The DCSF may have funding available for ALSPAC over the next two financial years to help with increasing participation in the study. There would be £30,000 available in the first year and £55,000 available in the second year, or vice-versa depending on ALSPAC's needs. In order to access the funding, ALSPAC needs to write a proposal to the DCSF outlining how this money will be spent on increasing participation.

As a result of the UWE Social Marketing report and focus groups that were held, a number of ideas of how to increase participation in the study were suggested. Using this advice, ALSPAC want to implement a strategy with the aim of significantly improving participation over the next two years. The first year will focus on using specific marketing techniques to recruit key peers in order to spread the message about ALSPAC. The key peers will be the 'popular' young people who have lots of influence over a wide range of other young people. One idea is for them to comment on ALSPAC on their Facebook page as well as upload photos of ALSPAC events to get their friends interested in what ALSPAC can offer them. ALSPAC will be taking advice from a 'new media' specialist to make sure that the correct message is reaching all young people. ALSPAC will be targeting them as three separate groups; the engaged, recently dropped off and the disengaged. The social marketing report made it very clear that involving these three groups in the study would take three different strategies. For example, the engaged would like to know more about the 'Science', whereas the disengaged at this stage are more interested in incentives. The key idea here is viral marketing and getting it to work for ALSPAC.

The focus in the second year will be on introducing 'club membership' to ALL of the young people in the study for when they turn 18 years old. This is something that all of the young people taking part in the focus groups were very enthusiastic about. The idea behind this is to keep all of the YPs engaged in the study and to give ALSPAC more of a presence in their everyday lives. It would be similar to an NUS card but will be free to join. The young people will be given a membership card which will entitle them to discounts on nationwide shops/cinemas, a free bus/rail card etc and entry to ALSPAC events (e.g. CV writing, fitness assessment, parties and comedy nights) and competitions. More importantly, it will sustain a link between ALSPAC and them. We will be able to keep them updated with what we are doing and what clinics/questionnaires are currently running. For instance, using their membership card, they will be able to use their 'username' to access online questionnaires etc. These are only initial ideas and we expect that as we go along other opportunities will arise that we could take advantage of.