See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Is this taboo on sex driving our young people to making uninformed decisions?
After embarking on the Family Planning Agency’s “Bout Ye” (for males) and “Choices” (for females) sexual health programme this summer, Headliners members investigate how up to scratch sex and relationship education is in our city.
Across the city there are facilities available to provide a sexual education and contraceptives to young people. And schools more often than not will provide sex education. However, a lot of young people find this to be very limited, not really answering questions they need but rather using scare tactics such as STI's and pregnancy.
We want to make sure that young people are aware that there is support available outside of school which is confidential. Young people could be endangering themselves if they rely solely on the ridiculously awkward and brief school-based sex and relationship education to keep them informed and healthy.
What we want to look at is how informed young people are about the help that they can receive and what’s actually available to teens to help make them aware of what they can do to help themselves. As young people we should be conscious of the facilities that are available in our city for sexual health and contraceptives.
What we want is easy discreet sexual health clinics with approachable staff who can provide helpful advice. We all know that for a lot of people it can be very hard to talk to parents about problems, especially on such a delicate subject. So it’s important that there are services available that can help young people make safe and well informed decisions.
Although we do have sex clinics in the Northwest, when researching online, as a young person in need of these services might do, it was difficult to find tangible results. The prominent result was the GUM clinic. The GUM clinic is in Altnagalvin Hospital and is available to all people but is only available Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9.30-11am.
So this not really accessible to young people as these are not after school hours. And after quite tedious searching we found that the Nucleus Sexual Health Clinic in Derry is available every Tuesday and Friday from 4-6pm. This service is obviously one which is most suited to what we are talking about so why, we ask, is it so hard to find information on it?
On one side of this we need to accept that sex clinics are part of our community as opposed to seeing them as something taboo. On the other hand we must realize that by not being so obvious the privacy of the people who do go there is more protected. This poses the question of what is more important, a more discreet service, or a more accessible one?
The UK Youth Parliament recently did a survey relating to sexual health education which was the largest survey of young people ever carried out in the UK and found that nationally 40% of young people between the ages of 11 and 18 found their sex and relationship education was either poor or very poor whilst a further 33% found it to be average. The survey also found that only 49% of the respondents knew where their local sexual health clinic was and in addition it was found that most of these clinics were only available at times not convenient to young people .
When we went to get the opinions of other teens we first posed the question, do you know where your local sexual health clinic is? We were relieved and surprised that within the small cross section of teens we interviewed the majority were aware of some clinic in the city.
However, when asked if these facilities where readily available to young people there was a divide in opinions. Afric, (16) said: “Yes, because there is plenty of information about them.” Whereas, Niall (17) said: “They aren’t particularly teen-friendly. It would be embarrassing to approach one. I think they are inaccessible.”
Many of the people we interviewed said that more awareness should be raised by putting up posters or giving out leaflets. Leah (18) said: "I think schools have to be more co-operative in regards to sexual health education and make students more aware of where they can get information and help in regards to their own sexual health."
Headliners members who took part in the "Bout Ye" and "Choices" programs over the summer got a taste of proper sex education in an intensive course.
This is what they thought!
“I thought that the programme was really educational and interesting. It was a lot of fun and yet I learned a lot from the course.” Robert(17)
“In the ‘Bout Ye’ programme we learned several different things and I thought it was very educational and there was a lot of craic (fun) too. In the programme I learnt about several different issues, from keeping yourself healthy, different STI’s and how to look out for such cancers like testicular cancer and prostate cancer. All in all I enjoyed the programme a lot because it was a relaxed and enjoyable experience.” Jack (17)
“I thought that it was a unique opportunity. It was also very fun as well as being important and informative!” Eabha (17)
‘Bout Ye’ is a program where young people get educated in some information about sexual health issues. The course was both interesting and fun. It made us aware of STI’s. There was a series of exercises to keep it interesting.” Fearghal (17)
Here at Headliners we where very lucky to be given such a sexual health and relationship education with depth that is not demonstrated at schools and within a group that we felt comfortable asking questions in. It is our hope that all teenagers could be given such an education so that we can grow up with the know-how to make safe and well informed decisions.
This article was written by Headliners Foyle member, Emma Arbuckle
