More Than The Substance: Understanding substance use, reducing harm, guiding change

Often the way an adult first raises the subject of substance use is what decides whether a young person talks or turns away. When the conversation feels like judgement, shame does the rest, and the young person disengages from the very people trying to help.

This one-day workshop offers a practical foundation for engaging in helpful conversations. You will build your working knowledge of alcohol and other substances and how to assess use without alienating the person in front of you.

Participants will be guided to explore what to notice, which validated screening tools to reach for, and how to make sense of what a young person is saying within a harm-reduction and health-based frame.

Motivational Interviewing (MI), an evidence-based, collaborative style of conversation designed to strengthen a person's own motivation to change will be highlighted as a practical tool to be added to your toolkit. Rather than trying to convince, warn or "fix," you'll practice drawing out a young person's own reasons for change, so that therapeutic engagement, the single strongest predictor of a good outcome, is where you begin, not where you hope to end up.

Key content

• Overview of alcohol and other drug use in New Zealand
• Biology of addiction
• Using validated screening tools and how to feed results back and make meaning of them together.
• A practical harm-reduction approach, and brief intervention matched to where the young person is at.
• The spirit and evidence base of MI, understanding ambivalence and "resistance" as a normal, workable part of change, and how the "righting reflex" can quietly push a young person the wrong way.
• Recognising, evoking and responding to change talk so you can amplify a young person's own language for change.
• Ready-to-use strategies for exploring importance and confidence, and offering information respectfully.
• Exploring possible referral pathways