Teen Challenge Tasmania’s #NotEvenOnce® … Not ever!

While fighting the flawed process which shoe-horned fundamentalist Christian organization Teen Challenge Tasmania (TCT) into the closed primary school in Meander, MARRA (Meander Area Residents and Ratepayers Association) has also investigated TCT’s operations.

A lot has been discovered and the newest investigation raises doubts over the validity of TCT’s #NotEvenOnce® drug education program. This program is being marketed aggressively and was delivered to 15 high schools in Tasmania in 2017. Wild claims of success are now being touted.

What has been ignored by TCT is that their ‘proof of success’ is based on a major flaw.

According to national drug education experts, the data gathered by TCT before and after their presentation is useless for measuring the program’s effectiveness. TCT only asked the kind of questions that make it easy for them to demonstrate a ‘positive response’ (such as knowledge, and what the students think they’ll do), but no questions about actual behaviour outcomes. They cannot prove if their program has affected student’s drinking or drug-taking behaviour. They do not know how students behave a week after their seminar, let alone a year later.

A secular version of the program was pushed to State schools probably to the relief of some teachers too busy and distracted to conduct proper checks. But the devil was in the detail. On the last line of the #NotEvenOnce® seminar response form, there was space for any student who felt they needed more help to provide their contact details to TCT. Following parental protest, TCT have said they’ll remove that part of the form. Why it was there in the first place reveals the organisation’s primary goal.

Teen Challenge Tasmania claims it “specialises in the alcohol and other drugs sector in treatment interventions, and prevention through education”1. But none of the personnel delivering the #NotEvenOnce® program in schools is a qualified teacher or health care worker, or has tertiary qualifications in drug education and training.

Teen Challenge Tasmania’s expertise is in evangelism and highly persuasive marketing. Their Vision Statement is “life transformation… We desire that every person within Tasmania is equipped to choose freedom from addiction through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.”2

The program is the ‘wonderchild’ of TCT and the Dalgarno Institute, also a faith-based organization promoting Temperance, and which has a BIG WEBSITE but thankfully little influence otherwise.

MARRA is not the only group worried by the program. It has features that drug education experts3, 4, 5, 6 say should be avoided, or that are even harmful. For example, the use of ex-drug addicts as speakers can unintentionally ‘glamourise’ addiction, and encourage risky behaviour in some young people.

Acknowledged experts, including Tasmania’s own Drug Education Network, know the features of drug education programs of proven effectiveness. #NotEvenOnce® does not have those features. It focusses on abstinence and scare tactics and the aforesaid ex-drug users. It also runs counter to the National Drug Strategy’s approach of harm minimization – an approach based on reality.

All the above doubts have recently been raised with High School Principals around Tasmania.

Unfortunately, TCT is Agfest’s Official Charity for 2018. Surprisingly, TCT’s Vision Statement is not in Agfest’s website or brochure, and rest assured that they won’t tell the public the full story. They will doubtless welcome all monies compulsorily donated via every ATM transaction at the venue.

The sad thing is some State schools have already fallen victim to the slick, glossy marketing of a free program which has bad features, delivered by people with no credentials and has an underlying, fundamentalist Christian agenda. That it was chosen in preference to programs of proven effectiveness is particularly disappointing.

Refs …

1 https://www.agfest.com.au/supported-charity
2 Teen Challenge Tasmania’s Home of Hope submission to Meander Valley Council, May 2016
3 Lee, N.K., Cameron, J., Battam, S., Roche, A. (2014) Alcohol education for Australian schools: A review of the evidence. Adelaide: National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction.
4 Warren, F. (2016) ‘What works’ in drug education and prevention. Health and Social Care Analysis, Scottish Government.
5 www.yodaa.org.au/schools/what-works-drug-education
6 https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/news/wrong-school-drug-prevention-program-can-do-more-harm-good

*Brian Hillman “brought my well-baked hide over from Western Australia about 3 years ago with the now-evaporated idea of retirement. In WA, I was a full-time agricultural adviser before becoming a full-time father. I do not like being forced into any religious organisation or lied to by them, any Council or political party but I confess to being impressed by Jesus’ example. Unfortunately, most of what I see is Krystyanity – something barely recognisable and of little connection to Christianity.”