Louise O’Connor is a Trustee for Mentor UK, and an Independent Consultant. As former Head of the Drugs Education and Prevention Research Unit (DEPRU) at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, (now Roehampton University) Louise O’Connor has published a number of books and research reports examining the effectiveness of drugs prevention and education approaches, multi-agency partnerships, and school health education. These include the seminal report which subsequently influenced ACPO and Government policy on drug education in schools, ‘Drug Education in Schools: Identifying the added value of...

Louise O’Connor is a Trustee for Mentor UK, and an Independent Consultant. As former Head of the Drugs Education and Prevention Research Unit (DEPRU) at the University of Surrey, Roehampton, (now Roehampton University) Louise O’Connor has published a number of books and research reports examining the effectiveness of drugs prevention and education approaches, multi-agency partnerships, and school health education. These include the seminal report which subsequently influenced ACPO and Government policy on drug education in schools, ‘Drug Education in Schools: Identifying the added value of the police service within a model of best practice’ (1999). At Roehampton, Louise led the national Training Programme for Safer School Partnerships (SSP) 2003 – 4, with Centrex, and subsequent research into the implementation of SSP in Southwark, conducted for the MPS. The objectives of this article are twofold: to question whether the lessons learnt from the ACPO/Roehampton report have been incorporated into current practice; and in the absence of such evidence, to posit the view that similar research ten years on, would find similar issues around rationale, implementation and evaluation.