Background
Methods
Intervention
Study design
Data collection
Subjects and recruitment
Data analysis
Ethical approval
Results
Participants
Participant ID number | Stakeholder position | Gender | Interview Type |
---|---|---|---|
ID01 | Conference Organiser | Male | Face-to-face |
ID02 | Conference Organiser | Female | Face-to-face |
ID03 | Conference Worker | Female | Face-to-face |
ID04 | Conference Worker | Female | Face-to-face |
ID05 | PEEP | Male | Face-to-face |
ID06 | PEEP | Female | Face-to-face |
ID07 | PEEP | Male | Face-to-face |
ID08 | Conference Presenter | Female | Face-to-face |
ID09 | Conference Presenter | Male | Face-to-face |
ID10 | Parent who attended conference | Female | Face-to-face |
ID11 | Parent who attended conference | Female | Phone |
ID12 | Teacher who attended conference | Female | Phone |
ID13 | Teacher who attended conference | Female | Phone |
Thematic analysis
Part 1 Engaging young people
Safe and open learning environment
“It offers a forum for them to be able to talk about all things sex and sexuality and gender without any of the restraints that might be there in other circumstances whether it’s with parents or with schools or even headspace, and other professional forums” Organiser, ID01.
“You’ve got people there that are more open in their sexuality. Where as you wouldn’t expect that in a school situation. The presenters are more comfortable being themselves and talking about their experiences” Teacher ID12.
“School makes it feel a bit uncomfortable, PASH made it more comfortable. I think just having a sense of humour, they were always funny, and they just really made us feel good about it” PEEP ID06.
“Sex is delivered as something very normal and natural, it’s not processed but it’s certainly not fear based at all. So it doesn’t lead with that harm minimisation approach around STIs or pregnancy. Whilst they are aspects of the PASH program, really the way the framework is presented is looking at their overall wellbeing and sexual health being a part of that.” Organiser, ID02.
“This is a conference where everything is out there for you now, you can say what you want, you can tell them... Nothing is hidden in the dark. Everything is expressed and almost out there for them to decide” PEEP, ID05.
“It gives them a chance to ask questions in a safe environment. We can always teach them at school, but being teachers they might not want to open up to us and they’re more likely to do that in a group and even if they don’t ask those questions, they may hear questions that other kids have asked.” Teacher, ID12.
“It is difficult to engage young people and so that pro-social modelling that can happen from their peers is paramount. Otherwise you have a bunch of adults standing around telling a bunch of young people what to do and they hear that all the time. When they see their peers which they may identify with, they provide a kind of role model for their peers to get involved” Organiser, ID01.
“They see all these doctors and professionals and they think they’re some big thing and they cannot relate in some way. However with us, we’re their age, they can communicate better and it’s not lost in words” PEEP, ID05.
“….it’s a powerful performance illustrating emotion… stuff that I wouldn’t talk about with my son”. Parent, ID11.
Empowerment of young people
“Definitely having all those speakers. So you saw the legal side, the sexual therapy side, you saw where everyone was coming from not just like with a teacher, they just say…this is how everything is. Where as when you get a lot of speakers specialising over lots of different areas you can almost put a picture together and understand a lot in depth.” PEEP, ID05.
“This is learning more about sexuality, and better sex, at school they don’t talk about things like making sex good or relationships, a little bit about STIs but not much. Check ups and things like that we never learnt much about” PEEP, ID06
“It’s the variety, all the topics, they cover a whole lot of issues that you probably wouldn’t be able to cover in one sexual health education. It’s like.. I couldn’t cover all of these topics with my child” Parent ID10
“They <the students> were discussing it on the way back and were saying,…we’d like to see more of this, and this is good because of this, so they spoke to me about what they liked, and what they thought other people would like to hear” Teacher ID12
It was felt that the ‘What’s Legal, What’s not’ hot-topic session offered young people a space to discuss differences between legal obligation and actual practice in the community and build awareness of legalities surrounding consent.“At law, children under the age of 16 can’t consent to any sort of sexual intercourse or touching and that’s quite out of step with what’s happening in the community and we’re finding generally young men are effectively being criminalised when something goes wrong in the relationship” Presenter ID08
Building awareness around pornography and media images appeared to be important. This was covered within a piece from the youth theatre which was felt to provide a light-hearted and relatable means to engage young people, as well as a hot topic session which included interactive exercises to brainstorm differences between ‘porn sex’ and ‘real sex’. The brainstorming session was perceived to explore the negative impact that pornography can have on sexual behaviour due to 1) unrealistic images, 2) lack of consent shown and 3) lack of safe sexual behavioural practices.“I think the social media one was almost an eye opener for some people. It definitely informed of the ‘Do’s and Dont’s’. It was about sexting and how it could affect someone if it ended up as child pornography” PEEP, ID05
“When I started I was always the shy one who sat at the back and didn’t want to talk. But then when I started going along, I became more confident and I started talking to more people and became more open about it. And I’ve had people come up and ask me stuff and I know how to answer it now. It’s good, it has helped.” PEEP, ID07
Making informed choices based on what feels right to the individual | |
Protective behaviours | |
Negotiating better sex | |
Skills around consent | |
Ability to discuss emotions and sex- related matters with peers and parents | |
Accessing services | |
Decision-making | |
Communication | |
Knowledge transfer | |
Help seeking | |
Critical thinking |
“The Embodied consent was run by a sex therapist and that is giving them an active experience of setting boundaries and giving themselves permission to state what is right for them…So they do that in the context of the hand massage, so you go into details of saying exactly how you like it, so it challenges people’s notions, their right to speak up, valuing themselves, their assertiveness…” Organiser, ID02
