Starbucks response about blocking Sex Education Websites

This blog is blocked in Starbucks free WiFi, I had a little poke around and found a few other SRE sites blocked (some of which now seem to have been unblocked). I sent an email to Starbucks about my concerns and today I received this reply. Always nice to get a reply but sadly it doesn't seem to actually say that much. Why is Sex and Relationship Education information blocked? Is the content of this blog a danger to young people?

Dear Gareth,

Thank you for contacting Starbucks.

We appreciate you sharing your concerns regarding Wi-Fi in our stores and I would like to assure you that we have been working on a solution with our provider, BT, which means that customers get the right balance between the protection and the freedom they want and need online. We are close to implementing this solution and part of it will be to restrict access to sites which are not deemed appropriate to view in a busy public environment.

BT has also shared the following information regarding this issue:

“Wi-Fi at our partner sites has traditionally been a business service, largely paid for by credit or debit card and therefore limited to adult customers. Now that some retail premises like to offer Wi-Fi for free, the need for parental controls has developed. BT will be in a position to offer these to its site partners by the end of the year.”

I can assure you that I have documented your feedback and forwarded it to the appropriate department in our corporate office for their attention.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact us. We hope to welcome you back to your local store soon.

Sincerely,

Gretta
customer service

Reflecting on training the trainers of Sex and Relationship Education

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 how to relate to youth workers and know they will have some practical experience of what young people are facing today. 

So what did I learn by doing this course? Firstly it was fun, a lot of fun working with 10 people who obviously care about young people and want to learn new ways to help young people have happy healthy lives. Recognising that happy health relationships and sex can go a long way to helping this happen. I get a buzz from training and educating, I enjoy the process and I enjoy the result. It can be exhausting but I think all the effort you put in is worth it. Now I also have a passion for pedagogy and enjoy experimenting with various techniques/styles. I enjoy planning for groups and seeing when they fit into the tracks I have laid out. But I also love the chaos/opportunities when the groups goes off the tracks and the education is more reactive, informal and sometimes much more important. Having a good group is key. 

The second thing I learnt from leading the training was that I know more about SRE then I may realise. When asked question by the students I knew the answer. Not because I had a session plan in front of me, not because the answer was obvious but because I have spent the last 4 years focusing 50% of my working life on SRE and from that I now know a lot of stuff that I was completely blissfully unaware of 8 years ago. I forget that it is not common knowledge (for most people) to know which STIs are a bacteria and which are a virus, or what the standard treatment is or why LARCs are so important. I treat these bits of facts as something that should be common knowledge but maybe I have a stronger "Curse of Knowledge bias" then I appreciate. 

The training also exposed some gaping holes in my knowledge. At times I found myself saying a sentence and then silently hoping the group didn't ask me "Why?" Somethings I repeat because I have heard them so many times, maybe I have heard it so much I have forgotten the source, maybe I was never told the source. Maybe some facts are more experiences that are so common they look like facts. I still need to learn more about SRE myself. The more I know the more I recognise what I don't know. The difficulty is knowing what area to now focus on. Child development or public health theory? Parenting skills or more about midwifery? So many ways to broaden my knowledge and also always more depth to explore. If anyone reads this and has a suggestion on what they think a SRE trainer should study let me know. 

Finally, I think I now believe everyone can be involved with SRE but some people stand out as extra keen/suitable for SRE work. Thankfully on this course I wouldn't hold back on recommending a single person from this group to a school. They all did great and I believe showed the ability to work well in schools in the future. My judgement may be completely off and some of them  may surprise me (in a bad way) when I take them into a real school environment. However, out of the group a handful of people stood out as extra keen, extra motivated and extra interested in the topic. It wasn't just the loudest people in the group, it was about the depth of questions they asked. They awareness of the wider issues, from politics to media. An interest in the subject does not necessarily = an ability to educate young people about the subject but it helps. I will keep quiet about exactly who I noticed but I am curious if my mental list of people prove to be the most able in classrooms and future work. I suppose this raises the question are some people born to be Relationship and Sex Educators? 

Sex and Relationship Education in Youth Work

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

Stories from a Thai HIV orphanage

Today I wanted to share a few short insights into the everyday realities for children and young people living in a HIV orphanage in Thailand. I visited this orphanage, The House of Grace, in 2012 whilst travelling around South East Asia (read my post about it here). Like my work in UK this project is linked with ACET international. Today I received an email from the project and wanted to share a few snapshots of what it is like for children and young people in Thailand being supported in The House of Grace. Funded and staffed by Christians the project provides a hope and a home for alone, rejected and something sick young people victims of HIV. Kitisak is the pastor who has dedicated his life to supporting these children and running the House of Grace. These hopefully give a snapshot of the rough and the smooth. 

