2017 has been a big year for the AoD sector in Victoria! We have seen two ground breaking things get the green light, two things many of us in the sector never thought we would see. We welcome a safe injecting room in Richmond and the legalisation of medical cannabis in Victoria.

YoDAA tries to keep up to date with youth substances trends (from mushrooms to Nangs) we aim to source new and up to date information and harm reduction strategies. As well as bringing our readers new guidelines and resources to help develop your practices.

Mid this year we featured some of the articles that were popular with our readers from the first half of the year. So we thought we would bring back what was trending from the YoDAA newsletter for the last 6 months.

The more we understand young people and complex trauma the more we understand how to help young people in their journeys. In July this year the YoDAA newsletter featured the BlueKnot Foundations Trauma Guidelines. YoDAA also took some time to listen to Nadine Burke Harris’ TedTalk “How does trauma affect DNA”.

Something that was incredibly popular early this year was the Dovetail “Guide to slang terms”. So Dovetail has written a SECOND “Guide to slang terms” for youth AoD workers.
Keeping up to date with the trends and the patterns of substance use of the young people who are accessing our services is something YoDAA prides itself on.Late this year we saw a spike in young people using Nangs and Poppers.

YoDAA e-news readers love a good resource, having great websites and tangible tools to work with young people can be incredibly helpful with helping them along their path.
Youth AoD workers took the time to understand the harms and dangers about Synthetic Cannabis.

Ensuring young people stay safe over the silly season is important to parents as well as workers. Paul Dillion has some great fact sheets and resources for parents and workers.
Methamphetamines are often reported on in the media. YoDAA has tried to source some great tools and websites for youth AoD workers to better understand the effects and harms associated with using them.