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How We’re Influencing Sexual Health Policy
SECTION NEWS & EVENTS
How Members are Influencing
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Sam Baillie, Assistant Editor
Our Annual Participation Programme has completed its first theme – woo! This is one of the major ways which Who Cares? Scotland seeks to positively influence policy and practice and create real-world change. Each year at our Annual General Meeting, members vote on several key issues they want us to focus on, they then share their views and we use this data to influence the Government, Corporate Parents, and The Promise. Our first theme was Sexual and Reproductive Health. We’ve learned loads from our members, and have compiled this data into a report – here’s what you said!
You told us that care experience can create many barriers towards learning high quality information about sexual and reproductive health. Low school attendance, priorities at home, and placement moves all combine to make learning about sexual health more difficult than it should be. The older age of kinship carers was also shared as a potential difficulty in creating healthy, informative conversations about sexual health. As a result, this could lead to members having to learn instead through their own first-hand experiences, rather than through high quality information.
Also, some professional services can be quite tricky to use for Care Experienced people. This could be due to the awkwardness of professionals and carers, services not being trauma-informed, giving poor advice to young people, or simply people not knowing they are available in the first place. Many members also felt judged, stigmatised or ‘othered’ by professionals and adults – with half of all respondents feeling their care experience impacted the way they were treated in sexual health services. This was also linked to stigma felt from being LGBTQ+ or being a young age when interacting with a service. What became clear is that different areas need to be improved to support Care Experienced people in not just learning about sexual and reproductive health but also in what the experience of accessing services is like.
Now that we’ve gathered your views, we’re ready to begin influencing policy and practice positively to make change for Care Experienced people. Based on the range of experiences and views we’ve heard and with help from our National Representative Body (NRB), we’ve developed several recommendations. Representatives from the NRB read through all of the views you shared and worked with us to create priority areas which need attention. These come under 12 areas:
1. Achieving empowerment through learning in schools 2. Ensuring education is inclusive 3. Supporting carers and families 4. Bridging the generational gap seen in kinship care 5. Training the social care workforce 6. Honest and open conversations with carers and families 7. Access to period products 8. Questioning sexual experience as a learning method 9. Trauma-informed services 10. Easy accessibility to confidential resources and services 11. LGBTQ+ inclusivity 12. Understanding Care Experience and harmful prejudices
How Members are Influencing
What’s next?
We’ll be using what you’ve told us to influence policymakers to create positive change for Care Experienced people, and will keep you updated with our progress as we continue our mission! This includes inputting to the new National Sexual Health Standards, which will be a guide for all sexual health services in Scotland and influencing some focused work to refresh NHS guidance for carers in the Glasgow and Greater Clyde area – as well as much more. If you’d like to read the full report, you can access this on our website at: www.
whocaresscotland.org/influencing-sexual-health/
Next issue, we’ll be providing you with an update on our influencing around Mental Health – so stay tuned! And thank you to all 55 members who provided their experiences for this report. If you have any questions,
please get in touch! You can email policy@whocaresscotland.org, or speak to your WC?s worker.
