UKCAPP United Kingdom Community Alcohol Prevention Programme

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UKCAPP(United Kingdom Community Alcohol
Prevention Programme)

• Willm Mistral
• Claudia Mastache
• Richard Velleman
• Lorna Templeton
• April 2008

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UKCAPP Background

• 2003-04 AERC prioritised community action to
  reduce alcohol-related harm
• Harold Holder Sven Andreasson invited to lead a
  2 day workshop for existing community groups
  ready to develop community initiatives, which
  would benefit from extra funding from AERC

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Holder approach

• Community as a system
• Community mobilisation, leadership and
  responsibility
• Evidence based strategies
• Responsible beverage service
• Alcohol access (outlet density).
• Enforcement of laws and regulations
• Media advocacy
• Efforts directed toward policy-makers to
  influence social, economic, environmental
  structures in local environment
• Partnership at local and national levels.

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UKCAPP

• following submission of bids AERC part-funded 3
  projects which became known as UKCAPP
• AERC commissioned the MHRDU to
• ascertain extent to which projects were able to
  apply Holder model
• identify barriers and solutions to implementation
• draw conclusions about what worked and how
• combine individual local evaluations into a whole.

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Evaluation Methodology

• Mixed methodology, quantitative and qualitative
  data
• Phase 1
• Develop strong relationship with projects
• Identify a local person to be primary contact
• Develop an overall evaluation design, combining
  findings from all 3 projects, to add to strength
  of outcomes
• Phase 2
• Monitor progress (site visits) and identify
  problems, barriers, and solutions in evaluation.
• Obtain data from comparison districts where
  feasible
• Produce Final Report, and Disseminate findings.

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UKCAPP Outputs

• 1. Awareness-raising both general public and
  political, to
• promote local ownership of problems and solutions
  
• warn of dangers of excessive consumption
• publicise interventions contributing to public
  safety
• 2. Licensed Premises engage with licensees to
  
• promote server training
• encourage Pubwatch make Best Bar None awards
• enforce licensing regulations
• 3. General Environment
• improve lighting and cleanliness of streets
• increase police presence
• set limits on licensing of local outlets.
• 4. Transport
• improve transport links in order to assist with
  orderly dispersal of crowds, and improve safety.

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Impact of Interventions
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Impact of interventions
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Impact of interventions
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Impact of interventions
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Glasgow Police, Ambulance, AE

• City centre comparing 2006/07 with 2004/05
• Decreases -10 police recorded crimes
• Increases 74 police alcohol incidents
• 5 Ambulance incidents 6.5 AE attendance
• Impact of short-term police, environmental input
  around Central Station (comparing last quarter
  2005 with 2004)
• Decreases -19 total Violent Crime
  - 4.4 Serious Assault
  -21.5 Robbery
• Increases 300 Assistance to public
  250 complaints from public 61
  disorder arrests
  100 for knives 200 drugs.

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Cardiff Police, Ambulance, AE

• Comparing 2005/06 with 2004/05
• Decrease -25.7 in AE alcohol-related
  attendances
• Increase 33 police recorded crimes
• Increase 6 Assault
  15 Wounding
  25 Robbery

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Birmingham Police, Ambulance, AE

• Project area 800m buffer zone
• Decrease -37.7 targeted crime
  -29.5 wounding
• Decreases greater than in bordering police
  operational command unit.
• However Numbers were small, and so difficult
  to draw robust conclusions

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Difficulties with Data

• Despite best intention of local teams,
  collection, validation, and comparison of
  statistics across sources or sites exceedingly
  difficult
• Police, Ambulance, AE employ different methods
  of data collection, recording, analysis,
  retrieval
• Scotland not exactly comparable to England/Wales
  because different legal systems/recording
  practices

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Different tools and methods

• iQuanta (Police Standards Unit) to turn Home
  Office Police statistics into useful outputs on
  performance in England Wales, differs from
• TASC, launched in 2000 under Home Office Targeted
  Policing Initiative, which includes AE data on
  alcohol-related assaults.
• if all those assaults were now reported and
  recorded as offences, this would add about 30
  . (TASC evaluation, Maguire Nettleton,
  2003)

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Why statistics may increase

• Following instructions to focus on certain
• offences, rises in specific statistics are a
  goal
• One of the objectives the Home Office set us
  was to increase the number of recorded incidents
  of domestic violence . What they are saying to
  us now is that you must crime it, and as far as
  common assault is concerned it is one of the
  highest categories volume-wise . A very similar
  situation happened with racially motivated
  incidents. (I15).

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Different ways of interpreting raw statistics

• Whether an incident/crime is recorded as
  alcohol-related depends on judgement of
  individual police officers or data analysts
• Increased visible police presence may reduce both
  crime and recorded crime
• or may increase arrests, and reduce problems,
  while statistics show an increase in crime
• or may increase recorded incidents, while
  reducing arrest and crime figures.

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Statistics are sometimes used to support
political aims (believe it or not!!)

• I could call up data that could prove anything
  I wanted to..using proper data I can manipulate
  it to make it look pretty. Similarly, if I wanted
  to put pressure on the Home Office to support us
  with an initiative I could put my hands on data
  that would do just that. So, its whatever you
  want . All partnerships do that. (Data
  Analyst).

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Positive Partnerships

• There can be no doubt that the UKCAPP
  partnerships have had considerable positive
  impact on local environment
• increasing awareness (both public and political)
  of factors impacting on alcohol related harm
• improving standards and relationships within the
  licensed trade
• improving the environment in terms of lighting,
  cleanliness, cctv, visible policing
• improving late-night taxi and bus links.

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Further Impact

• increasing collaboration across a wide range of
  community agencies
• facilitating adaptability and flexibility in
  these agencies
• instigating positive community responses to
  alcohol-related harm
• institutionalising partnership working.

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Partnerships are Important

• Partnerships crucial, providing financial and
  human resources beyond ability of one agency
• Without partnerships no substantive multi-faceted
  interventions could be undertaken.
• Partners included local health authority,
  community safety partnership, alcohol and drug
  teams, police, licensing forums, business, media,
  and public groups.

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Potential Barriers

• Barriers to effective community interventions
• Partnership difficulties
• Financial insecurity
• Commercial considerations
• Transport (private companies)
• Perceptions of extent of alcohol-related problems
• Workloads
• National and local alcohol policies
• All of these potential barriers can only be
  overcome through a process of extended negotiation

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Importance of evaluation

• Imperative that partnerships are comprehensively
  evaluated
• Evaluation must be costed-in
• Action needed across all public bodies so that
  each set of statistics has responsible owner of
  appropriate seniority, with duty to engage with
  researchers about reliability and meaning (Smith
  et al.2006)

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Conclusions

• Two main reasons for arguing that community
  prevention programmes should continue
• a) it is likely (although currently difficult
  to prove) that deleterious effects of high levels
  of alcohol consumption would be worse at a local
  level if these interventions were not taking
  place
• b) it is likely (although again difficult to
  prove) that these local actions are best chance
  for minimising harm in face of concerted push
  towards national deregulation and promotion of
  alcohol consumption.

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THANK YOU!