Standards

  • Partnership
    • This workgroup is managed by Jellinek Prevention, from Amsterdam. Jellinek Prevention provides mental health & addiction care in Amsterdam. Jellinek offers prevention, care, in & outpatient treatment and rehabilitation for people with psychiatric or addiction problems. ´Unity´ is Jellinek´s specific nightlife and synthetic drugs outreach Harm Reduction program in 7 regions of the Netherlands. At the moment Jellinek is main partner of the EU-project OASIS.
  • Context
    • These days leading institutes, city councils, national governments and the EU demand minimum quality standards* for preventive interventions. By 2012 the European Commission plans to submit to the council a proposal for an EU consensus on minimum quality standards and benchmarks in drug demand reduction. This should cover all components; prevention, treatment, harm reduction, rehabilitation & reintegration in the EU member states. Minimum quality standards also makes it easier for projects to be implemented in different regions. By standardizing and making projects implementable, they will also become stronger.

      *Quality standards are general accepted principles or sets of rules for the best/most appropriate way to implement an intervention. Quality standards frequently refer to structural (formal) aspects of quality assurance, such as environment and staff composition. However they may also refer to process aspects, such as adequacy of content, process of the intervention or evaluation processes.
  • Objectives
    • - Creating a workable framework for a minimum quality standard for all Work Packages (WPs) in the NEWIP project. This will ensure that all parts of this project are described and evaluated in the same way. This WP will also help the other WP’s in developing their activities within this framework. This framework will be based on the Preffi 2.0., the healthy nightlife toolbox handbook, and the framework being developed by the EQUS project. We will look for collaboration with other networks and institutions (for example Healthy nightlife toolbox, Club Health network, EQUS project, EMCDDA) and ask them to endorse our framework. We will also look for consensus of the fieldwork organizations on this framework.

      - Using this framework to standardize the "on site and online peer education interventions". This intervention is done in many different countries in Europe but hasn’t been properly standardized. This work package will collect underlying evidence, working methods, experience, contextual factors and evidence of effectiveness from the different existing peer education projects in Europe and put this into a guideline*. By standardizing and putting all the information into a guideline we will try to make peer education in nightlife settings a best practice intervention** in Europe. We will not only look at onsite peer education on parties but we will also look at the new component of online peer education (websites, social media, etc).

      *Guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners and patient decisions about appropriate interventions for specific circumstances. Guidelines usually include a set of recommendations or steps that can be followed when implementing an intervention. In most cases, the content of guidelines is based on the available research evidence.

      **Best practice: The best application of available evidence to current activities in the drugs field. - Underlying evidence should be relevant to the problems and issues affecting those involved (professionals, policymakers, drug users, their families); - Methods should be transparent, reliable and transferable and all appropriate evidence should be considered in the classification process; - Experience in implementation, adaptation and training should be systematically collected and made available; - Contextual factors should be studied by modelling different prevalence levels so as to assess the impact of an intervention on the population; and - Evidence of effectiveness and feasibility of implementation should both be considered for the broader decision-making process.
  • Methodology and Time table
    • Products that will be produced include:
      - Preffi Training for WP leaders
      - A quality standard framework for all workpackages to work with
      - A best practice guideline for onsite and online peer education

      Time table

      Jan 2011 – Dec 2011: Definition of format for the good practice standards and inventory of existing interventions

      Feb 2011: NEWIP Steering Committee 1

      Jan/Dec 2011: recruitment new partners

      May 2011: WP "Standards" meeting 1 (during the Bologna NEWIP seminars 1): Training on Preffi

      July 2011: Quality standard framework proposition (first draft)

      Sept/Dec 2011: the WP get the first draft framework to work with / contact other networks / contact other possible partners

      Dec 2011:
      NEWIP Steering Committee 3: consensus on the NEWIP Standard framework (Dec.15th-16th, Prague)

      Jan/Feb 2012:
      - WP "Standards" meeting 2: decision on the work method for Safer NIghtlife peer intervention standardization and beginning of the standard development
      - Information / literature search on peer education accomplished / WPs start working with (revised) framework

      May 2012:
      - NEWIP Steering Committee 4 (during the NEWIP seminars 2)
      - WP "Standards" meeting 3: Collecting experience of peer projects, Safer Nightlife peer education standard and guideline developement

      Jan 2013:
      - NEWIP Steering Committee 5
      - WP "Standards" meeting 4: First version of the Safer Nightlife peer education standard and guideline

      May 2013:
      - NEWIP Steering Committee 6 (during the NEWIP seminars 3)
      - WP "Standards" meeting 5: Revision of the Safer Nightlife peer education standard and guideline

      July/August 2013: use of the guideline during the NEWIP common field intervention

      Sept 2013:
      - NEWIP Steering Committee 6
      - WP "Standards" meeting 6: Final version of the Safer Nightlife peer education standard and guideline

      Sept/Nov 2013 NEW Final Conference in Padova: difusion of the Safer Nightlife peer education standard and guideline

      Nov 2013: NEWIP Steering Committee 7
  • Participants Info
    • Possibilities for new partners to join

      The Workgroup is open to new partners. We are looking for partners who:
      - either have experience on working with peer education projects (either online and/or onsite)
      - or would like to start with a peer project in the near future
      - or who are experienced in defining quality standards and standars for good practice (eg universities)

      New participants can join during the first year of the project.

      We ask that participants are actively participating at meetings and will also assume some of the work that will come from the meetings, like for example looking for and reading literature, contacting projects and writing parts of the manual.

      Contribution:contribution 500 euro per year per participant. This includes all travel and accommodation costs for all meetings mentioned above

      Max. number of partners 10 participants maximum
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