Developing Relationships Between Sexual Health Clinics and Schools: More than clinic nurses doing sex education sessions?
Abstract
Linking schools with sexual health clinics facilitates clinic access by young people. This paper documents the process of developing one such link and its impact on clinic use.
Multiple data collection strategies were used to document a developing school/clinic relationship and constant comparative analysis was used to develop hypotheses from the data as follows:
* A few teachers have a good knowledge of local sexual health services and extensive experience of referring to them.
* Most tutors (despite their pastoral role) have little knowledge of local sexual health services and no experience of referring to them.
* Organising work in the school is difficult because teachers have little non-teaching time and a variable commitment to sex and relationship education.
* The link between the clinic and the school has facilitated access to the clinic by school pupils.
* Outreach work is more effective when young people meet the outreach worker repeatedly in different settings.
Each hypothesis is presented with its supporting data. This information is consistent with what is known about the benefits of school/clinic links and adds to what is known about the process of developing and maintaining such links.