Positive Lifestyle Program evolves to meet youth demand
The Positive Lifestyle Program helps people to work through various issues in their lives and make better choices for the future. (Photo: Shairon Paterson)
The Salvation Army’s Positive Lifestyle Program has been expanded. PLP4YOU, a youth-specific version of the course, has recently been launched as well as several translations of the resource.
Major David Knight, who coordinates the programs for The Salvation Army Australia Eastern Territory, says significant amendments to the original version of PLP were made to ensure that it would effectively meet the needs of young people in Australia and New Zealand aged 14 or older.
Designed as an hour-a-week one-on-one session between a facilitator and participant, PLP4YOU encourages people to explore and evaluate their personal experiences through topics such as self-awareness and self-esteem, social decision-making and substance use/abuse, managing anger and turning dreams into goals.
The original program, which was introduced in the Australia Eastern Territory in 1992, will continue to be used throughout court and prison programs. Many magistrates and others routinely refer first offenders to the program after seeing outstanding results. The program is also being used throughout Salvation Army corps, Recovery Services and other centres, with over 300 facilitators registered.
Major Knight estimates that at least 45,000 people have undertaken the programs in the Eastern Territory alone. He says that PLP4YOU has, in some ways, brought the program full circle. The original Canadian PLP program, which provided the basic framework of the program now run widely in the Australian Eastern Territory, was itself modified on a program initially designed for youth.
“It originated from a situation in Toronto, Canada where the repetitive offending of juveniles was around 80 per cent, and so The Salvation Army was invited [by authorities)] to try and reverse that repetitive offending,” he says.
“Over a three-year period, it brought down the rate of repetitive offending of those who did PLP from 80 per cent to just 7 per cent.”
That organic evolution to meet presenting needs and cultural requirements has continued.
The new PLP4YOU was modified from the “Xplor” program for youth, created by Salvation Army Community and Family Services in Palmerston North, New Zealand. Xplor was itself modified from the original PLP.
The Army’s Australia Eastern, Australia Southern, and New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga territories have also developed and now offer specific facilitator training and programs, including PLP, for those in addiction, Aboriginal (urban) culture groups, and for Korean, Mandarin and Sudanese speakers. PLP for Christians and a Tongan version are being developed, and a Pidgin English version and PLP for Aboriginal (desert) culture are also being planned.
Major Knight says that facilitator training is an essential part of the success of the PLP and is a prerequisite to any course being run. But he believes the real secret of the program’s success and growth is simply God’s overarching provision and protection.
“This program will always remain his [God’s] … it has really been in his hands all this time!”
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