Contraceptive implants: parents 'should be told' (From Romsey Advertiser)

Readers back parents' right to be told school children are being given contraception

1:50pm Saturday 18th February 2012 in Education By Melanie Adams , Health Reporter

CONTRACEPTIVE implants should not be given to children in school and parents have the right to know if their child has received one, according to hundreds of Daily Echo readers.

Visitors to the Daily Echo website have been voting to have their say on the controversial sexual health services that have fitted 33 students with a birth control implant at nine schools in the city.

Last week the paper revealed that one of those girls was just 13 years old and that she was given the device without her mother knowing.

The mum blasted the service for being “morally wrong” and is demanding that changes are made to the NHS service to ensure every parent knows that the service is being offered to their child and that compulsory follow-ups are introduced.

And our trio of polls, posted on our website, shows that she is not alone.

A massive 82 per cent of people who voted believed that parents should be made aware that their child could potentially be fitted with a contraceptive implant at school.

As part of the Daily Echo’s investigations last week, none of the nine schools directly responded to our questions about what information is sent home to parents.

Instead, Southampton City Council responded on their behalf, confirming a template letter and information sheet given to schools to send to parents only stated that a “full range of contraception” is available. In our second poll, 68 per cent voted in favour of parents being told if their child has received contraceptives in school.

And 60 per cent of people voted for the service to be scrapped altogether.

Health bosses have defended the service, introduced in 2009, for successfully reducing the number of unwanted teenage pregnancies in Southampton and stressed that it was run by trained professionals.