During the 1990s, Iceland had some of the highest figures for substance use among young people in Europe. The alarming statistics sparked the development of the groundbreaking Icelandic Model for Primary Prevention of Substance Use, which has since been implemented in 30 other countries, including Ireland.

A 1995 study by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) showed that adolescents in Iceland and other Nordic countries were more likely to become drunk than other European teenagers.

While other countries may have rolled out the usual ineffective information campaigns featuring those unintentionally hilarious videos that we all remember from our youth, Iceland chose a different path.

The Icelandic model is based on the collaboration of various stakeholders such as parents, teachers, local development companies, and youth groups.

In 2018, Galway, Mayo and Roscommon jointly became the first region in Ireland to implement the model, now known as the Planet Youth programme. Planet Youth programmes are also now being implemented in Cavan and Monaghan, and Fingal in North Dublin.

Emmet Major, of the West Regional Drugs Task Force in Galway told Changing Ireland: “The Icelandic prevention model was developed over a number of years by the Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis. You survey the children in their schools at 15 to 16 years old every two years using the Planet Youth questionnaire, which is a thorough, investigative, very extensive examination of the lives of young people at that age.

“The purpose is to find out what what’s going well, what are the risk and protective factors in their lives that we can improve on. What’s going wrong? But it’s not for those kids, it’s for the children that are coming behind.

Emmet Major, West Regional Drugs Task Force, Galway

“You take the data, and you try and apply interventions in four big areas. One is what’s going on in their home. Another is their school experience. The other one is leisure time. And the final one is the peer area, can you bring any influence to bear or change or improve what’s happening in the peer group?”

In Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, all 81 secondary schools and 10 Youthreach centres in the region participate, representing about 10% of secondary schools in the country. The survey features questions on teenagers’ substance use, physical health, mental health, physical activity, family and school experience, internet use, bullying and many other categories.

There are 92 primary questions and numerous sub-questions in the current Planet Youth questionnaire used in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, with a total of 1,972 variables; all of which can be examined and cross-tabulated.

The model revolves around the idea that by strengthening the supportive role of parents and schools and the network of opportunities around teenagers, the problems associated with adolescent substance use can be reduced or prevented before they arise.

“It’s very much a community development type of approach. We’re always trying to be inclusive, get everybody involved. Really it’s about all the parents, the community – how can we all be invested in improving outcomes,” added Emmet.

Meanwhile, in Iceland, in 2007, 20 years after the model was first introduced, the figures began to speak for themselves. The proportion of 10th graders who reported becoming drunk during the last month fell from 42% in 1998 to 20% in 2007. The percentage of 10th graders who reported smoking cigarettes daily was 23% in 1998, this dropped to 10% in 2007. (No newer figures were available).

In Ireland, it’s too soon yet to begin measuring the impact of the programme. According to Emmet: “It’s a 10-year piece of work before you really start seeing stuff. And the whole undertaking, I think it’s probably a 20-year piece of work.”

However, the long-game aspect of the programme raises challenges in relation to funding. “It’s very hard to convince the political class to spend money where you’re not going to see outcomes for probably 10 to 15 years. Because (they think) ‘I’m not going to be around to see that’.

“There’s no mention in most national strategies of prevention. How do we get a national buy in to say ‘actually, the strategies are wrong, it needs to change to include far more of a focus on prevention’?”

Currently, the programme is funded by the West Regional Drugs Task Force, the local authorities in the three counties, and various grants from sources like the Dormant Funds and National Lottery.

Emmet says that the landscape in relation to funding is “a challenge”. He remarked: “The elephant in the room of all of this is that we don’t value youth work (in Ireland), well the government certainly doesn’t seem to. It’s the first thing that funding gets cut for, and it’s an awful space to work in, because you never know if you’ve got a job from one year to the next. All the cuts in the recession, youth work was just savaged – what sort of message does that send?”

The information gathered in the survey has already been put to good use by community and voluntary organisations. Imelda Gormally, community development worker with Galway City Partnership, explained: “Every partnership in the country this year has to put in a tender for their SICAP programmes. So every partnership in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon will be using Planet Youth data to inform and help us stream our tender and our annual plans for the appropriate actions around young people and families.

“To have that evidence is so important for us. It’s up to date, it’s a huge level of information that I don’t think we’ve ever got in one place ever before. Within Galway City Partnership there’s a youth advocacy programme, they’ve been really interested in the data coming through. For some organisations, it’s kind of: ‘Are we on the right track here? Do we need to rethink and regroup and replan the way we work?’

“We run an afterschool programme in Ballybane, but we had no real activity-based work. It’s a homework club with some activities. We’ve changed the way we do those and diversified the activities to make sure that every child who attends gets an opportunity to be physically active at some stage in the day. Some of the data that came through showed us a very limited range of opportunities for some young people.”

Planet Youth data will also be included in the region’s Local and Economic Community Plans, and youth officers in the Education and Training Boards in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon draw upon the information when applying for funding through the UBU Your Place Your Space scheme.

It is also used to provide information for parents in the form of a booklet for the parents of students commencing their first year in secondary school, and another for the parents of children in junior infants.

“The idea is that they’re getting good information, this is what the teens are saying, and you really need to be thinking about this now. It’s stuff like bedtimes, family time, communication, sports and hobbies and there’s guidance on all of that,” said Emmet.

Participating schools are also provided with individualised reports, comparing their data with other schools in the region. Following an analysis of the data from the third survey in 2022, researchers began to observe a number of trends emerging.

“There are really interesting trends that we can just begin to see now. A really concerning thing that we’re going to be doing a lot of work on is that parental tolerance, or what the kids perceive to be parental tolerance for drunkenness, is on the slide.

“One of the key issues we picked out of the second survey was that lack of sleep is a huge issue for the young people that’s not being talked about nearly enough. We can begin to see the cross-tabulation between sleep and mental health, school engagement – every aspect of their lives is impacted by lack of sleep,” revealed Emmet.

Fundamentally, where Planet Youth differs from a lot of other youth initiatives is that rather than specifically targeting a vulnerable group, it aims to improve outcomes for all children. Emmet likens it to “a rising tide that lifts all boats”.

He concluded: “Everybody’s all about themselves, largely speaking. And if we work together a lot more in a lot of these types of spaces as they seem to have done in Iceland, it’s a much better approach. Whether it’ll ever work here, it’s still a bit up in the air to be honest, but it won’t be for lack of trying.”