Yarmouth school trip to STD clinic
A school trip normally means a day out at a museum or nature reserve, but pupils from Great Yarmouth have recently gone on a tour of an NHS sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic.
A school trip normally means a day out at a museum or nature reserve, but pupils from Great Yarmouth have recently gone on a tour of an NHS sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic.
In a pioneering initiative for the region, teenage girls from one local high school were shown round the Bure Clinic at James Paget University Hospital, Gorleston, and given a chance to inspect facilities and ask questions.
The trip, organised outside of the clinic's working hours, was the idea of the charity GFS Platform which works to improve life opportunities for young women, in many cases teenage mothers.
Sally Rozier, GFS Platform's strategy and development manager in Yarmouth, said it was an extension of their long-standing sexual health peer educators programme, which saw young women supported by the charity going into high schools to raise awareness about the realities of teenage pregnancy and parenthood.
These volunteers had been going on fact-finding visits to the Bure clinic for years, but the recent trip was the first involving a party of high school pupils escorted by GFS Platform staff.
Hailing it as a success, she said: “It allows them to experience how it feels to walk through the doors of a sexual health clinic to learn
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about the confidential services it provides.”
Ms Rozier said they had good links with all the local high schools as well as the clinic and would be happy to organise future trips.
The trial scheme has won the enthusiastic support of a county council expert and local headteacher, although a national parents' campaign group has expressed scepticism.
