Blindfish RSE

Today childline launched a new campaign (FAPZ) to help young people make sense of the powerful influence online porn can have on young people. I welcome any new or renewed effort to help tackle this issue. What ever adults personally think about adults consuming porn, it clearly is not meant for young people. Below is a tweet from Simon Blake (CEO of Brook) Agree @NSPCC we must talk about porn at home, school & community. Whatever you think about porn it is not place CYP should learn about sex — Simon Blake (@Simonablake) March 31, 2015 It is very worrying to hear Childline reporting high numbers of calls to their phone line where online porn is a key issue. And this will just be a tip of the iceberg of the influence porn is having. When I talk about Childline in high schools I have meet many young people who think its not for them because they aren't a child so they wont ring it. Such a shame.  However, the NSPCC could strengthen their...

Today on BBC Three Counties Radio I heard an interview with 20 year old Grace talking about her experience of being pressured into watching pornography by her then boyfriend when she was 15 years old. She was incredibly honest and open about how she felt it had negatively impacted her. If you would like to listen to the interview it will be available for a week at the BBC , skip to 1 Hour 7mins into the programme or you can read my typed up  complete transcript of the interview. In this blog I want to pick out a few of things that Grace said.  One of the first things Grace says is  So the boy I was currently dating at the time, was obviously at that age where he had been watching it since about the age of 12 and he had heard from some of his friends that they watch it with their girlfriends. So he came up with a suggestion to me and I said no and I kept saying no and then he just kept on pushing, so I then said “well ok lets check this out, I’ve never looked a...

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 ...

Yesterday I was invited to speak on the Chester university Christian youth work course all about the importance of sex and relationship education, especially for youth worker. We got to cover lots of great stuff. I promised to post on here links to a couple of things I mentioned. If you are interested in attending the training I mentioned email me at Gareth@cscw.org.uk  The Sex Education Forum's guide to SRE within the youth service   The Department of Health recently published  Sexual health improvement framework

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...

Thoughts on how SRE workers may have to respond to it with young people.  I have just finished reading 50 shades of grey. As a youth worker and sex and relationship educator I felt it was important to have an informed opinion before September when teenagers/young people might ask me questions in lessons and youth clubs. I'm a little behind the trend but spending 12 weeks travelling did take me out of touch. I have always thought it is crucial to read a book itself before commenting on it. So even though it is not my typical book I thought it was important to read it.  To be clear this book was not written for young people, it is not meant to be read by young people and I don't believe E. L. James would be happy for young people to read it. But in my experience young people love to consume (watch, read, listen) media that adults do not want them to read. Either as a form of sexual exploration or out of rebellion or for many other reasons young people have a...

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 ...

Does the system protect the vunrable? This is a big issue and working in the school enviroment and youth club enviroment has made me very aware of possible situations. Especially as my job is to talk about sex and relationships. This can be a very sensitive subject and needs to be responded to as such A good policy is essential. When I read this BBC article I was alternatively annoyed, worried, relieved and concerned. Most of all it highlighted the importance of a robust useable safeguarding policy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-16927479#story_continues_2 Most accusations against teachers in Wales are dropped I was annoyed that teachers are getting their careers ruined by false accusation. Rex Phillips, from NASUWT is quoted in the BBC article as saying. "It's every teacher's worst nightmare to have a false allegation made against them. Their reputation is damaged and they often find it hard to go back to work, even though they've been completely exonerated. ...

Yesterday we finished our training course for local youth workers in the Oasis Esteem course. It was great fun, especially the final day with each youth worker delivering a mock session to the rest of the group (who all pretended to be young people). It raised lots of very interesting points about the topics and about classroom management. The group acted the role of young people with passion and commitment. Infact I think some (including myself) found it a great opportunity to misbehave. All in all I'm very happy with everyone who completed the training, I can't wait to get them involved with some real lessons with real young people.

Today I am visiting the University of Chester, Christian Youth Work Course. I am giving a guest lecture to the 3rd years about the role of Sex and Relationship Education in Youth Work. As part of the lecture I used a Powerpoint which I have attached to this blog post if anyone wants to make use of my quotes and figures. Sex and Relationship Education in Youth Work

Hello, my name is Gareth and I work as a sex and relationship education worker in the UK. The main part of my job is in local schools but also sometimes work in youth clubs. This blog is about Sex and Relationship Education stuff. It is about a variety of things, my work, my thoughts, resources, policies and experiences. It is one place for me to put stuff into the public domain, maybe the people who read this will be strangers or maybe they will be people I know. I don't mind, I am using this to try and publically reflect on my work.