Our extremely popular and well supported series of Parent Partnership events continued last Monday night with a talk from Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, from the Daniel Spargo-Mabbs Foundation. Entitled “I Wish I’d Known: a workshop for parents about young people, drugs, alcohol and decisions”, the talk took place online and was attended by Upper School parents from across all year groups.
During the talk, which was informative, emotive and extremely enlightening, Fiona shared the tragic story of her son Daniel’s death as a result of taking ecstasy, and how it had uncovered her lack of knowledge and understanding of the issues young people face when making decisions about drugs and alcohol. Along with her husband, Tim, she set up the DSM Foundation in 2014 with the aim of supporting young people to make safe choices about these things. They work with students, teachers, parents, carers and professionals in schools, colleges and community organisations across the UK and Fiona has become a leading UK expert on drug and alcohol education, including how parents can best support their children.
Fiona explained, “The world for young people is a very different place than it was for their parents, including their vulnerability to risk from drugs and alcohol, and this workshop provides a great opportunity for you as a parent or carer to become more aware of what issues face your children, and what you can do to help them stay safe.”
Fiona Whiteman, Parent Partnership Lead, said “The DSM Foundation do such important work. Their research highlights the enormous influence that we as parents have on the decisions our children make and therefore how important it is that we are all informed. If you didn’t make the talk, I would encourage you to read her book. It’s it’s chock-a-block full of important information, hugely enlightening and very readable.”
Feedback from the event was all in praise of the talk. One Fifth Form parent said “Brilliant workshop Fiona, thank you so much for bringing this to us. It’s such a valuable tool having the Parent Partnership.” And another with sons in the Remove Form and Upper Sixth remarked “Very informative and extremely well presented. Totally invaluable information for us parents.”
For those unable to attend, there is information available on the DSM Foundation website here, including a link to Fiona Spargo-Mabbs’s recently published book for parents “I Wish I’d Known” (Sheldon Press).