Introduction
Welcome to The Art of Community Alcohol Management: What local government can do to prevent and minimise alcohol-related harm.
This guide has been developed by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation (ADF) and VicHealth to explore what Victorian local governments can do to prevent and minimise alcohol-related harm, creating safer and healthier communities in their municipalities.
It draws from the best available evidence and the experience of public health and Victorian local government professionals who have tried and tested strategies in rural and metropolitan areas. The guide will also support local governments to incorporate effective alcohol actions into their Municipal Public Health and Wellbeing Plans.
Many of these actions offer excellent examples of ‘high impact actions’ as they are relatively cheap to establish or refine yet provide local governments and their communities with the potential for large dividends through the prevention of alcohol-related crime, injuries and costs. This suite of actions provides benefits to local governments and their communities, including:
- safer, healthier, more enjoyable events
- fewer alcohol-related risks and liabilities
- changing social and cultural norms to promote activities that do not feature alcohol product consumption as a central component
- coordination with others to synchronise actions, clarify communications, share resources and reduce risks
- cost savings (e.g. property damage, insurance costs, legal costs associated with alcohol-related injuries)
- fewer alcohol-related complaints (e.g. noise, antisocial behaviour)
- reduction in alcohol-related crime (e.g. physical and sexual assault, property damage)
- improved perceptions of community safety
- reduction in alcohol product-related waste collection and cleaning
- revenue for council (e.g. through application process, festival sponsorship)
- resources for council (e.g. through extra skills and time committed by partners)
- more public and professional recognition for council’s work on this topic
- legislative compliance.
The Guide also includes a self-assessment tool to help identify and prioritise areas of need, proposed action areas to address those identified needs as well as a range of tools and useful links to support the development and implementation of those actions.
Although the Guide has been developed to support Victorian local governments with some content being relevant to the Victorian context, the Guide still provides a large amount of useful information and support tools that may be relevant to local government more broadly.
Download the full guide
An outline of the guide
