Critical Analysis Of A Local Health Education Intervention – The Sammy D foundation Expert Answer
The Sammy D Foundation is an education intervention intended for young people encompassing school and college going students, sport clubs, different workplaces as well as communities. The basic educational background planned to be delivered to these people include impacts of bullying in the environment on people along with the impacts of violence resulting from drug and alcohol use. The reason for the recruitment of young people in this plan is to empower them for making positive decisions in their lives so as to be able to participate in the betterment of the community overall (Foundation).
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The foundation was built by the parents and in the remembrance of the motives of a young sport enthusiasts and a compassionate person who has been especially kind and helpful to people being bullied. Always being a defender of those getting bullied, Sam lost his life to one punch attack. The loss of Sam was put together into a foundation known as Sammy D foundation with ultimate goals of making young people skillful enough so as to prevent the happening of any such tragedy again. Following this, the core message of the Sammy D Foundation was spread across various schools, sports and community clubs equaling to numbers in hundreds. The main purpose remained the education and awareness of young people about the bullying and violent behaviours, the violence and other risks associated with drug and alcohol abuse as well as the ultimate consequences not on the associated families but also on the society as a whole (Foundation).
The practical planning and processes of the Sammy D foundation included school programs, sporting club programs, workplace education interventions and community programs. The further divisions of the plan included: bullying prevention education, workshops and prevention programs; violence presentation and prevention workshops; and combined drug and alcohol education with the help of presentations and preventive workshops. Similar to this, other programs i.e., sporting club, workplace and community programs were also built on similar individual infrastructure of aims. bullying prevention education entailing initial presentations to describe the purpose of the intervention, workshops to give an idea and impact of bullying in schools, and a prevention program spanning 8 weeks in length consisting of a student led inquiry programs for evaluating and preventing bullying and violence in schools (Foundation).
The resourcing of the Sammy D foundation intervention consists of grants, fundraising money, events and rantings, different programs, mentoring and some other sources of income. Let us discuss about some of these resourcing in detail with recent examples. The foundation has secured a state government funding for 3 years from 2018-2020 for the purposes of growing the organization, addition of a general manager for assistance in fee-for service model’s establishment as well as for establishing of partnerships with various sport and educational organizations. With this guaranteed stream of income support, the foundation also plans for the promotion and establishment of long term financial goals so as to achieve a better outreach in the community. Apart from the state government, funding, different fundraising activities have also contributed a major deal in increasing the income stream of the Sammy D foundation. This increase roughly equals to 18 % from fundraising in 2018. Also, the integration of volunteers is also a main component of the intervention’s both planning and resourcing activities. Although volunteering by people, in itself, does not contribute directly to resource generation. However, it contributes passively via saving of resources which result from the addition of volunteers, which would have been otherwise spent on paid workers for the intervention (Foundation).
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The implementation and the practical process of this intervention includes: professional services; program and employee expenses; events and advertisements; and office expenditures. The main programs for the implementation of the intervention comprise: violence prevention education; bullying prevention education; true colours; education about alcohol, methamphetamine and drugs; community mentoring; out of home care mentoring; and fee for service mentoring. The basic educational purpose for violence education involves the elucidation of the significance of the long term consequences beholden by such behaviours not only for the person getting directly affected by it but also for the bystanders and the persons involved in such acts. Also, the negative long term mental and physical health consequences ae also included such as self-esteem and belief loos, elevated anxiety and depression along with prevalence of an anti-social behaviour. Moreover, the implementation of the true colour program was aimed at the provision of a movement so as to make people self-aware of their true colours i.e., based on taking actions on spot to walk away, stop or saying no to violence (Foundation).
To date, the Sammy D foundation has reached out to over 91,000 people about staying safe, looking after one’s friends and mates as well as ingraining an aptitude of never considering violence as an answer. A high quality educational suite was also developed for the conduction of programs based on demoralising and preventing violence and bullying along with drugs and alcohol use which is also equally common in young adults of Australia. Other achieved goals included individual mentoring of approximately 200 people at high risk of this problem, significant partnerships with businesses and individuals for a sustained support of the program and a remarkable growth in the schools’ and clubs’ community sharing the same purpose and passion about prevention of bullying and violence behaviors (Foundation).
According to a 2018 report on the Sammy D foundation intervention, the success lied in a big number of people educated on all the said aims of the programs. The statistics for that are: 4974 people educated on violence prevention; 442 educated on bullying prevention; 795 educated based on curriculum education and knowledge; 1974 people on alcohol and other drugs education; and 1839 individuals educated on methamphetamine and illicit drug use. Counting together, these individuals totalled to 10,328 educated about different aspects of the bullying, violence, alcohol and drug related health intervention of the Sammy D foundation (Foundation).
Now let us have an overview of the stats related to the issue concerned with this intervention i.e., bullying, violence, alcohol and drug use. About bullying, 1 out of every 4 individuals have been found to be bullies in the age range of 8 to 14 years old. Same are the stats for violence with the difference of age range, which in case was between 15 – 18 years old. About the alcohol and drug related violence, 1 every 5 Australian hospitalisations are due to alcohol and drug consumption in age group of under 25 years old. In view of all these, several effective results were obtained which were measured and evaluated both internally and externally. Of note, 92 % of individuals or participants had witnessed previous instances of bullying, prevention in the involvement in bullying due to information or education they got through the intervention and believed the unacceptable nature of the bullying behaviour following the information given on bullying. Of the participant people who got more aware of the bullying impact on individual lives and society, 87 % success was observed (Foundation).
