Through my role as a Change Direction Youth Mentor and Senior Youth Worker at Northallerton Youth Space, I have had the privilege of teaming up with Yorsexual Health to develop and facilitate a young person‘s sexual health drop-in clinic in Northallerton.
Whilst mentoring young people one-to-one and collaborating with them in a larger group setting at youth club, the need for a sexual health drop-in clinic became very apparent. We began to understand that the shame and taboo some young people feel around sexual health is massive and that young people sometimes feel that there is no one to talk to without been judged. North Yorkshire Youth therefore began working closely with our partners Yorsexual Health, to collect the views of young people about what they felt they needed.
Working together, we opened a sexual health clinic which runs weekly throughout the year, including school holidays. The clinic takes place on Tuesdays, at 3:30pm-6:30pm, directly before youth club opens across the road. It is open to young people aged 13-19 on a ‘walk-in’ basis. At the clinic, there is a trained sexual health nurse who is able to prescribe free contraception, carry out Sexually Transmitted Infections testing, pregnancy testing and talk to young people around any sexual health concerns they may have. My colleague and I are also available as Youth Workers, offering emotional and general mentoring support, which provides quite a unique service all in one place. We are also trained to distribute condoms.
The clinic has seen and supported young people in a timely way, especially in times of worry when they have been unable to get appointments through GP surgeries due to waiting lists. Although the service is still relatively new, we hope that numbers will grow and that the clinic will be readily used in the future. We really do feel that the clinic can be a lifeline for young people, freely available when they need support the most.
Callie Thomson, Change Direction Youth Mentor, Northallerton & Thirsk