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Social Norms Conference - 16th September 2010

Date: 9 Jul 2010

Social Norms Conference - 16th September 2010

 

The Truth About Youth Conference

On:      Thursday 16th September 2010

Time:  9.00am - 4.00pm

At:       University of Bedfordshire, Bedford Campus, Bedford, MK41 9EA

Key note speaker: Professor Wesley Perkins of Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York, leading authority on the social norms approach.  To hear Wesley Perkins explain the Social Norms Approach, check out this video.

Cost:   FREE

Who should attend: Commissioners for Young people, Community Safety leads, Youth Workers, Connexions,  Secondary Schools, Head Teachers, PSHE coordinators, PSHE Advisors, Anti-bullying Coordinators, Police, Youth Offending Service, Health Improvement Specialists , Children and young people's support services, Integrated Youth Support Service, 0-19 services

Since September of 2009, a few Swindon secondary schools took part in a pilot focused on Social Norms.  The pilot focuses on helping young people understand that the majority of their peers are engaging in healthy behaviours.  With this knowledge, we hope to combat the inaccurate belief that "everyone" is having sex, drinking alcohol and using drugs. Based on the results in Swindon, we know 8/10 young people are not sexually active.  Of those that are sexually active, 9/10 are not having sex while under the influence.   The majority of young people in Swindon do make healthy choices; we just need to get the word out. To find out more about the work in Swindon, and if this approach could be applied to your work with young people, consider attending the free Truth About Youth Conference on Sept.16, 2010.  To register, click on: http://www.beds.ac.uk/knowledgehub/events/awards/youth  

What is a Social Norms Approach?[1]

Normative approaches help children and young people understand what their peers are doing, and these are generally positive behaviours. This approach has been developed to counteract findings that indicate people of all ages generally think there are fewer healthy and more risk-taking behaviours occurring than is actually the case. The perceptions that young people hold about their peer's behaviour are often misperceptions.

Common misperceptions amongst young people are:

  • The healthy majority think they are in a minority - this has the potential to weaken their resolve or negatively affect their choices
  • The unhealthy minority think they are in a majority, which can reinforce their already unhealthy behaviours.

Children and young people tend to under-estimate the healthy choices that they and their peers undertake and, at the same time, over-estimate risk behaviours. In one study, 25% of secondary school students believed that drinking alcohol on a daily basis was the norm. The research concluded that in fact only 5% of those students drank daily (Perkins, 2003).

For further information regarding this conference, please click here. 

 


1] Positive Guidance on Aspects of Personal, Social and Health Education, Stephen De Silva and Simon Blake, 2006