Minutes:
The Board received a presentation from John Bucknall, Integrated Commissioning Manager, on teenage pregnancy in Halton.
It was suggested that young women in Halton felt they had limited prospects in life and that the best option for them was to become pregnant. Further it was suggested that the use of drugs and alcohol amongst young people left them vulnerable in certain situations. He commented that statistics showed that families in Halton had children earlier than the national average and the pattern tended to be followed across generations.
The Board was advised that The National Support Team Visit back in October 2008 gave the following priority actions and recommendations for Halton:
· To improve and extend provision and access to a full range and choice of sexual health information, advice and services;
· The Joint Commissioning Plan needed to identify additional contraception funding already in the PCT general allocation for 2008/09 and forthcoming for 2009/10;
· There needed to be a designated young people’s services with an emphasis on positive sexual health and wellbeing;
· Universal advertising aimed at young people, families/carers and professionals was required, around the availability of sexual health services;
· It was important that positive partnerships existed to encourage meaningful partnership working.
In response to the recommendations, it was reported that Halton had established a Teenage Pregnancy Group as a means to share good practice and learning to identify opportunities for collaboration. Further, Halton had increased the number of young people focused sexual health clinics and made them more accessible by changing opening times and venues. Also, media tools had been implemented to promote positive relationships and sexual health to young people, for example the website www.getiton.
Halton had also increased the number of holistic health sessions in schools, facilitated by youth workers and increased the number of targeted programmes in schools, such as Teens and Toddlers, Skills for Change and Healthitude. Further, the VRMZ outreach bus had been commissioned which provided a mobile and street based service, engaging with young people in ‘hotspot’ areas.
John provided the current picture of Teenage Pregnancy, in that it had fallen in 2012 and was predicted to fall in 2013. He advised that the challenges for the future would include:
· Continuing to ensure meaningful partnership working through the Targeted Youth Support Strategy Group;
· Encouraging all partners to become involved in the delivery of Teens and Toddler and other programmes in schools;
· Continuing to encourage all schools to take up the offer of targeting programmes in schools;
· Increasing the number of targeted campaigns aimed at promoting positive relationships and young people’s sexual health clinics;
· Continuing to deliver sexual health provision in hotspot areas, through the VRMZ outreach bus and street based teams and to ensure sustainability of such provision;
· To monitor numbers accessing young people’s sexual health clinics and review types of interventions requested;
· Continued training to all frontline staff on talking to young people about sexual health and relationships; and
· Increasing the number of male registrations on to the C-Card condom scheme.
Following the presentation the following comments were noted:
· Not all schools had engaged in the holistic health programmes, such as Catholic schools. It was noted however the programmes could be customised to suit them;
· The development of the School Nurses would help to back up the above programmes;
· It was possible to associate the drop in teenage pregnancies with the increase in GCSE achievements and reduction in NEETs;
· Pregnancy as a ‘lifestyle’ choice was now more difficult due to austerity measures.
RESOLVED: That the presentation and comments made be noted.