Housing evidence / case study · working draft
The Filter Wales: youth smoking prevention and quitting support
ASH Wales took smoking prevention and quitting support into youth clubs, training centres and schools, alongside workshops and training for youth professionals.
01 / THE APPROACH
What was tried
The Filter was ASH Wales’ dedicated youth smoking-prevention and stop-smoking project. Its informal approach focused on teenagers in communities where smoking was more common, meeting young people in familiar places such as youth clubs and training centres.
Delivery combined out-of-school workshops, direct engagement at events and training for youth-work professionals. The project began with Big Lottery funding in 2013, followed by two years of Welsh Government funding.
Commit to Quit was the structured quitting element. The March 2018 account describes a six-week challenge in which young people worked towards cutting down or stopping smoking. A contemporary school toolkit describes delivery to small groups wanting to quit. The public account includes an example of weekly carbon-monoxide readings to show one participant’s progress; it does not establish that every participant followed the same testing schedule. The team also offered support through social media and online information. The accompanying Filter the Facts lesson plans were developed with teachers, Public Health Wales and Healthy Schools, mainly for Key Stage 3 with scope to adapt activities.
An earlier ASH Wales programme-design document describes weekly half-day sessions over six to twelve weeks. Team activities, carbon-monoxide readings and short question sheets were intended to make space for conversations about cravings, difficulties and support needs. This explains the design of the approach; the later closure account describes the delivered challenge as six weeks.
02 / THE FINDINGS
What was learned
Across The Filter’s wider work, ASH Wales reported engagement with 12,500 young people at 250 events over five years, hundreds of out-of-school workshops and training for 800 youth-work professionals. These are programme-reported reach figures.
The March 2018 account gives a separate picture of Commit to Quit. It reports work with more than 650 young smokers and says that 66% of those who set a quit date stopped smoking. That percentage applies to the people who set a quit date, not all 650 participants. The article does not give the exact number of quit-date setters or a follow-up period for that figure.
For the preceding year, the team reported working in more than 40 youth settings and helping 120 teenagers quit. These delivery figures are part of the same programme story, rather than additional independent evaluations.
The dedicated project ended on 29 March 2018 when further funding was unavailable. It is a historical project, not a service currently accepting referrals.
03 / TRANSFER TO WALES
What Wales could learn
The practical model combined a youth team working in familiar community settings with group quitting support, social-media contact and training for the adults already supporting young people.
It shows how prevention and quitting support can sit together, with lesson plans helping staff carry the work into schools. Its closure also illustrates the importance of continuing funding: documented reach did not guarantee the project could remain available.
Sources & review
ASH Wales, ‘Wales’ Only Youth Stop Smoking Project Shuts Down’, 29 March 2018: dates, funding, reach and delivery settings. Contemporary delivery material: Making your school smokefree, October 2016, pages 5–6 (PDF pages 7–8), https://ash.wales/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/toolkit-18th-oct-2016.pdf: Commit to Quit, social-media support and Filter the Facts. Retrospective context: https://ash.wales/information/our-work-with-young-people/. Public sources checked 23 October 2026. Reach figures are programme-reported; no causal claim about population smoking prevalence. Expanded 23 October 2026 after checking the complete published closure article: six-week Commit to Quit challenge; more than 650 young smokers; programme-reported 66% among quit-date setters; preceding-year delivery in more than 40 youth settings and 120 reported quits. No comparison with adult services is made because comparable populations, denominators and follow-up are not established. Earlier delivery context: ASH Wales Impact Report 2015–16, pages 16–18, https://ash.wales/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/ash-wales-cymru-impact-report-2015-to-2016-2.pdf.
Additional source: ASH Wales archive, Ash Wales The Filter Project report (matching copies reviewed 23 October 2026). This is a programme-design document with proposed delivery and follow-up, not a completed outcome evaluation. Used only to explain the intended session format. ASH Wales has authorised sharing its own project learning; individual participant data and private contact details are not reproduced.
