Kirklees Young Advisors trained in August 2011 and have been busy appraising sexual health services in their area ever since!

After they trained, the Teenage Pregnancy Commissioning Manager offered the YAs an initial challenge of helping adults understand what some young people perceive as barriers to accessing sexual health services.

The YAs made suggestions very early on in their training about what they thought would increase young people’s access to services. They thought ‘the fear of the unknown’ was one of the biggest factors preventing young people using the services available to them. They also said that not all young people knew about the services available and that young people still do not always understand the rules regarding confidentiality.

The YAs first suggestion to address ‘the fear of the unknown’ was to create a film which would show what would happen when a young person attends a Contraception and Sexual Health (CaSH) appointment. By using a North Kirklees CaSH location, the young people also believed this would raise awareness where to go for CaSH advice.

The YAs worked in collaboration with a group of third year film students from the University of Huddersfield to create a ‘Point of View’ film, which shows where to enter Dewsbury CaSH and what to expect from arrival to consultation. Take a look at the film!

To read more about what the YAs got up to, take a look at the report. Great work Kirklees!