The Family Federation’s Youth open House (YOH) is a model programme focusing specifically on the sexual health and sexual education of young people. Our goal is to promote sexual health among young people in Finland.

We have been carrying out our activities over twenty years. We have noticed that young people need services that correspond to their own wishes and needs concerning sexuality, growth, development and possible problem situations arising in these areas. We have developed our services and our programmes on the basis of our experiences and surveys conducted among our young clients.

YOH-ideology is based on a service model we have developed, on the sexual rights of young people and the theory of the Steps of Sexuality.

When a young person comes to the Sexual Health Clinic for the first time, this is often the first independent contact the individual has ever made with health care services without his or her parents. This visit creates the image of how health care works and how young persons are treated. Adults have already the information, skills and experiences about how to act and behave at a clinic. Adults know which services and treatment to expect.

Confidentiality is one question that is often raised. To whom and in which case the information on the young person´s treatment can be sent? What happens in the doctor’s office? Do you have to accept or submit to everything or can you decide what kind of services you want?

The media and Pornography

One of the most important aims of sexual health work is to give a realistic picture of the world the young person is living in. The media, the press, television, advertising, films and literature and the internet are constantly creating an image of a more sexist and performance-driven world. In regard to sexuality and sex, it seems that nothing is ever enough. Anything goes, you have to try everything and you can’t say no to anything. Intimacy and privacy are old-fashioned and soon probably even abnormal.

In our work, we try to take into consideration the impact of the media on the worldview of people today. We discuss this when young people visit the clinic, in sessions arranged at schools and when training professionals.

Youth-oriented advertising, music videos and the world of fashion are performance-driven and even pornographic. Sex and porn have always been and continue to be a topic that interests people – young people, as well. Everyone is forced either willingly or unwillingly into their sphere of influence. Therefore, the significance of pornography and its manifestations, for example, are issues that are absolutely necessary to be taken into consideration both at the clinic and in sexual health education.

Differentiating between sexuality, sex and porn helps to define oneself and one’s own wishes and desires. One doesn’t have to accept or want everything; instead one can learn to listen to one’s own unique and valuable emotions and feelings – and to use them to make one’s own decisions, decisions that are good ones for oneself.

The Right to Self-Determination

Each client who comes to the clinic will be treated and respected as individual.

Young people are often under the preconception that when visiting the doctor, one has to submit to everything the doctor wants. It is important that young people are told about their right to self-determination over their own body. During adolescence, self-esteem is at its lowest. When visiting the doctor, young people should feel that they themselves can make the decisions concerning their own affairs.

We try actively to give the young person positive feedback about his or her development and body. We also encourage the young person to understand the importance of self-determination. The role of the nurse and the doctor is to act as assisting experts. They can provide information that the young person can use to make good and sensible decisions on his or her own. Our purpose is to strengthen the young person’s self-esteem.

Trust and Education

One can talk even about very intimate and delicate issues, as long as there is enough trust. You have to work to gain a person’s trust – it is never an intrinsic value, not should it be considered as such. Trust must be gained through one’s own actions. Maintaining trust requires that one is worthy of it.

The information young person has about sexuality and sexual health is always an unknown. We can’t assume that the young person, has or doesn’t have a certain readiness, because of his or her age, for example. The only way to find out is to ask questions and discuss the issues.

The visit to the clinic is in itself sexual education: providing accurate and real information and correcting wrongly held beliefs and information. Strengthening a person’s self-esteem during this delicate developmental phase is extremely important. Young people who respect themselves and have a healthy sense of self-esteem also feel they have the right to good service and know how to take care of themselves. If the young person’s self-esteem is weak, it will be difficult to get good results even with education or information. If the individual feels worthless, then he or she may not bother with protection from sex diseases, for example.

Declaration of sexual rights

Sexuality is an integral part of the personality of every human being. Its full development depends upon the satisfaction of basic human needs such as the desire for contact, intimacy, emotional expression, pleasure, tenderness and love.

Sexuality is constructed through the interaction between the individual and social structures. Full development of sexuality is essential for individual, interpersonal, and societal well being.

Sexual rights are universal human rights based on the inherent freedom, dignity, and equality of all human beings. Since health is a fundamental human right, so must sexual health be a basic human right.

In order to assure that human beings and societies develop healthy sexuality, the following sexual rights must be recognized, promoted, respected, and defended by all societies through all means. Sexual health is the result of an environment that recognizes, respects and exercises these sexual rights.

1. The right to sexual freedom. Sexual freedom encompasses the possibility for individuals to express their full sexual potential. However, this excludes all forms of sexual coercion, exploitation and abuse at any time and situations in life.

2. The right to sexual autonomy, sexual integrity, and safety of the sexual body. This right involves the ability to make autonomous decisions about one's sexual life within a context of one's own personal and social ethics. It also encompasses control and enjoyment of our own bodies free from torture, mutilation and violence of any sort.

3. The right to sexual privacy. This involves the right for individual decisions and behaviors about intimacy as long as they do not intrude on the sexual rights of others.

4. The right to sexual equity. This refers to freedom from all forms of discrimination regardless of sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, race, social class, religion, or physical and emotional disability.

5. The right to sexual pleasure. Sexual pleasure, including autoeroticism, is a source of physical, psychological, intellectual and spiritual well being.

6. The right to emotional sexual expression. Sexual expression is more than erotic pleasure or sexual acts. Individuals have a right to express their sexuality through communication, touch, emotional expression and love.

7. The right to sexually associate freely. This means the possibility to marry or not, to divorce, and to establish other types of responsible sexual associations.

8. The right to make free and responsible reproductive choices. This encompasses the right to decide whether or not to have children, the number and spacing of children, and the right to full access to the means of fertility regulation.

9. The right to sexual information based upon scientific inquiry. This right implies that sexual information should be generated through the process of unencumbered and yet scientifically ethical inquiry, and disseminated in appropriate ways at all societal levels.

10. The right to comprehensive sexuality education. This is a lifelong process from birth throughout the life cycle and should involve all social institutions.

11. The right to sexual health care. Sexual health care should be available for prevention and treatment of all sexual concerns, problems and disorders.

Sexual Rights are Fundamental and Universal Human Rights

Adopted in Hong Kong at the 14th World Congress of Sexology, August 26, 1999

The steps of sexuality

The activities of the Open-Door Youth Service are based on the theory of the Steps of Sexuality. It is a model that our experts have developed about how a person’s sexual development evolves one step at a time.

Each step has its own characteristic emotional and behavioural features. Most often development proceeds from one step to the next. Sometimes one can skip over a step and sometimes one may return to an earlier step. Most important is that the young person’s development proceeds peacefully and at its own pace.

Being aware of these steps helps the adult and the professional to face the developmental phase the child and young person is in and to support him or her in the right way.