I enjoyed Julie Wray’s discussion of language in particular what we call our body parts last week. It made me think how crucial the issue of language is in sexual health and how often in this country we find it easier to use words and phrases which confuse, rather than clarify.
It reminded me of the comments of young people made in a video booth consultation we carried out when we moved premises. I should add that I work for Brook Manchester, a free, confidential young people’s sexual health and advice service, and part of a national network of Brook centres http://www.brook.org.uk/.
We asked young people how they would improve sex and relationship education and one young women offered this evaluation of the SRE delivered in her school, “it’s just the birds and the bees, what’s that all about?”
Indeed, what is that about? I was surprised to see what feels like such an old fashioned and also oblique phrase still be used by young people today. I was certainly disappointed that this young person was receiving SRE that left her feeling so short changed.
Across the UK through it’s clinical services, its campaigning and lobbying work, and its outreach and education work, Brook and its partners are facilitating a shift away from SRE which leaves young people feeling ill equipped to navigate modern relationships and lacking the skills to negotiate safer, more pleasurable sex.
We want to see programmes that offer a broad range of both skills and knowledge being embedded into the curriculum and beyond. We have seen at first hand how they can develop a young persons’ confidence, their emotional resilience and their ability to reflect upon risk and the impact this might have on their life.
We want to move from comments like that to this resounding evaluation by one young women of a programme Brook Manchester delivered in a school non-attenders’ project.
“I learnt not be ashamed of my sexuality.”
I think I can hang up my hat when all young people describe their SRE in terms like that!
Jackie Behan
Outreach Manager
Brook Manchester
Email: jackieb@brookmanchester.org.uk
1 comment:
I was quite moved to hear that a young person was able to express that they no longer felt ashamed of their sexuality. Not only should that outreach team hang up its hat, it should be exchanged with Olympic laurels! Afterwards, I was discussing the simplest essence of our service with a colleague (we work in mainstream Sexual Health services) and I was sayng that it was surely to "make it easy" for people to come. "Yes," my colleague agreed "to make it easy for them to be here and not to feel dirty..."
Such a simple message, yet encoded within it are so many complexities! However, we are doing our job if we can remember that simple message and convey it to all our clients.
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