Whole Settings Approach to Smoking and Vaping

This toolkit is designed to help schools and colleges adopt a ‘whole settings’ approach to smoking and to protect staff, students and visitors from the damaging, life-long impact of tobacco.

What is a ‘whole settings’ approach to smoking?

Education on smoking plays a vital role in reducing smoking prevalence among young people, but to be most effective, lessons should be part of a wider programme of work that extends across the whole setting.

A whole settings approach has policy at the centre, but also acknowledges the role of staff, family members, peers and the environment for keeping young people smokefree. By working across each of these areas, a whole settings approach changes the culture of a setting to one where being a non-smoker is the norm. This resource will help your school or college to undertake activity in each of the key areas.

The whole settings approach is similar to a jigsaw. All pieces need to be in the right place to be complete.