Adolescent sexual and reproductive health

Adolescents get their information from each other, from the internet, and from adults who are too embarrassed to correct any of it. The result is confident misinformation. A teenager can tell you exactly how pregnancy is avoided and be completely wrong, and there is nobody in the room they trust enough to say so.

These sessions are for older pupils and for young people who have already left school, and they are conversations rather than lectures. We cover how the body works, how pregnancy happens and how it is prevented, and what a healthy relationship looks like, including what consent actually means and what pressure looks like when it is coming from somebody you like. Questions can be written down and handed in unsigned, which is how we find out what is really being asked rather than what a room is willing to say out loud.

Those unsigned questions are the most useful thing we collect all year. They tell us what a year group is genuinely confused about, and they are the reason pregnancy prevention is taught alongside relationships instead of as a separate warning. What we have not solved is the gap between a session and a service. A young person can leave ready to ask for advice and still have to walk into a clinic where somebody might know their mother.