Arriving - Fah


Nine year old Fah is one of the most recent children to join the House of Grace family. One evening, towards the end of December last year, she found herself literally dumped at the gates of the House of Grace. There she stood crying, not a friend in the world, with just three plastic bags containing all her belongings. Kitisak’s staff found somewhere for her to stay that night. The next day they discovered that nobody wanted her, not even her grandmother who said that she no longer loved Fah and didn’t want her anymore. So Fah came to live at the House of Grace and fifteen year old Pakart was given the responsibility to be her special ‘big sister’. Wherever Pakart went Fah went too. We first met Fah at the Christmas/New Year party and could see that she was already beginning to feel at home.

Seeing a way forward? - Dae


Dae, who will be twelve in July is another very precious child at the House of Grace. The other day Kitisak heard him counting slowly and aloud - “eleven… twelve … thirteen …” Why was this? What was he doing? He was counting the number of steps from the boy’s dormitory before turning left into the dining room! Dae’s is a long story but briefly here it is.

Eighteen months ago it was discovered that Dae was blind in his left eye and that sight in his right eye was deteriorating. In November 2011 he had surgery in Bangkok in an effort to try to save the sight in that eye. This proved effective for a year or so but now he appears to be almost completely blind in both eyes. The other night at evening prayers it was very moving to see his friends finding a chair for him to sit on and at the end of the meeting two other friends helped him, one to put his chair away and the other taking him by the hand and leading him off to his dormitory. 


Early next month Papa Kitisak will take him to Bangkok to see if the surgeon can do any more for him. Kitisak is very concerned that if Dae were to lose his sight completely what would become of him. The House of Grace is not really equipped to give him the special care that he would need. 


Surprising Joy - Preow


Thailand is known as “the Land of Smiles” but what is behind the smiling face of two year old Preow? In June last year she came from the local provincial hospital to join the House of Grace family. She had been receiving treatment for cancer in her hip and there was no-one to care for her. It wasn’t long before she felt the love and warmth of her ‘siblings’ – everybody just loved her and wanted to hold her! Since then she has had chemotherapy several times but her smile is still so captivating! Last month when it was discovered that the cancer had spread to her lungs Papa Kitisak shared this news with all the
children at the House of Grace and said, “However long dear little Preow lives with us let us make sure that her life is full of joy and happiness”.

A Hope and A Future - Dom and Toey


The House of Grace started way back in 1997 when Kitisak and his wife welcomed two little children Dom and Toey into their family. As orphans from HIV they had been left abandoned, living in a little shack in a nearby village, to fend for themselves. From that moment on, life began to have hope and a future for them. Today Dom, now 21 is studying in a local university to become a teacher and Toey, 19 is gaining valuable work experience in his second year of a local apprenticeship scheme. Dom and Toey are just two of the 69 children at the House of Grace, of whom 38 are HIV+.

There are hardships and problems, 

but there is also hope and opportunities.

HIV, Thailand, Orphanage, The House of Grace, ACET, international, Why, 

#SASHevent2013 Coventry Uni Porn - Sexting presentation

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the #SASHevent2013 Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn"

Firstly my presentation

Documents

Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Healthwith Brook, FPA, The National Youth Agency
People and Pornography - A Briefing for Workers

NSPCC sexting study
Summary report of the qualitative study
Full report of the qualitative study 

McAfee The Digital Divide: How the Online Behavior of Teens is Getting Past Parents 
Digital Divide

BBC Newsbeat Survey 
Men worried about Porn

Sex Education Vs Pornography statistics taken from show episodes, they are currently unavailable but you can find useful stuff at their sexperince website 

Youtube clip from Friends episode about the need to turn off the porn



Books
I may not agree with everything in these books but they have some interesting bits.

Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain 
William M. Struthers 

Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality
Gail Dines

Virtually You: The dangerous Power of the E-personality
Elias Aboujaoude 

You can read more about the results of the first time I taught this lesson to a year group, here. I hope you find these sources helpful and if you attended the conference, please let me know what you thought of my session in the comments.

