Blindfish RSE

Over the last 2 weeks, for the first time I have taught a full Sex and Relationship Education trainer course. In the past I have helped out on someone elses course and have lead workshops on specific topics at events/conferences. This was the first time I took  responsibility for an entire course. The course I taught is the 4 day  Esteem Resource Network  course. This was the course I was originally trained in and 5 years and 500+ hours of classroom experience later I was now teaching the course. The course had 10 people and I loved opening up the wide field of Relationship and Sex Education to them.  On the course I had 1 co worker, 1 local church based child and family worker, 2 third year youth work students (one who has been on placement with me) and a herd of 6 second year youth work students. So basically everyone was a youth worker or similar  This helped me as it's the group of people I work with the most. I know ...

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the #SASHevent2013  Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Documents Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Healthwith Brook, FPA, The National Youth Agency People and Pornography - A Briefing for Workers NSPCC sexting study Summary report of the qualitative study Full report of the qualitative study   McAfee The Digital Divide: How the Online Behavior of Teens is Getting Past Parents  Digital Divide BBC Newsbeat Survey  Men worried about Porn Sex Education Vs Pornography statistics taken from show episodes, they are currently unavailable but you can find useful stuff at their   sexperince website   Youtube clip   from Friends episode about the need to turn off the porn Books I may not agree with everything in these books but they have some interesting bits. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain   William M...

I have started teaching a lesson on the media's portrayal of Sex and Relationship. The lesson focuses on movies, TV shows and visual pornography. But with all the media hype around 50 Shades of Grey I wanted to do a small scale survey of young people I work with to see if the hype had any grounding in reality. Are young people reading it and is it impacting young people?  At the end of a session looking at the Distortion of Media I handed out some small surveys. Just half a dozen questions and a space for general feedback. I did this with two year groups both mixed gender. A group of year 10 students (aged 14-15) and a group of year 12 students (aged 16-17). With the older group I also asked if the book had encouraged them to experiment with "BDSM/fetish/kinky stuff" but talking with school staff it was decided not to ask that direct question to the year 10 groups. Below are some of the figures from my study, please note it is very small scale and may not ref...

Today I shared another resource listing the agree disagree statement I often use in Relationship lessons. I find agree disagree activities as a bit of a two edge sword. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they just seem flat.  I think agree/disagree activities work well if young people in the group do not all think the same. The true value in agree/disagree activities is the discussion it can stir up. The discussion is the point where young people learn things and develop their attitudes. The statements need to be crafted to try and divide opinion and stir up this discussion. When the statements do not divide group opinion then rarely will I get a good follow up discussion. The problem is that the statements that work well for one group do not work for another group.  The temptation is to try and pick truly controversial issues but I have had as much success with the historically controversial issues (abortion, porn etc) as the more s...

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BBC3 takes a frank look at how a sexual health clinic operates in Manchester. Following a n umber of young people as they go through the process of testing, waiting, getting results and then if needed getting treated. Mixing true life stories and high quality sexual health advice this show has the power to do some good.  Revealing some shocking attitudes in the youth. Especially in regards to condom use. By both males and females. Plus the voice over guy has some great one liners. You can see the shows official page here  and if you live outside the UK and want to watch this show have a quick look at TunnelBear  .  "I love dripping willies,   because    then you know what they have" For me the best part of the programme is seeing how the staff are professional and friendly. I really hope and believe that this programme will help increase the number of people going as now they have an idea what will happen. The mystery of sexu...

Something a bit differant today. I'm in Thailand visiting a HIV orphanage and education project that is also linked with my work with ACET in the UK. I'm going to post a full account later. But today I just wanted to share with you this image. Walking through a Thai supermarket we found this tshirt. "Practice safe snax, always use a condiment" I found it funny, Michelle loved it and so did our hosts. A married couple both over 70, missionaires who have been in Thailand 40+ years and who have spearheaded amazing HIV prevention and care work. Inspiring people to stay with.

What's in a name? I regularly run into the problem of giving a concise but comprehensive name to the work I try to do about sexual health and wellbeing (see I just tried to summerise it in 4 words) but every term I use seems to fall short of fully explaining the field. Every worker in this field of knowledge of biological, sociological, emotional, technological and probably some more -icals related to reproduction has their own personal favourites. My favourite is Sex and Relationship Education. Short and simple but not necessarily very complete in covering all I work on when I have lessons covering individual self esteem, sexting and the distortions of pornography. Most names in the field have a history and reason for their particular emphasis. For example my favourite name for my work emphasis a core approach that I will only talk about sex as part of a larger curriculm which includes discussion on healthy relationships. I fully believe this is a key learning point for young pe...

Fighting for love? I love dystopian future stories. I don't know maybe there it is the part of me that loves to watch how things might fall apart. From the bleak Joss Whedon Firefly and Dollhouse  TV shows or the amazing Metatropolis  anthology to this new trilogy of books and 1st film the Hunger Games. By Suzanne Collins this triology explores a bleak near future where America has collapsed and ruled with an Iron Fist the capital city holds 12 districts under its thumb treating them as slave labour. Barely able to survive, working back breaking jobs the vast majority of the population serve the few rich capital city dwellers. As part of the capitals drive to keep the districts under heal and broken they city forces each district to select 2 young people to fight to the death in a televised event called the Hunger Games. The games themselves unfold in a very similar way to the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale  but the world they are set in is ...

