Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Emotional Resilience Intervention for Girls and Young Wome...

Kent County Council (the Council) are procuring provision of a Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Emotional Resilience Intervention for Girls and Young Women aged 10-16 years. The service will improve outcomes for young women who have been exposed to adversities including sexual exploitation, coercive and abusive relations and familial domestic abuse. The services will be available to those living within the Kent County Council geographical area.

The Contractor shall manage referrals and deliver a timely intervention with the young person and their family, as appropriate. Key principles of the intervention will be:
• A strength based, domains-based approach to resilience
• Building self-efficacy through working towards goals articulated by the young person
• Using a trauma informed approach

Since 2012 this has been delivered through the Positive Relationship Service with two Contractors across Kent. The current Positive Relationships intervention takes a flexible but structured approach which introduces young women to issues of consent, healthy relationships, recognising coercion and risk, building skills in negotiating relationships, building self-worth and aspirations and identifying additional sources of support. Building relationships with these young women, giving them permission to talk about their experiences has led to the disclosure of sexual exploitation, self-harm, historic domestic abuse and cohesive familial and peer relationships. The group work programme varies according to the age of the young women. This is in line with the current evidence base (Howarth E 2016 unpublished).

As of April 2018, the service was working with approximately 72 young women across Kent and a total of 240 young women per year.

It is the Council’s intention to award the contract for a period of two years with the potential to extend for a further two years in twelve-month extensions. The contract will commence on 1st October 2018. The maximum contract value is £195,000 per annum which may be subject to change.