As many of you are aware, our programme takes a Social Norms approach to tackling risk taking behaviours.

Once again the data has continued to improve for young people and so we have laid down the challenge for them to find new and innovative ways to change perceptions with this brilliant news.

And they did not disappoint us!

St Chad’s High School in Halton are the first school to reach our National Enterprise Finals with this intriguing, innovative footsteps campaign of “leading peers to the truth”. Creating actual footprints leading to a poster with the correct answer, the main areas of focus were smoking, alcohol and how many students would take action against bullying.

Our second finalist came from Sandymoor School, also in Halton. Their mug campaign delivered the combined aim of changing student and teacher perceptions, whilst also raising money for Cancer Research.

Gary Lovatt from Social Sense, explained why both campaigns received nominations.

“The panel are looking for campaigns that are engaging and capture the imagination. The footprints campaign created intrigue and suspense whilst the mug campaign achieved a number of aims, including a range of opportunities for people to have the discussion about the realities of teenage drinking.”

With ALL Halton secondary schools signing up and completing the programme, Simon Bell, Commissioning Manager from Halton Borough Council added that the engagement from schools and young people were big factors in the programme being recommissioned.

“The process allows schools and young people to approach health in a positive way and importantly gives a voice for young people. It is very powerful when the messages are actually coming from local young people themselves and we look forward to building on this work this year”.

This year schools will also be offered Social Sense’s new Mindfulness programme, funded by the council as part of the overall intervention.

Further nominations from other areas will be revealed over the coming weeks with the £1000 of prize winners being announced in mid-October.