As a centre for addiction prevention, the Villa Schöpflin is committed to preventing addiction both in the Lörrach area and throughout Germany. The aim of our work is to provide children and young people – and their key contacts and multipliers – with appropriate, effective and sustainable addiction prevention measures.
Between the ages of 12 and 20 life is filled with questions and boundaries.
Am I a child or an adult? What are my boundaries? How far can I go?
In this critical chapter of a young person’s life we believe it is important to offer the right help and advice. In order to act early and prevent addiction, we help young people to learn about the risks of addiction and how to confront those risks. This work covers everything from tobacco and e-cigarettes, to alcohol and cannabis, and new media and gambling. Our programme works with young people – as well as parents, teachers, experts and other associated people – to sensitise, inform, support, teach and advise them about the issues and the dangers involved.
Our advisory services are free of charge. All our colleagues are subject to a statutory duty of confidentiality. Everyone who comes to the Villa Schöpflin is able to speak openly about his or her problems in the full knowledge that nothing they say will be divulged to third parties.
The Villa Schöpflin is in fact the original childhood home of the Schöpflin siblings. The facility is now a public-private partnership in conjunction with the district of Lörrach and has grown into a single point of contact and ideas workshop for addiction prevention. It brings together expert knowledge and hands-on experience to develop and implement realistic concepts. One of our goals is to replicate the best models and implement them throughout the country.
»HaLT« – our alcoholism prevention programme – operates in 160 locations across 14 federal states in Germany. As such it is Villa Schöpflin’s largest, national addiction prevention programme. »Max & Mina« is one of the latest programmes developed by the Villa Schöpflin. The »Max & Mina« workshop is aimed at 10-12 year olds and looks at preventing the harmful overuse of media.
We have developed two alcoholism prevention programmes which are now available throughout the country: »HaLT – Hart am LimiT« (»HaLT – Hard up against the Limit«); and »Tom & Lisa«, a workshop for school children. The first involves targeted discussions and support for young people who are already drinking heavily and have experienced an alcohol poisoning episode. The latter involves us working in cooperation with other social players to ensure that child welfare is guaranteed, that adults become good role models, and that young people develop the skills they need to deal responsibly with alcohol and are aware of the risks involved.
On cannabis, the Villa Schöpflin offers its own interactive workshop - developed in-house - called ‘Cannabis – quo vadis?’. It encourages participants to reflect on their own attitude to the issue of ‘cannabis’. Those who don’t take it are given encouragement to stick by their decision not to use. Those who are actively taking cannabis are made aware of the risks and given details of the help available. And for young people who are taking cannabis, we offer a structured programme – called Realize it X-Tra – which helps them to achieve cannabis-use reduction objectives that they set themselves.
On Digital Media, we have set up “Compass”. This is a Lörrach-based network project that we coordinate and which aims to prevent the harmful use of media. Our programme includes training for teachers, parents evenings at schools, network meetings, and public surgeries for anyone interested in the subject. Our ‘ESCapade’ programme helps young people who make excessive use of new media – and the families of these young people – to reflect on their consumption of it and to devise their own solutions to tackle the problem.
We work with the child and youth psychiatry services in Lörrach and with schools in the Lörrach area, providing surgeries and individual advice sessions to help people to quit smoking.
We have developed a programme to prevent problematic and reckless gambling. It is used as part of the careers advice service and in youth centres. This interactive workshop is aimed particularly at those young people who are in danger of developing an addiction to gambling.