Empower Education FAQs

We are a fee-for-service program. Encounter Youth is able to offer a significant discount to the cost of our program in partnership with the Department for Education for South Australian schools. Contact us today to receive a quote for your school. 

We see the best outcomes achieved when we see students and parents or staff on the same day. Where this is not possible, we are able to deliver the seminars on different days for an additional cost. Contact us today to receive a personalised quote for your school.

We take a holistic, comprehensive approach to alcohol & other drug education, educating students across multiple year levels and educating their parents and school staff. This approach is grounded in best-practice principles and helps the whole school community to be on the same page about alcohol & other drug issues.

In our seminars, we adopt a harm-minimisation approach and encourage students to ‘look after themselves and their mates’. Our program aims to reduce and prevent alcohol and other drug-related harm among young people. We avoid emphasising negative consequences and scare tactics, which are proven to be ineffective. Instead, we equip students with strategies to make choices that are right for them. We provide tools to help students respond appropriately if things don’t go according to plan or if a friend is in a vulnerable situation.

While we may consider a modified program in some specific situations, we do not routinely offer our program in primary schools. Evidence shows that the vast majority of young people will not try alcohol or other drugs in primary school and providing specialist education at this age can increase curiosity and increase use.

In line with research, we recommend primary schools use a classroom-based health and wellbeing approach encouraging healthy habits and personal, emotional and social development. These are the things that are most likely to be protective for primary school-aged children against harmful alcohol or other drug use during high school and early adulthood.

We need a space appropriate for all students to be comfortably seated and a projector with sound that we can use for the presentation. Teacher supervision is also required to meet duty-of-care and student support needs.

Research shows that alcohol & other drug education is more effective when implemented through a holistic approach. For this reason, we aim to educate three student year levels, the staff within the school and parents/guardians in the program. Along with creating a consistent message around alcohol & other drug education, we also provide helpful strategies and tips for staff and parents to support young people on this important topic.

Staff seminars can be included towards staff professional development hours. For more information, see the description of our staff and parent seminars on the Middle School package or Senior School package pages, or for online training, explore our online Teacher Resource Room.

Yes, this can be accommodated for an additional cost subject to presenter availability. Contact us directly to see how we can deliver this for your school community.

As bookings tend to fill up quickly, the best way to check availability is to give us a call on 08 8179 0300.

We do not have a minimum number, but we can consider combining year levels for classes of 15 or fewer students. The maximum number of students we present to in a single year level is 200. If your school has more than 200 students per year level, we can split the class into multiple groups for an additional cost. Contact us today to find out your options.

We do offer individual seminars on specialised topics such as the Inhale The Truth: Vaping & E-Cigarettes seminar, Safety at Schoolies seminar and requested custom content. Check out our School Seminars page or get in contact to see how we can support your community.

Our best-practice, holistic approach to education means that we do not recommend standalone sessions from within our Middle and Senior School packages.

No, there is not. We make no mention of religion in our educational programs. Our goal is to equip young people with up-to-date information about alcohol & other drugs and with strategies to make positive, informed choices that are right for them.

Our motto—look after yourself, look after your mates, it’s your choice—informs all our education programs.