Dudley's Respect Yourself Campaign

The role of the Respect Yourself Campaign is to influence all agencies who work with young people to use their resources to enable young people to make informed choices about their sexual health and improve the life chances of teenage parents and their children.

The Respect Yourself Campaign work in partnership with Childrens Centres and Connexions to ensure that the appropriate support of young parents and their children is available, according to need, in line with the Every Child Matters Framework.

Respect Yourself Campaign Team Manager – Rachel Hare

As campaign manager Rachel is responsible for the implementation of the Respect Yourself Campaign strategy, ensuring that as a borough we work with our partners to reduce the number of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Rachel manages the training provision for partner agencies across the borough. This ensures a cohesive knowledge base is disseminated to all agencies working with young people, and supports the strategic objectives ensuring prevention of teenage pregnancy remains a priority.

Respect Yourself Campaign Assistant Manager – Ellen Phillips

Ellen’s role involves supporting the Respect Yourself Campaign Manager in the implementation of the strategy. Ellen takes a lead on the improvement of services to support young parents and their children across the borough, through partnership working. This includes projects around secondary prevention, support for young dads, develop projects with Children’s Centres, and continue development work in relation to the support agenda.

Lisa Johnson – Sexual Health Outreach Nurse

Lisa’s role is seconded from health to support young women (18 and under) who are either pregnant, young mom’s or who are vulnerable young people. Lisa can offer all methods of contraception and can see clients in their homes, clinic or other suitable environments. Other sexual health needs can also be met such as Chlamydia and pregnancy testing. Lisa can also facilitate referral to GUM and termination of pregnancy appointments.

Karen Virgo – Campaign Youth Worker

Karen works proactively with young people aged 13 to 19 on issues around sexual health, relationships and the prevention of unplanned pregnancy.

Karen’s role involves the coordination of relationships and sex education work, condom distribution and sexual health information and guidance drop in schemes, and the implementation of the Chlamydia screening programme, within Dudley’s Youth Service.

Karen’s priorities include sexual health training to all Dudley’s Youth Service staff, running community Peer Education programmes, and RSE work with specific groups of young people as the need arises.

Sarah Tiley – Campaign Co-Ordinator (Prevention)

Sarah role involves liaising with partner agencies to ensure that the prevention agenda for the Respect Yourself Campaign is prioritized. In order to achieve this Sarah trains professionals to ensure that cohesive support and services in relation to sexual health are available for young people across the borough.

To achieve a reduction of teenage pregnancy means to involve young people at the forefront of this work, specifically through the peer education project which Sarah co-ordinates. The trained peer educators run drop in services in all further education colleges (branded as FISH – free information in sexual health) for fellow students to access sexual health information and advice.

Kath Clarke – Campaign Co-Ordinator (Health Promoting Schools)

Kath’s role involves working in partnership with both primary and secondary schools to develop and support the delivery of relationship and sex education (RSE).

Key to this role is preventative education, promoting positive sexual health messages and the establishment of links to the local contraceptive and sexual health services. Kath is also responsible for co-ordinating training which is available for relevant professionals within schools so they are able to deliver RSE and signpost young people to the most appropriate services.

Lin Sherwood – Campaign Administrative Assistant

Lin’s role is to support the Respect Yourself Campaign manager with the day to day administration of the project, with responsibility for inputting referrals and other data to support the strategy, collating training requests, producing training materials and certificates, and a whole host of other tasks as an when required.

Sue Swindells – Teenage Pregnancy Education Support Officer

Sue’s role is to provide support to young parents who are under 16 years old and the schools they attend. Sue aims to ensure that young parents’ education is maintained, remaining a positive experience and they are able to take their examinations, enabling them to continue in education. This is achieved by liaising with partners in order to provide a holistic approach.

For information about:

The Referral Process

Support Groups

Supported Housing