Let's Talk: Attitudes and values about sex and relationships among young people and professionals. Findings from Phase 1.

The Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership and the Conseil General de la Somme developed an Interreg action research project in partnership, entitled ‘Let’s Talk’ to explore young people’s attitudes, values and beliefs regarding sex and relationships to go some way towards understanding elevated teenage pregnancy rates in Kent. Parts of Kent and the partner area of the Somme in France share similar problems such as a higher than national average level of teenage birth rates, though there are marked variations within the Primary Care Trusts.

This project consisted of two phases. Phase One was the data collection phase, and was used to inform Phase Two of the project. In Phase One, young people and professionals were invited to explore their attitudes and values towards sex, relationships, sexual health and teenage pregnancy in a number of focus groups. Phase Two involved the development of two interventions that were designed based on the knowledge gained from Phase One.

Two interventions were developed and evaluated following Phase One: the first, a six week course on sex and relationships education (SRE) in a secondary school in West Kent which forms the basis of this report; and the second, an evaluation of two sex and relationships education road-shows in East Kent.

This section of the document reports on the findings from Phase Two of the project and discusses the results of the evaluation of one of the two interventions that were developed with health professionals, school nurses and school teachers.