Peer Educators lead the way: How London Borough of Lambeth lowered teenage pregnancy rates and improved sex education

Change management

With support for the Youth Council’s then recently appointed full time worker, Andy Hamflett (now Chief Executive of the UK Youth Parliament) a group of young people from the Youth Council did some research on sexual relations and sexual health issues, developed lesson plans around what they felt young people wanted to know, developed a proposal for a peer approach, and submitted a bid for funding.

Funding was obtained for a six month pilot project and Andrea Legal-Miller took up post at the end of 2002 to organise recruitment, training and delivery working with the young people from the Youth Council. Following the success of the pilot the project was put on an established footing and has been running now for eight years with around 30 new peers being trained each year.

Recruitment has not proved a problem.  The majority of new recruits are attracted through word-of-mouth or are recruited through the delivery of the workshops. 

Typically, the training consists of 12 to 16 weeks of 2 hour sessions. Modules cover:

•  Working as a group
• Presenting to and managing a class of young people
• Equalities and diversity
• Sexual relations and sexual health
• Attitudes to gender and sex

Lots of time is spent looking at attitudes and exploring the fact that these are very sensitive issues about which people have very different beliefs. 

Professionals contribute to the training around sexual health, substance misuse, domestic violence and Lesbian Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues. This means the peer educators are able to see firsthand professionals who work in the borough on these issues.  They also make visits to sexual health clinics to meet with staff and ask questions when no patients are present. This means they can speak from experience when discussing services in the borough.

Sessions in schools are delivered by pairs of peer educators. Peer educators have the advantage of speaking to young people in a clear and relevant way. They also challenge attitudes and discuss values and beliefs. One popular workshop addresses young people’s attitudes. In these sessions the peer educators break down some of the common slang words used for boys and girls, and attempt to show how loaded and often inaccurate they are.  Although the sessions are made to feel fun and light at first, the students do come to realise how stereotypes aren’t always helpful and that it is important to think a little deeper before labeling people based on just their appearance.

The peer educators are involved in the creation and development of the workshops.  They know how best to involve their peers and ensure each workshop has a range of activities to engage both shy and boisterous young people in voicing their views.

The project works to a quality assurance framework.   Every session has the class teacher present. At the end of the session the teacher completes an evaluation sheet as do all the students.  The peer educators also complete de-brief forms with each other on how their sessions went and how they can be improved. Although Lambeth staff sit in on some sessions peer educators are trusted to manage the sessions with the principal form of monitoring being through the evaluation forms.

Most peer educators are between 15-19 years old and in full time education.  Around two thirds are girls. The majority are Black African and Black Caribbean which is broadly reflective of the borough.  Lambeth teenage mothers are also known to be over-represented in the Black Caribbean and Mixed Black Caribbean-White communities. One of the challenges in future is to make the peer educators a little more diverse in terms of both ethnicity and gender. Indeed the latest intake is half and half male and female for the first time.

Peer educators are treated as unqualified youth workers and paid accordingly (£8.31 ph). This is seen as important in recognising their commitment and professionalism.