Checking back over my diary at Christmas, I realised that it has been three years: three years since I started working as a Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP) Adviser in Scotland. How quickly that time has passed!  Having been brought on board to grow the number of CAPs in Scotland, and thereby, increasing the work we do to reduce alcohol-related harm among young people, I thought the most obvious place to start was with someone already in harness, my fellow adviser, Alan Simpson. Alan is and was already doing excellent work looking after the CAPs in Edinburgh and Orkney so - why reinvent wheels? Working with Alan quickly gave me lots of tips on how best to engage with partners, and to make sure that the local partnerships really focused on improving the health and wellbeing of young people in their area. Without this help from my fellow CAP Advisers, I may never have succeeded in getting my first CAP partnership over the line.

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It wasn’t an easy task by any means at the time as the country was beginning to open up after Covid. Priorities were understandably elsewhere. However, through dogged persistence and some introductions by partners, I was able to begin local discussions in areas where alcohol-related anti-social behaviour among children and young people was on the increase particularly after Covid.  Some of those discussions moved quickly, some of them stalled for a variety of reasons and some are still ongoing.

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Despite those challenges, CAP has made real progress in Scotland as we continue to grow our footprint in areas as far apart as Midlothian and Orkney with lots of other areas in between. Today we have 22 active, live local partnerships working hard to reduce alcohol-related harm among children and young people, improving their health and wellbeing, and making a tangible difference within their local communities. These locally managed partnerships typically involve police, councils, youth services, and local retailers supported by a CAP Adviser in Scotland.  The work in each of these CAPs is varied but includes, at its core, the key themes of education, community engagement, increased awareness of alcohol harms (and our recent parental supply work is a good example of this) and retailer training. Over the past three years, I have seen all sorts of initiatives to engage with children and young people around alcohol, be that through water safety events, football, leaflet drops, drama presentations or Halloween activities. Being innovative is the secret to success in many.  All of this work is driven by local partners who understand the local challenges and who are best placed to respond to these. This is, in essence, what CAP is all about.

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Our plan is to continue to grow our footprint in Scotland and to continue to deliver proven results in tackling alcohol-related harm among our children and young people. As recently as December 2023, we launched a new CAP in Cumbernauld, and later this month, we hope to launch a new CAP in Rutherglen & Cambuslang. I am very excited about what CAP can achieve next in Scotland.