The international evidence is clear. Building the knowledge, skills, resilience and aspirations of young people, and providing easy access to welcoming services, helps them to delay sex until they are ready to enjoy healthy, consensual relationships and to use contraception to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Central to success is translating the evidence into a multi-agency whole system approach.
This Framework is designed to help local areas assess their local programmes to see what’s working well, identify any gaps, and maximise the assets of all services to strengthen the prevention pathway for all young people. It can be used flexibly to review actions across a whole area, to focus on high rate districts or wards or to strengthen a specific aspect of prevention, for example relationships and sex education in advance of statutory status in 2019. A self assessment checklist is provided for councils to collate a summary of the current local situation, and identify gaps and actions.