Sexual health education is no longer being provided by public health nurses to elementary students in the Lambton Kent District School Board as of this year, officials say, leaving teachers to deliver the in-class curriculum.
“It wasn’t a decision made lightly,” said Kevin Churchill, manager, clinical and family services for Lambton Public Health (LPH), which, for many years, provided public health nurses to deliver the sexual health curriculum in LKDSB elementary schools.
“The funding is restricted, the needs are growing, and when we look at our priorities and our capacity, sometimes he have to make difficult decisions.”
In a May report to Lambton County Council, Churchill noted a number of budget pressures facing Ontario Public Health Units, pointing to a decrease in funding levels combined with inflationary pressures.
“As we were looking at our budget picture and our prioritization, we had to make some decisions about delivering some programs in a different way,” Churchill explained, pointing to the Ontario Public Health Standards (OHPS) — requirements that public health units must adhere to in delivering programs and services.
“The reality is, the standards changed a number of years ago…and a lot of health units discontinued direct in-class sexual health teaching many years ago.”
Lambton remained one of the only public health units to provide the service in recent years.
“We had continued it,” he added, noting the longtime partnership was only with the LKDSB, and not the St. Clair Catholic School Board, which delivers its own curriculum. “But we just had to consider our capacity to do that.”
The decision was made to move to a supportive role to enable classroom teachers to deliver sexual health education, with support and resources from LPH.
“We spent a lot of time developing presentations with links and references and everything a teacher would need to deliver the lesson,” Churchill said, “taking the time to make sure that we are referencing things that are reliable and current information.”
Both Churchill, and LKDSB superintendent Ben Hazzard said the transition has gone smoothly.
“They [LPH] created and built resources that they provided complimentary to our teachers,” Hazzard said. “And we’ve always appreciated that partnership.”
If parents or youth are looking for more information they can contact LPH anytime, Churchill added.
“We are there as a resource to the community and certainly want to be considered as a knowledgeable source of information around sexual health,” he said. “It’s still very important for us that kids get that information, learn about their sexuality, healthy relationships, and all of these things.”