Facilitating the Responsible Service of Alcohol by Hotels And Clubs

STRATEGIES TO REDUCE ALCOHOL RELATED HARM IN THE HUNTER

Two Collaborative Approaches

Robyn Considine, Sgt Alan Walker, John Wiggers, Justine Daly, Trevor Hazell, Sam Fairhall Huntre Centre for Health Advancement NSW, Australia

Paper presented at the conference Partnerships in Crime Prevention, convened jointly by the Australian Institute of Criminology and the National Campaign Against Violence and Crime and held in Hobart, 25-27 February 1998

This paper describes 2 collaborative projects being implemented in the Hunter Area of NSW to reduce alcohol related crime. Both projects are collaborative between Hunter Centre for Health Advancement, Newcastle Police and licensees of the Hunter. Alcohol related crime poses a burden to the community. From a health perspective there are huge costs associated with illness, injury and death. From a police perspective much of the work attended to by police is alcohol related. A large proportion of the community experience the negative consequences of alcohol related crime, injury and social and family dysfunction. Associated with these problems are the resource costs for the health, police and justice system. As a result of the burden of alcohol harm in the community and the costs associated with it, both police and health are mandated to attempt to reduce this. There is substantial evidence that there is potential for impact on alcohol related harm by working with licensed premises. This has been reflected by the increasing emphasis at policy and practice level on controlling alcohol at the point of supply. Evidence also suggests that there is a need for multiple strategies to address the problem of alcohol related harm This paper describes 2 collaborative projects being implemented in the Hunter. Project 1 The hotels and clubs project is a project, which focuses on changing the environment at the supply point of alcohol. It is an attempt to facilitate change by the provision of a range of services for hotels and clubs. The hotels and clubs project is undertaken in collaboration between Hunter Centre for Health Advancement, Newcastle Police and the licensees of the 400+ premises in the Hunter. It aims to increase a range of alcohol prevention activities in licensed premises. The project utilised a range of strategies focusing on individual (eg) and environmental change Method An advisory group was established involving representatives from pubs, clubs, police and the Centre. The role of the advisory group is to guide the directions of the project, and the acceptability of services offered. This has been essential to the success of the project. A series of services or activities that could be offered to pubs and clubs were developed, in consultation with the advisory groups. All pubs and clubs in the Hunter were contacted by the Centre, using computer assisted telephone interviews (CATI) to ascertain:

 whether they were currently implementing the activities, and if they were interested in implementing them. If they expressed interest in implementing the activity then the Centre provided the service. Every 6 months after review of the results by the advisory group, contact occurs again. This contact is tailored to the needs of each pub or club as it is based on their last contact. For example if at the last contact a pub expressed interest in implementing a policy for responsible service they were asked if they had, and if they needed more assistance There were 5 areas of service delivery agreed to by the Advisory group: A sample responsible service policy with steps for implementation Ways to link staff into responsible service training. Information on breathalyser suppliers and the legality of installing these Material on promoting the sale of non-alcoholic drinks eg mocktails. Safe transport options including designated driver schemes.

Results Fig 1 This graph shows the proportion of all pubs and clubs that have undertaken the alcohol activities at baseline in January 1996 compared to July 1997.
Proportion of hotels and clubs undertaking activities Jan96 and July 97 80 60 40 20 0
Resp. Service Training Resp. Service Policy Breathalyser Machine Promote Nonalcoholic drinks Safe transport Options

Jan-96 Jul-97

There has been a significant increase in all the activities except for the area of breathalyser where there has been no change. Fig 2
Proportion of hotels/clubs adopting activities since 1996
80 60 40 20 0
Safe transport Resp. ServiceResp. Serivce Breathalyser Promote Nontraining Policy machine alcoholic Options drinks

Since 96

This graph reports data from those pubs and clubs that were not undertaking the activities at baseline, that have taken it ups since the project began. This reveals a high level of adoption in all but one of the activities The project team was pleasantly surprised but somewhat sceptical about these results. In particular we were concerned at reliance on self-report. In order to validate the accuracy of the self-report. we randomly selected hotels and clubs and visited them to physically check the activity reported as being undertaken. Results of the validation indicated between 90 and 100% compliance with self report of all activities. Project 2 The second project is the Linking Project. This project focused on facilitating enforcement of laws in relation to alcohol. It aims to link alcohol related crime to the premise at which the intoxication occurred. Our data in Newcastle police indicates that 70% of all incidents that police attend are alcohol related. An incident is any event that police are called to carry out their police duties. While there has been substantial toughening of laws in relation to alcohol, these laws are dependent on the level of enforcement. There is substantial evidence that the level of compliance associated with laws is directly related to the perceived likelihood of being caught and the punishment In addition it is known from a range of other settings that feedback on performance is effective in changing behaviour, and thus has the potential to increase compliance. However many ARI do not result in charges, but use police resources. In reality, s relying on data of ARI from COPS and CIDS hugely underestimate the extent of s the problem. These data systems utilise landmarks for location and fail to link back the offence to the specific licensed premise Method In the pilot, ARI data were collected by police in the Newcastle police district. This area has the 3rd largest concentration of late night venues in NSW. This was used to see if the data collection form we had developed was acceptable to police at the coalface. A data base was developed that would collate the data into a form which would print out a report for each premise. This would also produce results of all ARIs attended by police to give an overall picture on extent of the problem. A report format was developed in conjunction with police, the Centre and licensees that would be acceptable. The data form collects information on the date, time and location of each incident. It includes the type of incident eg PCA, assault., the degree to which the person was intoxicated. and information on the last place of consumption.

Results Fig 3
Type of ARI
PCA Assault Offensive Behavior Malicious Damage Intoxicated persons Domestic Dipsute Other

From the pilot this graph shows the range of ARI that police attended. s
Licensed Premises with More than 2 ARI
25 20 15 10 5 0 Licensed premises with signficantly high ARI

Fig 4

An aggregate report of all data can identify what premises are producing the most ARIs. Of the 400+ premises in the pilot, only 21 were responsible for above the average number of ARI per premise. In particular only 4 premises contributing to s most of the ARI s Discussion There is no single answer to the problem of alcohol related harm and in particular to alcohol related crime. The 2 projects have strong theoretical frameworks. The first approach is facilitating voluntary changing of the environment at the point of supply. This is occurring by an ongoing service approach to enable pubs and clubs to modify their practices. From theory such enabling strategies have the potential to change behaviour. From evidence however reliance on self-regulation is insufficient for compliance. Therefore the approaches are complementary in that the second approach focuses on changing the environment through enforcement. In theory such reinforcing factors have been demonstrated to facilitate compliance. Lastly from theory and practice community support is essential for success in these types of projects. Essential to the success is the collaboration of the key players. Formalising the collaboration has been and will continue to be critical to the success 5

of these. If successful these projects utilising 2 different but complementary approaches should bring benefits to all key players