Treating the Sex Ed past of america as a learning opportunity Just posting this info graphic by a guy called G reg Voakes  who contacted me letting me know it was online to be shared (thank you). Whilst it is focused on the USA lots of the statistics are very informative for our work in Chester and the UK. I have always thought about the USA as a grand experiment in SRE approaches, we different approaches applied in entire states. But the experiment should be wrapped up. I think that it has conclusively proven that abstinence only education is not effective and that condom only education is not enough. We need comprehensive education that covers it all from the right to say no, emotional well being, relationships, STIs and contraceptives. (plus in my opinion, sex and technology for the next generation)  Created by: PublicHealthDegree.com

Teen pregnancies at 40-year low This is obviously great news and it is great to have the BBC publish a quote directly crediting this decline to the work of relationship and sex educators. The article does end with a note of caution. Our rates of teenage conception are still higher then the rest of Western Europe. We still have a significant teenage pregnancy problem that needs consistant funding. Maybe i am too pesermistic but I worry that good news like this will lead to people cutting funding to the area "because we have solved that problem now". It is not solved thousands of young people are still getting pregnant when they didnt want to. I hope this good news is seen as a validation of the value of good sex and relationship education. Lets hope those government officials involved in the on going PSHE review will hear and preserve the importance of SRE, it needs to be added as a compulsart element of education. The role of outside expert educators should not be forgotte...

Trying to interest and educate over 100 young people about key issues in just 10 minutes. I kind of hate assemblies, I hated them when I was at school and now working in schools I still kind of hate assemblies, especially Sexual Health assemblies. However, the reasons have changed. When I was a student I hated assemblies because I found them tedious, irrelevant and usually very boring. As I became a 6th formers I sometimes found myself feeling sorry for the poor teacher standing in front of 100 bored students plowing through some moral example or thought for the day. Now i dislike these assemblies for a completly differant reason. I struggle with the assembly format because the format does not make discussion, feedback or questions easy. These are the most qde important parts of a good sex and relationship education session. Yes im sure young people can recieve information just from watching & listening to someone delivering a assembly. Maybe one of the key points will...

Could you explain how HIV impacts the body? I ask this question at the start and end of every HIV lesson I teach. Its a way of trying to monitor if my lesson is making a difference. Asking if they could explain a topic to someone else is a reasonable test to see if people understand the topic themselves.  Today I asked this question at the start of a lesson and none of the 32 young people (13-14) could say yes. Now I am used to most young people not knowing that much about HIV but usually 1 or 2 say yes. It reminded me just how low the level of HIV awareness is in the general population. Now I know that HIV rates are low in the UK but they are on the rise . If we are not careful it is very possible that we could have a significant problem with HIV if we fail to educate people about the risks. The role of ARVs may help make people live significantly longer so that HIV can be seen as a chronic condition and not a death sentence, yet the co...

Read this article about how the UK government is rethinking it's decision to only immunise girls against HPV. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/calls-to-immunise-teenage-boys-after-huge-rise-in-throat-cancer-6292679.html When I read this article I obviously was encouraged that the government was even considering changing the policy. As a male SRE educator I have felt that the current system is deeply unfair ever since the BBC aired a documentary about this on BBC3. The logic of with holding a potentially life saving vaccine on the grounds of cost verges on the ridiculous. Now the body of evidence is growing and hopefully soon the problem will be resolved. But even the original plan to immunise all girls to provide herd immunity seems to have a huge hole that in my opinion show discrimination at the state level. What about the male homosexual population? Now when HPV was seen to be linked to cervical cancer it was also shown to be linked to ...

76% of teenagers have not thought about how porn distorts what real sex is. Figures come from my research in this trial run of lessons Over the last few weeks and months I have been researching and writing a lesson looking at how the media distorts sex and relationships. Pornography has been a big issue to tackle and this week I have tested my lesson and I wanted to share my early results. I've posted the lesson plan, print out resources and powerpoint on my website , just scroll down to the Distortions of media section.  The Lesson progresses through a foundation of media distorting what is beautiful, moving on to how films/TV distorts relationships and finishing with an exercise that shows how porn distorts sex and what the consequences of believing porn could be. At the end of the lesson i hand out a feedback sheet. one of the questions asks them to write down what words they associate with porn. I've made their results into a wordle for you. (the bigger the word the mo...

Mumsnet survey reveals that parents think that schools should do Sex and Relationship lessons on sexting, Porn and the media.    (Click here to read their results)   This survey was done in November last year (not sure when they announced the results) so again I am a little slow on reading it. But it is a great encouragement to be reading this the day before I teach my first test lesson looking at how media (especially pornography) distorts sex. To be honest I have been a bit suspicious of the mumsnet group. I assumed (wrongly, I apologise) that they would be against sex education of their children. I am so glad to be proven wrong.  The results of this survey are a fantastic stamp of approval to my aims. With 80% of respondents agreeing that sex and relationship education should include " Sex education should explore sex and the media (to include subjects such as sexting* and pornography)." But when they break it down int...