Sex, drink and summer holidays: Parents warned
Saturday 1st August 2009, 2:59PM BST.
Bronia Lever
A RECORD number of youngsters – some as young as 12 – have sought help about contraception and sexually transmitted infections since the start of the summer holidays.
The Brook clinic has revealed that the number of people aged between 12 and 21 seeking advice has doubled in the past two weeks.
And last Monday, staff at the Nelson Street drop-in centre had to give the emergency contraceptive pill to more than triple the usual number of girls following the first weekend of the six-week break.
The news follows the revelation two weeks ago about the shocking level of under-age drinking in the Island.
Brook’s executive director, Bronia Lever, said that Brook usually saw between 15 and 20 local youngsters at each of its five weekly sessions, but that since the start of the summer break, staff have had to deal with between 20 and 40 young people – including children as young as 12 – at every one.
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What on earh do we expect when we insist on treating children as adults !!!
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Young beans eh! what are they like??
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I agree with Mogit and would add that giving 16 year olds the right to vote is only sending out mixed messages to these young confussed adults.
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What a sad indication of Jersey society when we hear that twelve year old children are seeking contraceptive advice, where has their childhood gone and .
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12-16 year-olds getting drunk and having sex?
I’m angry. I’m angry because I don’t remember my teenage years being that much fun in the early 80′s
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I think that there should be more clinics like Brook that offer the help and advice that these youngsters need. I’ve been to Brook before and it is always swamped with young people, sometimes its even quite intimidating to want to even go there when it is that busy, you tend to be afraid to see someone you might know.
If these youngsters are needing the pill, then 9 times out of 10 they havnt even used a condom, and arnt taking the pill, which puts them at risk to STI’s. More education for these kids is needed.
I also think the clinics need to toughen up. As nasty as a lecture can be, they need to be told that the morning after pill isn’t just there to use as a form of contraception!
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Mogit, you’re right.
The thing is, kids can copy adult behaviour but they’re NOT adults, they can’t deal, or even perceive, the consequences (some adults still can’t). Copying behaviour of adults does not make you a grown up in any way shape or form, only being able to deal with the consequences of your actions does that and that is something that is coming to people later and later in life than it used to.
I disagree with the ‘kids are growing up faster’ crowd because I don’t see it at all, they are copying adults but emotionally they are futher behind that my generation or my gran’s generation.
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I agree with your last paragraph Leah…..when my grandfather was a teenager he was fighting in WW2 and had to grow up damn quick!
Kids today have got it too easy ans some don’t even know they were born (as my gran used to say).
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Great. A new generation of alocoholics and welfare grabers.
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Could this be because of States’ polices over the past years. Give housing and benefits to those producing babies – now we have the result of that misguided policy on the litter strewn streets
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