Teenagers who read 50 Shades of Grey

I have started teaching a lesson on the media's portrayal of Sex and Relationship. The lesson focuses on movies, TV shows and visual pornography. But with all the media hype around 50 Shades of Grey I wanted to do a small scale survey of young people I work with to see if the hype had any grounding in reality. Are young people reading it and is it impacting young people? 

At the end of a session looking at the Distortion of Media I handed out some small surveys. Just half a dozen questions and a space for general feedback. I did this with two year groups both mixed gender. A group of year 10 students (aged 14-15) and a group of year 12 students (aged 16-17). With the older group I also asked if the book had encouraged them to experiment with "BDSM/fetish/kinky stuff" but talking with school staff it was decided not to ask that direct question to the year 10 groups. Below are some of the figures from my study, please note it is very small scale and may not reflect wider trends amongst young people. 

Year group	Total students	Number heard	% heard	Number  read	% read	Number experimented	% experiment
10	131	128	97.7%	11	8.4%	-	-
12	205	188*	91.7%*	40	19.5%	4	2.0%

*It should be noted that with the year 12 group 16 people did not 

complete the survey fully so I suspect the % for those who have heard 

about 50 Shades of Grey to be higher, closer to the year 10 figure.

Looking at these figures I think it is clear that 50 Shades of Grey is impacting young people. Nearly every young person has heard about it. Whilst only 8.4% of students aged 14-15 have read it this figure rises to 19.5% of 16-17 year olds. With a film planned to come out in the future I believe awareness about this specific book (and other erotic novels) will increase. As knowledge and awareness increases of the books I believe it is reasonable too suggest that awareness and interest in all things BDSM/fetish/Kinky will increase. 

I think this means a number of things for Sex and Relationship Educators. Firstly we need to get ready to directly challenge some of the stereotyping found in erotic books. Now I know their is huge variation in the style of these books but some themes in relationships may be common. The line between romance novel and erotica is blurred and any form of popular media must be critically examined by consumers to make sure we recognise how it may misrepresent reality  I have worked with many young guys who seem surprised to find out women naturally have pubic hair, porn has taught them different. I wonder what will be the sex and relationship myths made popular in erotic novels. I think 50 shades has some specific issues, you can read about my views on them here. 

Secondly we need to prepared for questions based in the curiosity encouraged by these books. Just as mainstream visual porn prompts specific questions and ideas. These books will create their own specific questions and comments. Possibly questions about bondage, spanking and other kink activities. This could be a big problem if SRE workers do not equip themselves for this possibility. Equally this will mean making sure we know what is good health advice and not just knee jerk reactions. Along with the physical well-being of BDSM participants we will also need to equip young people with skills to safeguard their emotional health. For example how do you respond to a partner who wants to try spanking but you hate the idea?  If you feel completely out of depth in the area of fetish I would recommend Violet Blues book Fetish Sex as a relatively plain English exploration of some of the most common fetishes. Be careful where you get the book out with its racy cover :). To be honest I got an ebook version so I could read it on the bus. 

The work with the 16-17 year olds showed that 2% of the group admitted to being encouraged to experiment with kinky things because of these kind of books. Now these books are not the only thing encouraging kinky sex, our old friend visual porn is also encouraging this. It is not the role of SRE workers to make a judgement on someone choice to experiment, if the choose. But it is our job to make sure young people understand how to protect themselves from possible physical and emotional consequences from this form of sexual activity. 

I fear I may sound alarmist, I am not meaning to be. I just want to make sure that as a group of sexual health educators we are all ready to help equip young people with the skills and information to navigate this possible issue. I am already thinking my porn lessons needs to be rewritten, to make it explicitly clear that the sex you read about may also be as fake as the sex in most porn videos. 

Agree - Disagree Sex and Relationship Statements

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 standard issues (loyalty, respect, condoms, etc). The only constant approach I have found to divide a group is to make a statement firmly gender related but you can only use them for some, not all the statements. I find it a difficult task to choose the statements that will work for your group. In the file of statements I have shared I have colour coded the statements to what the majority of young people normally respond, Blue agree, red disagree. 

For a youth group I once created some True False statement cards that where back to back. The trick was that some had two false sides. Some had two true sides and some had statements that could not be resolved. They where made to cause discussion/arguments. It was one of the most successful discussion starters I have ever used in a youth club but has not quite worked in a school environment. Have a look at the images in the album below. 

Let me know what statements you would use to stir up discussion and debate. 

True/True False/False ???/???