The statistics for the impact of violence prevention education and strategies resulted in identification of the 77 % of people who had been involved in the previous violence history against somebody. Awareness about the impact of punches in violence was achieved in 98 % of the participants and 89 % of individuals refrained from getting into a violent situation due to this informative intervention. Lastly, statistics about education and information transfer success regarding partying safely included: awareness in 77 % individuals about the thinking to make safer choices in relevance to party planning; 90 % individuals were made aware of the involvement of their parents in planning such parties and family involvement in events like these; and finally 98 % became more aware of the risks associated with drug and alcohol misuse (Foundation).
Apart from paying attention towards the education of young individuals getting bullied and violence, it is also necessary to pay special attention to people who bully. Although appropriate consequences of bullying should be a necessary aftermath of the one’s carrying out such activities, however it would also be quite logical to ask them for reasons and the thinking behind it due to which they are more prone to bully someone. Thus an alternative intervention should entail the knowledge dispersion, involvement and a need to have conversations to everyone so as to get to the ground realities of the thinking of the bully too. This does not imply acceptance of bullying, but accepting the individual challenges that one might be facing and their particular needs thus making the bullies an integral part of the intervention too rather than just making them let out of such programs (Cantone et al., 2015).
When considering broader literature about violence and bullying prevention, it has been quite clear that the co-occurrence of bullying has been found to be with the presence of mental and behavioural problems too. Some of the most common of these are aggressive and anxious behaviors. One example of this showed that young people suffering from such behaviour and psychological disorders have more difficulty coping up with their studies and peer as well as making friends. This factor further contributes towards the exacerbation of other interrelated behaviours some of which are bullying and violence too. Therefore, apart from just knowledge transfer about the worse effects of bullying and violence, it is also imperative to target the mental health of people too. An improvement in the socio-economic skills, school and friend bonding, promotion of positive social behaviors and norms would not only be beneficial to the prevention of social violence and bullies but also shall help reduce related problems such as alcohol use, substance use, aggressive and anxious behaviors (Limbos et al., 2007).
Another alternative option for this intervention could include the integration of social services along with medical treatments for schools, clubs and workplaces. This would also help in a better encouragement and stronger associations between different organizations and aid in the better development of referrals. The implanting of emotional, behavioral and mental health counsellors in the workplace environment would helpful in easing the access to care that is required by the said population. In this way, implementation of multidisciplinary team would further enhance the potential outcomes of the interventions and broaden its impact too (Ehiri, Hitchcock, Ejere, & Mytton, 2017).
The specific components of the interventions targeted at lessening the prevalence of bullying and violence in young adults, as led by the Sammy D foundation, is aimed at identifying the educational needs that might be lacking and thus contribute to bullying behaviors in young individuals. Apart from this, the intervention also focused on the proper education of such people of the bad impacts and consequences of such bullying and violence both physical and mental. As a result, considerable success has been achieved not only in the education but also in the reduction of such activities along with the involvement of people in speeding this education too. Moreover, it has also been found that the mental state of young adults in considering the act of violence and bullying a wrong deed, was observed. Also, an appropriate success of the program relied on the proper arrangement of the funding along with a great contribution from the volunteers too which had been essential in running the programs (Ehiri et al., 2017).
Apart from the positive lessons learned from the Sammy D foundation’s intervention in promoting health activities regarding violence and bully prevention, some improvisations could be done with the integration of multidisciplinary team in the plan too, such as the integration of mental health therapists. A second outreach could entail the involvement of both the bullies and targets so as both aspects are considered which are essential for eradicating the problem from its roots and also reaching to its base cause, from the perspective of the bullies too. Also, an integration of mental health programs would make such plans better able to cope with the mental health problems associated with such behaviours too, as most such activities are also found to be correlated with psyche abnormalities too. Therefore, more research on the underlying reasons of such behaviours would also be helpful in better planning of such interventions.
References
Cantone, E., Piras, A. P., Vellante, M., Preti, A., Daníelsdóttir, S., D’Aloja, E., . . . Bhugra, D. (2015). Interventions on bullying and cyberbullying in schools: a systematic review. Clinical practice and epidemiology in mental health : CP & EMH, 11(Suppl 1 M4), 58-76. doi:10.2174/1745017901511010058
Ehiri, J. E., Hitchcock, L. I., Ejere, H. O. D., & Mytton, J. A. (2017). Primary prevention interventions for reducing school violence. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017(3), CD006347. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD006347.pub2
Foundation, S. D. Shaping lives, changing futures. Retrieved from https://www.sammydfoundation.org.au/
Limbos, M. A., Chan, L. S., Warf, C., Schneir, A., Iverson, E., Shekelle, P., & Kipke, M. D. (2007). Effectiveness of interventions to prevent youth violence a systematic review. Am J Prev Med, 33(1), 65-74. doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2007.02.045
