At your youth service, the safe sex strategy consists of providing containers of condoms in the bathrooms for young people to take if they wish.
The younger boys tend to use them as water bombs.
How could the service improve its safe sex strategy, given your community, with its mix of ethnic and religious groups?
Id charge a small amount for condoms like $1 to discourage wasting of these.
ReplyDeleteWhy not leave a container of water bombs, too. Much cheaper.
ReplyDeleteAwesome example of Youthworker creative and lateral thinking :-)
DeleteWe started to do that in my last employment. It worked really well until we were told we had to stop doing this as it 'could' be a health and safety issue and a water bomb is classed as a weapon! Have you heard such nonsense.
DeleteHopefully we are leaving the days of feeling uncomfortable about buying condoms. They are readily available at supermarkets and chemists. Before committing to action, I would speak with the youth people at the school to gauge whether they would 'theoretically' feel uncomfortable about purchasing a condom.
ReplyDeleteAt our service we have them in the workers office so young people can request them and if/when they do we are able to show/tell them how to use them properly and safely.
ReplyDeleteIt may not be entirely problematic that the younger men are becoming physically familiar with condoms. Inflating and otherwise testing the capacity and feel of condoms is something we do regularly in sexual health sessions.
ReplyDeleteNaturally this isn't sufficient, but the notion of using play to explore issues is familiar. Games like Scattergories and Pictionary can easily be adapted to stimulate sexual health discussions whenever young people are gathered together.
At Yfoundations we offer a day training on using engagement strategies to raise sexual health issues with young people, but the principle can be applied by any worker.
Rather than removing the condoms I would try to develop a lot more opportunities to discuss sexual health issues. Ensuring posters and other material is up to date and culturally relevant is important.
I would also contact local cultural groups to discuss partnering with them in developing information and activities that promote sexual health and are acceptable and useful to cultural groups and families.
At the same time I consider the young people's health to be our primary concern, so where family or ethnic pressure is likely to result in less healthy outcomes it is important that we are advocates for positive change in that community, and that we support the decisions of our clients, even if is dismaying to some elements fo the community.
all great ideas love the idea of having water bombs as well and i do think that it is when developing safe sex strategies to bring in these ethnic community groups to help make a develop a safe sex strategies that are culturally appropriate and meet the needs of the commuinties in a respectful way. you the waterbomb incidents as a segway to disscussing safe sex. This would depend on feedback from commuinty and the nature of your work with the young people *Sorry if it is little Jumbled i have Dyslexia*
DeleteWhy don't you have a chat to one of the staff at The Warehouse Youth Health Service out in Penrith. They provide a great condom credit card initiative that is really effective. It means that young people can connect with workers , recieve condoms discretly and there is no wastage. I am sure they would be more than happy to discuss the model with you.
ReplyDeleteYeah good suggestions Colin!
ReplyDeleteI laughed when I saw this question. Maybe we should list condom-waterbombing as an activity we offer as part of our services.
I don't see a few wasted condoms being an issue, when it happens all the time and it's the same people maybe just have a word with the regular condom-waterbombers. It can be an opportunity to talk about condoms other uses...and that we don't want to waste too many because some people might need them for these other reasons (but also letting them know that playing with them is ok though).
I believe it's hard for some young people (and adults included) to ask for and purchase condoms. Every time there's a barrier to accessing a condom (eg. cost/asking someone for one) we are making it harder for our clients.
I believe one of the reasons we supply condoms in our service is to give young people every chance to access them when they are needed, now and in the future.
I would hope that any community religious and/or cultural beliefs wouldn't prevent us from leaving out condoms at our services. Of course it would be important to be sensitive and considerate when articulating this to community groups, parents and young people.
Haha, Thanks! I work at The Warehouse and was just about to say the same thing. Centres can become partners in the project. We provide training for workers and all of the accompanying info and resources needed to orientate young people to the program. There's more info available here http://goo.gl/hLGTz
ReplyDeleteAnyone who's interested can call us on 47490500 and we can give you all the info you need!
When I worked in the UK we had youth workers in the centre who were trained by health workers to distribute condoms, conduct pregnancy tests and give out home chlamydia tests to young people. They were also trained in 'delay' which was about encouraging young people to put off early sex until they were really ready and included discussions about peer pressure and alternatives to sex. Very different to abstinence approaches.
ReplyDeleteWhen giving out condoms the young people would have to sit down with the youth worker and be shown first how to use them on a demonstrator. I would also ask questions about how they felt about it and this would also show which young people just wanted some so they could blow them up/mess around with them.
This approach is much better than just putting them in the toilets for anyone to take/waste/not know how to use.
The condom credit card mentioned in earlier posts is great! Services can hang the posters around so that young people are aware of the program as well as feel more comfortable to ask about getting condoms as they know the services has them.
ReplyDeleteCondoms should be readily available and all issues raised be seen as opportunities to educate. Not feeling comfortable accessing condoms in other means is often an opportunity to talk about development and age appropriate sexual engagement (it is actually a clue that the maturity to handle intercourse may not be present). the only time water bombs and or condoms is a hazard is if the floor surface is prone to slippage or people have an allergy to latex, so consider these as part of the issues that just need to be managed well. NB on the last one - I know someone who has an epipen and has had to use it at least twice (balloons at birthdays and plastic covers medications ... scary stuff).
ReplyDelete