Teen SENSE
In January 2012, The Center for HIV Law and Policy's Teen SENSE initiative released the first set of standards created to ensure that sexual health care is included in basic medical services for young people in detention and other types of state custody, and that it meets minimum requirements for competent care: Model Sexual Health Care Standards for Youth in State Custody; Model Sexual Health Education Standards for Youth in State Custody; and Model Staff Training Standards: Focusing on the needs of LGBTQ Youth.
Model Sexual Health Care Standards for Youth in State Custody
Model Sexual Health Education Standards for Youth in State Custody
Model Staff Training Standards: Focusing on the needs of LGBTQ Youth
State and local agencies, and advocates who work with them, should start with basic written policies that outline the elements of needed sexual health services. To help with that, and the important goal of having consistent, written assurances that these services will be available, we have developed the following model policies: Model Policy: Sexual Health Care for Youth in State Custody, Model Policy: Sexual Health Education for Youth in State Custody, and the Model Policy: Training for Youth Facility Staff: Ensuring Competence that Includes the Rights and Needs of LGBTQ Youth. Feel free to use and share them as widely as possible.
Read more on the Teen SENSE initiative below.
Most adolescents who are confined in foster care and juvenile justice facilities are from the vulnerable communities and populations most affected by HIV/AIDS. They are poor, Black and Latino, and survivors of gender-based violence. These youth, wherever they are on the spectrum of sexual orientation and gender, are at great risk of HIV and other STIs, and yet they are systematically denied access to appropriate and effective HIV prevention, sexual health education and sexual and reproductive health care. To ensure that these youth have consistent access to quality sexual health education and HIV prevention information, policymakers must recognize that youth in state custody are legally entitled to these services and that failure to provide them has serious public health consequences.
All youth in state custody have the right to comprehensive sexual health care that includes both medical services and scientifically-sound sex education and HIV prevention counseling. United States federal courts long have recognized a constitutional requirement that state officials provide services for the health, safety and well-being of children in their custody.
The right of juveniles to comprehensive sexual health care and education also is central to their right to make decisions about and conduct intimate personal relationships. Federal case law also is clear that especially in the areas of reproductive health—pregnancy, abortion and sexually-transmitted disease prevention—juveniles hold fundamental privacy rights to choose their care despite their age.
Nonetheless these and other legal protections for children in state custody have not translated into specific, uniform policies and guidelines needed to ensure that these rights are a reality. To the contrary, sexual health care programs exist only in a very limited fashion in a relative handful of facilities. In most cases they exist at all only through the intercession of concerned individuals working outside of these institutions.
The Center for HIV Law and Policy's Teen SENSE (Sexual health and Education Now in State Environments) initiative advances the principle that respect and accommodation for all gender expression and sexual orientation is central to HIV prevention and sexual health. Comprehensive sexual health care for juveniles in state custody preserves health, reduces HIV and STI transmission risk, and increases the odds that severely at-risk youth will secure the essential skills and understanding that enhance self-respect and tolerance of difference, and encourage ongoing HIV/STI testing and care.
Teen SENSE is a multidisciplinary project that has engaged experts in adolescent medicine, sex education, foster care and juvenile justice to develop a complete advocacy model and then coordinate its implementation. We have developed a legal "roadmap" and model guidelines for comprehensive sexual health care and HIV prevention to support local leaders in bringing this central part of health care to youth detention programs in their communities.
Teen SENSE establishes a powerful legal and human rights framework and the on-the-ground alliances that we believe eventually will make meaningful, appropriate, non-judgmental sexual health care and real HIV prevention a mandated service for youth in confinement around the country.
Below is a sample of CHLP's Teen SENSE publications available on the Resource Bank:
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Juvenile Injustice: The Unfulfilled Rights of Youth in State Custody to Comprehensive Sexual Health Care
