Review

Sex and drugs and feeling whole

Love Life and Live it: a health education resource
Merseyside Youth Association, 1994

This is an attractive, accessible and worthwhile resource, tailor-made for delivering health education in an informal youth setting.

The pack Love Life and Live It was developed over a four-year period by youth workers wishing to integrate health education into the general youth work curriculum. The pack has been extensively worked on by youth and community groups to give us this excellent finished product.

The pack is divided into five booklets each with a particular focus. The themes reflect the concerns of young people. They cover general health, sexuality and relationships, sexual health, HIV and drugs.

The pack’s value is not in its originality, but in its development — interactive and bottom-up — and its utility.

In booklet five, on drugs, we find a well-rounded approach to some basic issues confronting young people. Relying on ISDD publications and Julian Cohen’s Taking drugs seriously, the booklet offers the youth worker and youth group exercises to explore knowledge, attitudes and skills in the field of drug use and misuse.

There is honesty here in acknowledging harm reduction as one approach. The booklet advocates self-empowerment in the context of a drug-taking society. Because of this, knowledge is not taken to be the major goal, the emphasis instead being on interaction and group work, Similarly the whole project is founded on such sound educational principles.

The title is an appropriate leit motif. It captures the tenor of the pack’s process, approach and style. This is an exciting resource, and one which needs to be used in youth and community centres. It represents good practice and places health centre stage in the youth work curriculum.