When Hull first started its teenage pregnancy work progress was a little slow. Conception rates were coming down, but not as fast or consistently as the city’s Teenage Pregnancy Partnership would have liked.
So in 2004 a review, Mind the Gap, was carried out. The findings led to a re-think about how the whole issue was tackled with a much greater emphasis placed on targeted intervention.
Gail Teasdale, integrated services manager for children and young people’s health, says: “We realised it was too clinically focused. We were not reaching those young people we needed to – the ones who were becoming teenage mothers and fathers.”
This led the Partnership to set up several new projects. Cornerhouse, a local sexual health charity was funded to run a drop-in clinic in the city centre. It is open six days a week with late opening from Monday to Friday and provides advice, support and information about sex and relationships as well as condoms, chlamydia testing and pregnancy testing. Contraception is also available as is testing for some other sexually transmitted infections. A nurse holds a clinic there twice a week to provide access to more clinical services, such as the contraceptive implant.
“It is very popular,” says Ms Teasdale. “Teenagers see it as a safe and nonthreatening environment in which to come for advice. It’s quite relaxed – there is even a Playstation there. The service talks to young people about having positive, happy relationships as well as supporting them to deal with other issues, for example peer pressure, sexting and the risk of CSE. You can’t just talk about STIs and teenage pregnancy in isolation. Getting that atmosphere right is essential because our research showed that teenagers were almost more afraid of the sexual health services than they were of becoming pregnant.”
Laura, aged 17, is typical of the young people who use the service. “I come to the drop-in for condoms and my appointment with the nurse for my depo, but I also have a cup of tea and a chat and usually sort out other stuff too.”
As part of the drop-in service a boy’s and young men’s worker has been employed to ensure they are engaged – and the post has had such an impact that 51 per cent of the 5,500 visits a year made to the drop-in centre are now by males. Young men can also be supported in other venues around the city. Changes have also been made to the way RSE is delivered with the Cornerhouse peer education project training fellow teenagers to go into schools to talk to their peers. But getting out and about has also formed an important part of the work in recent years.
This is done via street-based outreach work with workers going out to talk to young people in parks, on the streets and other places they gather. These projects have been combined with greater training for the non-clinical workforce, such as teachers, youth workers and voluntary sector staff who work closely with children.
Ms Teasdale says: “Often a young person, when they want to talk, will find someone to trust. It may not always be the person we plan it to be – the school nurses or clinic staff – so we have tried to make sure that people who work with children are comfortable about talking about these issues and know where to refer them.”
The figures for 2016 show an under-18 conception rate of 30.6 - a fall of 64 per cent from the 1998 baseline. The number of conceptions to younger teenagers is now low with 16 per cent of under-18 conceptions occurring in under-16s year olds compared with 20 per cent in 2010.
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