Eclypse is the Young Person’s Specialist Substance Misuse Service in Manchester. Manager Chris Henniker shares the service’s response to the lack of guidance on vaping, and explains how they are equipping parents and professionals to better support young people.
For anyone that works with young people, anyone that's a parent or has younger nephews, nieces, siblings, you're probably seen firsthand the significant growth in popularity of vapes.
At my Tameside service, people have got lots and lots of questions about vaping, yet when you look for the answers, they are not forthcoming, and there are significant gaps in provision of support
“In March/April 2023 the proportion of children experimenting with vaping had grown by 50% year on year, from one in thirteen to one in nine.” – Action on Smoking and Health
Why are we concerned about young people and vaping?
Because vaping devices are so new and the landscape is changing so quickly, we don't know how safe the ingredients are, and we certainly don't know what the impacts of these devices are on children.
The original concept of vaping as a tool for stopping smoking has a strong evidence base. But the majority of young users are using these things not to stop smoking, but as a thing in itself. It is very much part of modern youth culture and there is desensitisation around the harms involved.
Our services tend to respond when something's already gone wrong. Once somebody's education is impacted, once someone's been in A&E, or been picked up by the police – then they come through our doors. But when we look at vaping, we've got a good opportunity to get involved as early as possible so we're not dealing with a health crisis in five, 10, 15 years.
The rise in illicit devices
Most children are still not vaping, but the numbers are increasing significantly. Worryingly, this has coincided with the arrival of a new category of cheap, attractive, disposable vapes that are promoted extensively on social media. There are also vape pens hidden inside real pens, which you can take into school. Most young people are not using devices that they're buying from Tesco or ASDA; they’re buying them from online retailers, from market stalls, from backstreet vape shops.
- Read more about how to identify an illegal vaping device
Manchester has 110 vape shops – the third highest in UK – and a significant number of those sell illegal and illicit vape devices, clearly marketed towards children.
Trading Standards can remove the devices, but they just restock. The most they're going to get is probably a £200 fine, but the money they make from selling them makes that quite palatable.
Eclypse’s response
When speaking with teachers, social workers and A&E departments, we found there was nothing available for professionals, parents or young people to address the support needs around vaping.
In response, we formed the Children and Young People’s Vaping Group. This is a cooperative of services across Manchester, including Public Health; colleagues in the adult smoking cessation service; Healthy Schools, who provide education across Manchester schools; Eclypse Drug and Alcohol Service; Environmental Health; Trading Standards; Manchester University; a lung specialist; and school pastoral and safeguarding leads. They all wanted to come together to share ideas and figure out a response.
We had zero budget. Everything has been done with the drive of people that care about making a difference for our young people and who want to work together, share resources and just try and create change.
Training programme for professionals
The first step was to create a free training programme for professionals, so they could better support young people and give harm reduction advice.
The training is delivered online, once a month. We cover things like what is a vape, the differences between legal and illegal devices, the differences between smoking and vaping, UK legislation, environmental impacts and the impact on physical health.
We look at why young people vape, social drivers, social media, youth culture. We look at what problematic use looks like. We also look at vapes as the potential starting point for using THC or cannabis vapes, and as an entry point into the world of substance misuse.
We look at safeguarding risks and exploitation because we have an evidence base around young people being groomed with vapes. An example would be a young person with little disposable income. He's offered a vape if he just takes this package from this place to that place and drops it off.
Finally, we provide a series of harm reduction advice tools.
- Professionals in Manchester can register for an upcoming online training session via Eventbrite
The impact
Since January 2024, we have trained nurses across Manchester, the early help team, and the entire staff of two schools as well – a total of over 700 professionals. In any one session you may have teachers, social workers, police officers, fire brigade officers, youth justice practitioners.
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. 94% of attendees would recommend the training course to a friend or colleague; 95% feel more confident in supporting young people with the issues of vaping.
During the sessions, we ask attendees what they're dealing with. For example, they've had children as young as seven bring vapes into schools. They’ve also seen an increase in the number of children and young people visiting the dentist, as vaping causes dry mouth.
There was evidence that parents are buying children vapes to stop them from using theirs, or as a reward for good behaviour. Image influencers are vaping; it helps with eating disorders. People use it as a coping mechanism for peer pressure.
Free resource library
So – you go onto a training session, you learn a lot from it, but how do you keep it fresh, and use the information that you learned as part of your daily practice?
We worked with Healthy Schools to create a free resource library. On completion of the training, all attendees get access to the library which they can use in their community settings, allowing them to provide advice, guidance and harm reduction information.
It includes support around developing school policies; it has educational sessions; information for professionals, parents and carers. We provide a copy of the training session slides, links to further support, early warning devices, referral pathways and guidance documents.
We update this on a regular basis, so this is a live, working, ever-growing library. When legislation changes, when we create new interventions or posters, when we get new information, it all gets uploaded. It’s a one-stop shop for everything you need for supporting children and young people around vaping.
Screening tool
Eclypse can't take a referral for every young person vaping in Manchester; we would quickly be overwhelmed. So we created a vaping screening tool which allows professionals to assess the needs of young people and guide them as to whether a referral into Eclypse is needed.
The tool is motivational interview-based, so the professionals can ask open questions to assess whether they can deliver support themselves. If it's more complex – if a young person is using for self-harm purposes, as part of an eating disorder – then Eclypse can provide further intensive or structured support.
Upskilling parents
People come to the training sessions as professionals. But midway through the session, when we talk about the situations that young people find themselves in, people stop being a teacher or social worker, and say, “Oh my God, I've got a 14-year-old daughter at home, I had no idea she’s exposed to this.” And they became parents very quickly.
That got us thinking – who talks to the people that don't get access to this kind of training as part of their work? Who talks to the plasterers, the stay-at-home parents, the accountants?
Parents are our front line. They have got their eyes on their own children, more so than anybody else. So we adapted the training session for parents. We piloted it in April and we are continuing to develop and offer that training.
A new model to support young people around vaping
This work has exploded. My colleagues have been contacted by partners across the country who are interested in using our idea as a blueprint for how to implement this kind of support in their own areas. We seem to be a leading light in this field.
We're continually evaluating our response to this is ever-changing landscape, as there are new things coming onto the market all the time. We continue to liaise and share our work with other local authorities who are also struggling with a response to vaping, and we are proud that Manchester is leading the way in this area of work.
