From NDRI:

The Centre for Behavioural Research into Cancer Control and the National Drug Research Institute invite you to

What’s needed to Close the Smoking Gap?

A free public seminar with
Tom Calma
National Coordinator for Tackling Indigenous Smoking

3pm on Wednesday 17 November, 2010

National Drug Research Institute Seminar Room
Curtin University Health Research Campus
Level 2, 10 Selby Street, Shenton Park, WA

Tom Calma has been involved in Indigenous affairs at a local, community, state, national and international level and worked in the public sector for 35 years. He was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner for six years until early 2010 and has been Chair of the Close the Gap Steering Committee for Indigenous Health Equality since its inception in March 2006. As National Coordinator for Tackling Indigenous Smoking, his role includes leading and mentoring the tackling smoking workforce, advising on policy and program directions in Indigenous tobacco control, and advocating best practice approaches to reducing smoking in Indigenous families, communities and workplaces.

Dr Calma is an Aboriginal elder from the Kungarakan tribal group and a member of the Iwaidja tribal group whose
traditional lands are south-west of Darwin and on the Coburg Peninsula in the Northern Territory.

Please RSVP to NDRI Reception on (08) 9266 1600 or ndri@curtin.edu.au by Tuesday 16 November, 2010.

From Turning Point:

The 2011 course handbook for Turning Point’s Graduate Program is now out. The handbook and application form are available on the Turning Point website www.turningpoint.org.au, or from Student Administration, phone 8413 8700.

The courses comprise two core subjects, Perspectives in Drug Use and AOD Treatment, Assessment and Planning, and a choice of elective subjects from the following specialist streams: AOD counselling and clinical work, mental health, community/ policy, and AOD research and evaluation. Some subjects, including the two core subjects, can be studied online.

The closing date for applications for study in first semester 2011 is Friday 28 January 2011.

For more information please contact: Caroline Clark on 8413 8708 or carolinec@turningpoint.org.au

кухненски маси

We would like to invite you to a ‘Community Conversation’ seminar to be held in Cairns on alcohol and pregnancy. The seminars will give an overview of the current research projects on alcohol use in pregnancy. There will also be an opportunity for you to put forward your ideas on how you would like your health professionals to talk to you about alcohol and pregnancy and the possible risks of drinking alcohol while pregnant.

The seminars are part of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Project. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders is not a diagnosis but an umbrella term used to describe a range of potential effects resulting from fetal alcohol exposure. These effects include physical defects, facial abnormalities and problems with growth, development and learning.

The seminars are partly funded through the project and also sponsored by the Institute’s Consumer and Community Advisory Council and the Collaboration for Applied Research and Evaluation.

Attendees at the seminars will receive a small honorarium to cover parking and any out of pocket expenses. As places are very limited (maximum 30 at each location) we would appreciate your early response.

We are really excited about the potential for this ‘Community Conversation’ and do hope that you will join us.

Date: Monday 29 November 2010
Time: 9.00am – 1.30pm
Venue: Pacific International Hotel, 43 The Esplanade Cairns
RSVP: 22 November 2010
Phone: 08 9489 7724 (please call and we will phone you back)
Email: hjones@ichr.uwa.edu/au

How to get there
There is no parking at the Pacific International Hotel. Paid parking is available across the road from the hotel.
If you are coming via the local bus service, the nearest bus stop would be either in Abbott Street (1 street away) or Lake Street (2 streets away).

Via Sushi Productions:

These DVD resources have been developed from evidence based best practice and illustrate a range of counselling skills including generic counselling skills, assessment, motivational interviewing, problem solving, goal setting, relapse, as well as best practice skills when interviewing couples and families. They are invaluable tools for mental health, generalist and specialist drug workers who encounter people with drug related or mental health problems, as well as significant others concerned at someone else’s drug use.

These resources have been purchased nationally and internationally by health and welfare agencies; universities, TAFE, and individual practitioners. Reviews of the resources have been consistently excellent.

Each training resource is accompanied by a detailed set of training notes which enables practitioners to develop their counselling skills, and provide information for trainers running workforce development programs.

