It's been another busy week for the Scout Association's Media Team

This week we launched our new Sexual Health guidance material.

Our policy is to ensure our 100,000 adult Leaders have appropriate information and guidelines available so that if a young person came to them and asked for advice around the issues of sexual health they are equipped to respond in a sensitive and positive way.

The Sunday Telegraph ran with the story last weekend followed by most of Monday's papers. It would be fair to say that in the press it was a bit of a Marmite moment. As you can imagine a range of views were expressed about our decision to work in this way. Print journalist and columnists either loved the concept or hated it. Ann Widdecombe MP predictably hated the idea, especially after we obtained a supporting statement from Beverley Hughes, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families

We always knew that it would be hard to get our message across as effectively as we would like in print. We also knew that if we were able to secure some broadcast space then it would be easier to make our points. We therefore set up our campaign to be able to respond to TV, Network and local radio requests and use this platform to get our messages across. In three days the spokespeople team (an adult Leader and a youth member) covered over 100 radio and TV interviews which have resulted in over 230 pieces of radio and TV coverage across the UK. These interviews were often put together with vox pops from the public. In the vast majority of cases the public comments supported our position.

What a shame then that in this week's PR Week, our campaign was recorded as a miss rather than a hit in their weekly analysis of events. If the journalist who wrote the piece had seen all the broadcast material we had seen I think the results would have been different. But that's life.

The bottom line is though - that now more of the UK population think we are in tune with the needs of modern day young peoples and are supportive of the organisation and what we are offering young people. We even got a mention on C4's 8 out of 10 cats!

If you want to find out more about Scouting Policy on Sexual Health Advice and read, see or hear some of the coverage generated then click on these three links

http://www.scouts.org.uk/noticeboard_view.php?noticeboard_id=57

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7680077.stm

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ3uFjgqOWs

Keep an eye on C4's "Embarrassing Teen Bodies" programmes (21.00 Tuesday 28th October) for two Explorer Scouts finding out more about the HPV vaccination programme.

Simon Carter, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications at The Scout Association