“They have their own couple of days of training, so the more informed and comfortable they are, the more they can support other young people. So they on a general level go back into their school community and peer community with that training” Organiser, ID02
Knowledge acquisition and research | |
Assistance and co-facilitation of information delivery and discussion | |
Peer support | |
Knowledge transmission | |
Team work | |
Leadership |
Involvement of the young person’s support system and broader community
The Community Forum was seen as an important adjunct to the conference to engage parents, teachers and the community. However, whilst the forum was perceived to be an important opportunity to engage parents, many perceived engagement inadequate due to poor attendance. Some, including a PEEP, discussed the importance of having youth attend the conference without their parents to facilitate open and free discussion amongst youth unhindered by parent presence.“I got to see the interesting portrait of what teenagers experience, you know, what goes on, their inner dialogue so it was enlightening being confronted with what they deal with particularly as things have changed over the decades.” Parent, ID11
“I mean just for us as a family it’s really great that there is this forum that we can talk about anything basically now and feel comfortable and not awkward” Parent, ID11
“…there were a few things that I discovered and I thought that would be good to introduce into our program. It was a bit alarming to hear some of the others <teachers> involved weren’t aware of these things so I think it’s really good for those people to be at the conference.” Teacher, ID12
“I think what it’s doing is kind of saying to the community…hey this is an issue that we need to address and it’s also providing a vehicle for young people to be actively involved in that process. Kids go back to their schools and go…hey, guess what we did yesterday… and there is a bit of a ripple effect back into their schools and their communities.” Presenter, ID09
“At a community level it creates a space where young people start having a dialogue, a discussion about consent and what it means to them, They also start to have a discussion about other topics, pornography, sex and disability” Organiser ID01
Part 2 Recommendations
Improve conference format and planning
Content and format changes
“There could always be more focus on mental health and mindfulness, more more more more more, because I think what’s happening is we have a lot of kids with anxiety that don’t know how to manage it and they get through school, they get to year 10 and that’s when drugs, that’s what settles them...” Teacher, ID13
“It’s a very hard conversation to have”….“it’s a real issue in this community. It is a growing issue that we really need to address” Presenter, ID08
Increasing content on gender, sexuality, wellbeing, communication, drugs and alcohol was also recommended.“young people’s feedback included how they would like to see more around positive relationships… they need to see what good relationships and positive relationships look like” Worker, ID04
“ I think there could always be more time, but I think the way that it is set up is to keep it moving quickly, because that’s engaging.” Worker, ID03
Funding to ensure sustainability
“ It <PASH> clearly needs funding. That whole funding is a difficult issue as well….sometimes when things are funded they can get caught up in the bureaucracy that then takes that spontaneity away. So I think that needs to be carefully thought about so it maintains a connection with the group that it’s intending to service and that’s really important” Presenter, ID08
Model replication and expansion
“There could be a PASH conference for year 7s, year 8s, year 9s, year 10s so they’re getting something like that where all of this information is available you know and it could be modified, but having something where it’s not dumped on the shoulders of the PD/H/PE staff members” Youth Worker, ID04
“Looking at the syllabus and making it <PASH> an integral part, somehow making it so schools can embed it into their syllabus’ in some way.” Teacher, ID13
Enhance stakeholder engagement
Parent and community engagement
1. Greater promotion | |
2. Transport assistance for parents located at a distance from the conference site | |
3. More accessible venue - one interviewee mentioned holding the community event at the pub | |
4. Using ‘draw cards’ – such as food and alcohol | |
5. Create a more casual fun environment, e.g. incorporate a comedian | |
6. Have young conference attendees assist in running the forum |
“I think like a chat group or an online workshop could be really good...yeah, I feel like there needs to be more discussion and I feel like I’m a little bit limited to the friends that are around me and so when some funny antic comes around we talk about it but actually to cover a lot through wider, broader community views or experiences wouldn’t be a bad idea” – Parent ID11
School engagement
“It would be really exciting to have other high schools get on board and that’s not necessarily <a> sustainability issue, but you know I mean we want to educate as many people as possible if the resources are there” Youth worker, ID3
Teachers identified certain issues, which if addressed, could enhance engagement of young attendees as well as teachers. These are outlined in Table 5.“I would love to see more Catholic and religious schools involved. That’s still a bit of an interesting area.” – Youth worker, ID4
1. Earlier notification for teachers | |
2. Assist teachers in the lead-up to the conference | |
3. Align content to school curriculum | |
4. Provide follow-up to build on knowledge, skills and confidence gained during the conference, including a PASH follow up visit in the class room, a phone app or continuing professional development for teachers | |
5. Ensure service providers are available for each school catchment area |
Engagement of PEEPs
“I would like to see a little mentoring group maybe come of it, so those students could then come back into the schools and then maybe, like a peer support kind of thing…students to run little programs or have little workshops or you know, be observant and proactive in the classroom and the school” – Teacher ID13
Ongoing project officer role
“ I think something that worked really well was they created a paid position …and that certainly helped, you know, having someone with some dedicated hours. Because it is it’s a lot of extra work”. Youth Worker, ID04