Sexual health and working with boys and young men

Julie Wray presented some findings of working with boys and young men in Manchester at a showcase event at Brook Manchester recently. One of the key findings was the increase in the numbers of boys and young men over the past 10 years who access sexual health services.
This is amazing and a very positive message that shows how responsible and concerned boys and young men can be about their sexual health and wellbeing.

All too often boys and young men can be overlooked or missing from government policies and strategies. For example the teenage pregnancy strategy includes very little reference to young men or father’s, in fact they are mostly excluded. Evidence and reliable information about the uptake of sexual health services by boys and young men is rather minimal. It is time that this changed. The people I speak to claim that in reality boys and young men do access services and seek to care for themselves. Often though boys and young men prefer to see a male worker and it is important that sexual health services respond to this issue.

TEENAGE PREGNANCY TRENDS

At a conference organised by the Sex Education Forum in Manchester in February I was mesmorised, as I'm sure many other delegates were, by the statistics - for example "overall the trend is down" and "on average the downward trend is not on target", but when closely examined for example Tameside's stats show an 11% increase, whereas Hackney is well ahead of target with a 20+% decrease.

What is the use of averaging out statistics over the whole country when clearly the issues are very different even in wards? Is there anything to be gained by seeing an overall downward trend, rather than maintaining a clear focus on both the Tamesides and the Hackneys, so that good practice can be shared and the real issues appreciated?