London hospital expands youth work service

The youth work service at London’s Kings College Hospital is to employ one new full-time female youth worker based in the emergency department to work specifically with young people who present with sexual health problems that raise concerns around safeguarding.

Redthread, the south London-based charity that runs the Kings emergency department youth work service, has also secured funding for another post to be created at the Well Centre in Streatham to handle follow-up community work with clients who have attended hospital.

The developments reflect a growing recognition among health service commissioners that hospital emergency departments could play an important role in engaging with hard-to-reach and vulnerable young people.

Redthread expects much of the extra caseload will be with young women, many of whom come to the hospital seeking emergency contraception or for advice on sexual health concerns.

Redthread chief executive John Poyton said all emergency department staff will be trained in identifying sexual health safeguarding concerns when a young person first arrives.

He said: “This is a bottom-up approach to ensure all emergency department staff can assess and give young women the opportunity to talk [to a youth worker] about the issues rather than the symptoms they may have presented with.”

Poyton added that engaging with a young person at the “point of crisis” was critical to the intervention being successful.

“These girls will be the ones that come in but will be out within four to five hours. We want to make sure we have real-time engagement in the emergency department because if you don’t engage you miss the whole issue.”

A report by the Centre for Mental Health last week highlighted the fact that girls in street gangs are the most vulnerable group in the criminal justice system, with many showing evidence of being sexually abused and groomed by male gang members.

Poyton said the report’s findings demonstrate why the new Redthread workers are needed: “Young women are victims of gang violence but don’t turn up with obvious injuries, such as stab wounds. They are the unrecognised victims of gang violence.”