Planet Youth

Planet Youth is an international evidence-based primary prevention model that has been developed in order to reduce substance use rates amongst adolescents.

Parent Resources

What Parents can do to increase protective factors and decrease risk factors.

  • Increase the amount of time parents spend together with their children each week.
  • Increase parental monitoring to ensure parents are consistently aware of where their children are, who they are with, and what they are doing.
  • Increase adolescent perceptions of quality and value of time spent with family members by setting aside routine daily or weekly family time.
  • Notice your adolescent’s strengths, and the good things they do and tell them.
  • Use clear and consistent parental messages about expectations related to alcohol and other drugs.
  • Decrease alcohol and other drug access through parents/carers, other adults and peers.
  • Increase opportunities for structured leisure time activities that include your child’s friends and their families.
  • Use parental contracts to agree on common goals and behavioural limits.
  • Encourage adolescent’s attendance at structured and supervised leisure time activities.
  • Decrease rates of late outside hours without parental supervision and talk about the importance of reasonable limits to late outside hours.
  • Have shared interests, regular family mealtimes, family activities and meetings creates enjoyable time and space to chat with and listen to our teenagers.  As they get older, it is important to maintain good quality communication with them and to stay connected, interested and engaged in what’s happening in their lives. 
  • Get to know your child’s friends parents and be a collective voice in not allowing teenage children to drink alcohol anywhere at any time.

There is no evidence to support the view that parental supply of alcohol protects our children from adverse drinking outcomes.

The evidence is clear that the best thing we can do as responsible parents and adults is to delay and defer any alcohol use for as long as possible.

Council Planet Youth Resources 2023

The 2019 City of Mt Gambier and DC Grant Survey

The Limestone Coast survey was conducted in late 2019 and 2021 across four secondary schools with key findings available below.

The Alcohol and Drug Foundation are working with the Planet Youth Team to trial an Australian version of the program with SMLC, supported by the City of Mount Gambier and the District Council of Grant. The Planet Youth trial is funded under the Australian Government’s National Ice Action Strategy and managed by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation.

About the Program

In the 1990s, Iceland ranked comparatively highly across Europe for adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and other harmful drug use. In response, a group of policy makers, community leaders, and social scientists came together to explore new ideas for initiating a different, bottom-up collaborative approach to drug and alcohol use prevention that has since become known as the Icelandic Prevention Model (Planet Youth).  Over the last 30 years Iceland has seen large reductions in substance use in their young people and the program has now been adopted in 20 countries.

Planet Youth is now an international evidence-based primary prevention model that works by directly targeting the risk and protective factors in young people’s lives that determine their substance use behaviours and enhancing the social environment they are growing up in.

By reducing the known risk factors and strengthening the known protective factors the problems associated with adolescent substance use can be reduced or stopped before they arise. The Planet Youth model offers the opportunity to improve the long-term health and life outcomes for young people and goes far beyond simply reducing their substance use rates.

The model is underpinned by data derived from the administration of the Planet Youth questionnaire. This comprehensive lifestyle questionnaire is administered to 15-16 year-old students in their school setting and examines a great many aspects of their lives. Questions include substance use, health, mental health, physical activity, family and school experience, internet use and bullying.

The data returned from the survey is used to inform the development of suitable interventions in the community that will help address the known risk and protective for young people and thus improve outcomes.

Programs