Visit our website www.sushiproductions.com or contact Sue Helfgott, 0403 465682 or email hanmil@optusnet.com.au for further information on these resources.

Therapeutic Journeys: Exploring Choice Alcohol and Drug Counselling Skills
53 mins $100
This program features five counselling sessions with a young professional woman and addresses her dependency on cannabis and underlying anxiety issues.

Therapeutic Journeys: Exploring Roadblocks and Effective Counselling
12 mins, $50
Two vignettes of an initial assessment with a reluctant client who has alcohol related problems: the first demonstrates roadblocks; the second effective counselling skills.

Therapeutic Journeys: Counselling Aboriginal Clients and Their Families
Alcohol and Drug Counselling Skills with Adults and Adolescents
38 mins, $120
This program features three counselling sessions with an Aboriginal family.
· An individual session with an adult male client referred for alcohol counselling, as a consequence of losing his driver’s licence.
· A joint session with the client’s two children, explores the impact of their father’s drinking, as well as their own alcohol and other drug use.
· A family session with the father and his children.

Therapeutic Journeys – Mental Health & Drug Problems. Working with Adults
34 mins, $100
Session1: A young woman, experiencing anxiety and panic attacks related to an unwanted sexual encounter presents at a mental health agency.
Session2: A man with alcohol related issues and underlying depression presents at an alcohol and drug agency.

Therapeutic Journeys – Mental Health & Drug Problems. Working with young adults and adolescents
29 mins, $100

Session1: An adolescent client who presents at a mental health agency with concerns about her education reveals that she is using drugs to manage her depression.
Session2: a young woman presents at an alcohol and drug agency concerned about her speed use reveals her underlying anxiety and panic attacks.

Therapeutic Journeys: Counselling Family Members
27 mins, $100
This program demonstrates a brief five-step intervention developed for relatives of drug users in primary care settings. Based on the stress-coping-health model developed by Copello, A., Orford, J., Velleman, R., Templeton, L. & Krishnan, M. (2000a). The DVD features a counselling session between a mother, concerned at her son’s amphetamine use and a family counsellor. The client presents at an alcohol and drug agency as a self-referral.

Therapeutic Journeys: Marital Counselling
57 mins $100
Session 1: a young couple with relationship difficulties including the wife’s concern over her husband’s drug use.
Session 2: the success of attempted changes in the relationship and a lapse by the husband is explored.

Therapeutic Journeys Working with Complex Clients: Unraveling the Chaos
39 mins $110
The counsellor explores a number of presenting problems including the client’s anxiety, her drug use, the risk of harm to her children, suicide risk, relationship difficulties, financial problems and past child sexual abuse.

Therapeutic Journeys Alcohol Counselling Skills: Working with Binge Drinking
45 minutes $100
A young man with problems related to binge drinking is referred into counselling .

Minimum purchase age as a strategy to reduce alcohol-related injury

Dr Kypros Kypri
School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle

10am-11am, Thursday 25 November 2010

Metcalfe Auditorium, State Library of NSW, Sydney (entry off Macquarie St)

Speaker
Dr Kypros Kypri is an associate professor at the University of Newcastle and holds a research fellowship with the National Health & Medical Research Council. He is behavioural scientist interested in the evaluation of interventions to reduce unhealthy alcohol use and other risk behaviours. He has expertise in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials of behaviour change interventions, quasi-experimental evaluations of policy interventions, and web-based survey methods.

Abstract
Heavy episodic alcohol consumption is a leading behavioural risk factor for injury and a range of other health and social outcomes including crime. Increasing the minimum purchase or drinking age is being considered in several jurisdictions as a strategy to reduce alcohol consumption in late adolescence. The presentation will examine the research evidence on the effects of changes in the purchase or drinking age with particular reference to New Zealand, where the purchase age was lowered in 1999, and where further legislative change is likely to occur soon.

Directions
For directions to the State Library, please see the following website: http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/using/location/index.html?HomeLink=Services

RSVPs
RSVPs are essential for catering purposes. Please email to bocsar_seminars@agd.nsw.gov.au or ring 02 9231 9190.