Hope UK

Fourteen voluntary Drug Educators are available to provide drug awareness sessions for children, young people, parents and youth and church workers. 

In 2009 they carried out 67 drug awareness sessions, including support for Care for the Family’s Drug Proof Your Kids course, schools and colleges, youth organisations and church groups.

Northamptonshire Local Representative: Camille Cummings (c.cummings@hopeuk.org)

Hope UK is developing its drug awareness and training work in Northamptonshire. Our representative, Camille Cummings, has attended local community and church leaders’ events as well as meeting with Substance Misuse Groups.  She has done many sessions in schools and received funding from the Northamptonshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team to provide Hope UK’s two-day accredited courses for youth workers and family workers to local groups as well as drug awareness sessions for parents.

We have several Drug Educators currently working within Northamptonshire to help reduce alcohol and drug-related harm, and this has enabed us to engage with approximately 10,000 people (including children, young people and adults) in the last 2 years.

Our vision is to have at least twenty Educators in Northamptonshire as this number will provide the mix of skills and experience required to provide community-based drug education, especially for churches and other voluntary groups in evenings and weekends – when statutory services cannot provide workers. We are hoping to have some who will be able to visit schools and other groups meeting during working hours. 

We would like to thank the following organisations:-

• Kettering Temperance Society – for funding this work.

• Rushden Full Gospel Church, East Northants Faith Group, Faithworks and Logos – for their support in promoting Hope UK amongst Christian groups.

• Solve It - for helping to promote Hope UK in local schools and at their community events.

• Northamptonshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team – for funding accredited youth worker and family worker courses as well as parents’ drug awareness sessions.

Camille started working for Hope UK in Jan 2008 for the Northamptonshire area. Her previous experience has always focused around recruitment, training, education and business management, which has helped her deliver drug awareness sessions and recruit/support volunteers.

In her teenage years and early twenties she had a period of about 6 years where she was regularly using drugs. It began with solvent abuse, smoking and getting drunk whilst she was still in school. After a car accident just before the millennium, she started searching for answers about what life was all about and found them when she became a Christian at the end of 2000. She is pleased that she is now able to provide drug education to others so that they can consider drug-free lifestyles.

County Links

Northamptonshire Drug and Alcohol Action Team (information about statutory and other treatment and counselling services etc)

Solve it (volatile substance abuse prevention and support organisation in Northants)

Hope UK Links:

Drug awareness – Talks

Training sessions – Training