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6 –
Daily Update
– DAY ONE – Monday 26 April 2010
This year’s conference will see the launch of
the International Harm Reduction Academy,
an initiative to give people the chance to
update their professional skills within a short
timeframe.
The result of a partnership between IHRA and the Conference
Consortium and relying on the expertise of staff from Liverpool John
Moore’s University (LJMU), the programme is designed to give
participants an internationally recognised and accredited certificate
to demonstrate Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Students are then suitably equipped with fundamental
understanding of harm reduction to go on to do further training or
higher academic qualifications.
Sally Woods, a lecturer at LJMU, is the programme leader. ‘It’s
attractive for an international student to have a recognised accred-
ited qualification from a UK university,’ she says.
The mixture of people on the course will also make for a varied
learning experience as people share their knowledge in the context
of their own backgrounds. ‘Most students in this inaugural year are
from the UK – some of them highly academically qualified, some
with a service user background with plenty of practical experience,
and some serving professionals such as the police inspector from
Merseyside’, she explained. But there are also a couple of nurses
from Canada and Australia, and a participant from Denmark. The
UK’s National Treatment Agency (NTA) has sponsored 19 students
this year to help it get off the ground, but, Ms Woods points out, ‘the
demographics of the students is going to change depending on the
location of the conference.’
The course was piloted with NTA support two years ago, at the
International Harm Reduction Conference in Barcelona. Lessons
from the pilot enabled the programme to be refined and accredited,
and there is now competition for places, with students required to
apply to the university and supply references.
This year’s students began their experience yesterday morning,
by attending an introductory session to meet tutors and their fellow
students, and be given a workbook to complete throughout the
week. Pat O’Hare will deliver a guest lecture on
21 years of harm
reduction in Liverpool
, a slot that will be filled each year by a high
profile local lecturer. Talks are already taking place with Universities in
Beirut, which is anticipated as next year’s conference location.
Students will be expected to go to two conference sessions a day
on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then attend evening
workshops from 18.00-19.00 to discuss the sessions’ contents.
They hand in completed workbooks on Thursday, after the last
conference speech, and their completed answers to the written
questions will make up half of the module.
For the other half, they will then have up to 14 days to submit a
short essay (1,000 words) electronicially, in response to a generic
harm reduction question, once they have returned home. If they pass
the module, they will graduate with their CPD this summer.
Sally Woods has great expectations of the course in helping
people learn from the vast array of knowledge and experience avail-
able at this event. Apart from prescriptive nature of questions for
assessment, there is also plenty of time to attend whatever sessions
take the participants’ interest.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ she says. ‘Not only will it be interesting
to see how the sessions relate to people’s work – we’ll also have
plenty of our university staff around to help this year if anyone needs
extra help.’
Harm Reduction Academy
begins lessons in Liverpool
Let lessons begin...
The first intake of students gets
ready for action, with programme
leader Sally Woods (third right).