students and parents.

We continued our Facebook campaign around alcohol, check out some of the posts that have raised a lot of conversations and have been shared widely below!

Our focus around working on alcohol harm minimization continues, and we have hosted many spaces this month for the community to have conversations.

On the 10th of May, we had a working lunch conversation to gather insight around parenting teens and the dilemmas that parents and teenagers face when it comes to alcohol-related harm. Roxanne, Family Worker at Tamaki Community Development Trust, who is also a HEART Change Agent, hosted this conversation. We were overwhelmed with a great turnout, and we were 13 women sitting and talking and sharing our experiences during our teenage years.