Sexual Health "Mystery Shopper"

A group of Black and Asian Young People from the Oadby & Wigston locality took part in the Mystery Shopper project.

The Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) young people aged 16 to 18 took part in the Leicestershire Youth Services Mystery Shopper project, they visited 5 sexual health services 4 within the Oadby and Wigston locality, and one Leicester city based service.

These services were assessed against the 9 set criteria of the You're Welcome Framework; the young people were also looking for practitioners to have a clear understanding of their diverse, cultural, and religious needs in their response to the sexual health service offered to these young people.

The young people chose the five services they wanted to mystery shop based on what they believed would be the services young people from BAME communities would be more likely to visit at some point in their teenage years, they felt they needed to experience 'what it was like' in order to feedback the positives and negatives of their visits.

Sites visited:

- Emergency Hormonal Contraceptive (EHC) Chemist

- Youth Service–Sexual health provision

- Connexions (CNX)

- Medical Centre

- Leicester Contraceptive Clinic

4 of the young people were born and brought up in the UK and one came from Nigeria as an immigrant with his family, although all had a slight awareness of the existence of sexual health services, none of the group were familiar about the way in which these services are provided or promoted to young people.

The young people also shared in their experiences of 'Sex' being a very taboo subject at home and they didn't feel that sex, sexual health or sexuality could be openly discussed at home with parents. There was a deep sense of embarrassment, lack of confidence both from parents and themselves as well as cultural respect stopping them from even bringing up the subject.

However most felt that there was at least one parent who they were more able to engage with but they believed the topic of Sex was still a NO GO AREA.

They felt that even in 2009 they still faced discrimination, disadvantage and racism in their lives, they believe academic achievement is the key to making their lives better, and some felt sexual health services may not be a high priority for BAME young people as they felt it would only need to be accessed in emergency situations and in 'secret.' Confidentiality raised concerns as some had knowledge of friends that had experienced breaches of confidentiality. The ethnic origin of the practitioners carried no relevance, however knowledge of the young peoples cultural, religious, family and community barriers were an absolute must have training need, for the young people to feel a 'connection' that this person ''understands where I'm coming from'' and is able to empathise at their level.

Each young person chose their sexual health service to visit for their own reasons and created an identity and disguise to pose under for the visit; they then worked through the Mystery shopper preparation programme and spent several days role playing their secret identities.

Letters were sent out by the young people requesting the opportunity to conduct the mystery shopper exercise with the identified services.

They then planned the dates, times and travel to each service researching the opening times, availability and bus routes.

Youth work staff discretely accompanied the young people to the venue, waiting outside in order to provide support and a comprehensive debrief.

One of the young people who took part in the Mystery shopper said "The experience of the mystery shopper was both informative and Educational, we had full control over who we Mystery Shopped and what our identity would be, Rejni Patel – Youth Worker supported our learning with role play which helped raise our confidence levels and abilities to be able to assess the services"

The results of the Mystery shopper findings were posted out to each service. The Sexual Health services that scored highly for being young people friendly and meeting most of the You're Welcome criteria were congratulated, and those that the young people felt needed to improve their services to better meet the needs of young people were offered support and guidance from Katie Phillips - Leicestershire Teenage Pregnancy Planning Officer.

Santosh Verma "The young people who took part in the project showed incredible maturity and shared a valued commitment to the exercise. Their impressive attitude and ability to help shape services to be 'Young people friendly' was a credit both to themselves and our service".

For Further information contact:

Santosh Verma
Teenage Pregnancy County Co-ordinator
Leicestershire Youth Service
South Leicestershire College (Bobbin Factory)
Blaby Road
South Wigston
Leicestershire
LE18 4PH
Tel: 0116 3055797
Mob: 07904959449
E-mail: santosh.verma@leics.gov.uk