HSC Students Help Health Professionals Deliver Groundbreaking Workshop

Health & Social Care students were given the responsibility of testing a pilot workshop scheme by health professionals, dealing with the issue of cannabis use in young parents and its effect on child brain development.

The product of a partnership between the Barnardo’s Healthy Child Programme for 0-19 and Response, the Wirral advice and guidance agency for 13 to 19-year-olds, the workshop focusses on helping young parents make informed decisions for the well-being of their child where cannabis is involved.

Our students were chosen to test the workshop and give an honest appraisal and feedback to the health professionals in order to maximise the impact it could have.

Speaking before the pilot session, Heidi Clark from Barnardo’s said: “We approached the Sixth Form College because we though the Health and Social Care students would be a really great place to pitch this. They can give us an insight into its content and its delivery and they might have some information that we don’t have!

“The students here will maybe, and hopefully, go a long way to changing the way we work with young families who deal with cannabis use. We hope that this is of an interest to Health and Social Care students as it is a health promotion, and we want them to be brutally honest with their feedback because they’re helping to shape something really positive.”

The work between parenting and child brain development specialist Heidi, and her Response counterpart Phil Hamilton whose expertise lie in dealing with teenage drug use, is based on research that was shared with them by Arrowe Park Teenage Pregnancy Clinic and the numbers of young parents presenting to them where there is, or has been, on-going cannabis use.

Heidi explained that the inconclusive research in the effects cannabis use doesn’t help young people make the right decisions, and said: “The message for us is that cannabis use where you are raising a child impacts on brain development and that could be a sign of neglect. What we’re hoping to do with this workshop is a risk reduction plan for young people that have been identified through different services like social care and the teenage pregnancy clinic, and if they are continuing to use cannabis, that they do so in a way that doesn’t impact on their child’s development.”

Andy Walton, Head of Health & Social Care at the Sixth Form College said after the workshop: “The feedback supplied from our students was excellent; the health professionals were very impressed and very appreciative of their assistance. Heidi and Phil are going to send us a breakdown of how our students have helped shape their workshop and we have been invited to the launch of the programme with fellow industry professionals.”

Andy concluded: “As well helping with the feedback, the students learned about the five key ingredients to give babies the best start – Talk, Play, Relax, Cuddle and Respond – and how cannabis use can impact upon this critical period within the child’s first three years. They also gained some expert knowledge and insight into Response and their work in the Wirral, and got to make worthwhile contributions to the harm reduction plan to support other young people.”