Founder, Health Improvement Senior
Based on the success and feedback from the Community Justice Glasgow health and wellbeing event for people serving a Community Payback Order (CPO) in Glasgow City (September 2023) – you can read more about this in the article ‘A Tree of Hope – Reducing Health Inequalities’ – the Sexual Health Improvement Team have been working in partnership with the Unpaid Work Service to provide opportunities to increase staff knowledge and confidence on sexual health and blood-borne viruses and support them to incorporate these topics into their daily discussions with people serving CPOs.
A training needs discussion was carried out with a group of staff from the Unpaid Work Service, led by staff from the Sexual Health Improvement Team. This session focused on:
- Understanding the role of staff working within the service
- Current levels of knowledge and confidence in relation to sexual health and blood-borne viruses
- How topics related to sexual health and blood-borne viruses may present within interactions with service users
- Knowledge of sexual health services and sources of information
This session also considered the wide variety of backgrounds and previous training undertaken within the staff group as well as the general health and wellbeing issues experienced within their client group.
Insights from this discussion informed the development of learning objectives to guide training development. These learning objectives aim to build on knowledge and confidence related to raising the topic of sexual health and blood-borne viruses and also responding to these issues when they present in day-to-day interactions with clients.
A one-day training session covering sexual health and blood-borne viruses has been developed in partnership Scottish Drugs Forum, who provide blood-borne virus training expertise, with initial delivery planned over 3 dates later in the year.
Margaret Smith, Manager, Community Justice Glasgow, commented:
“We know from a growing evidence base that those who come into contact with the Justice System have much poorer health outcomes and have significantly higher barriers to accessing health services than the general population. We know that working to improve pathways and confidence in engaging with health services is often a vital first step to helping people to improve their health and other outcomes – that early engagement builds confidence to engage further. Through the Health event held, and the continuing work that has followed, I am confident that we are taking the right approach to health improvement and harm reduction for people undertaking a Community Sentence. It is vital that we raise awareness, understanding and confidence in accessing those services amongst the client group, but we also need a two-pronged approach, and I believe from experience that it is equally important to skill up those staff who build relationships and have lots of contact with the client group. I welcome this work and look forward to seeing it develop.”