Policy Brief

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Jan 9, 2024

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1 Policy Brief: Children’s Mental Health Thalia Estevez Merrimack College Intro to Social Work & Social Welfare Shannon Butler Mokoro MSW, EdD. May 13, 2022

2 Intro to Social Welfare Policy Across the nation, it is commonplace in K-12 schools to conduct regular universal screenings on children. Be it academic to ensure that they’re meeting grade-level standards. Their vision and hearing are checked to see if they could be impeding their academics. These universal screenings and the data collected are typically utilized to consider a variety of potential factors that might hinder the children’s academic success. In schools across the country, there is a persistent need for more inclusive health education. The current sex education in schools across Massachusetts is not nearly as comprehensive as it should be. According to The Healthy Youth Act Coalition, 6.9 percent of high school students experienced physical dating violence in the past year and that number increases to 17.7 percent for lesbian, gay, and bisexual identifying youth (The Healthy Youth Act Coalition, 2021). The Healthy Youth Act is sponsored by Representatives Jim O’Day, Paul Brodeur, and Senator Sal DiDomenico. This bill focuses on public schools providing sexuality education that should be done comprehensively, medically accurate, and age appropriate. The Healthy Youth Act would require Massachusetts schools offering sex education classes to deliver a scientifically sound curriculum that includes age-appropriate information about gender identity and sexual orientation. These opt-out sexual education classes must offer affirmative recognition of people's various sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions, as well as LGBTQ resources for students (Healthy youth act. BARCC, 2021).

3 Teachers of health classes must also educate their students on interpersonal and communication skills that will enable them to make healthy decisions and build respectful relationships devoid of violence, compulsion, and intimidation. This bill was initially suggested about a decade ago; now is the time for legislators to act and ensure that all kids have fair access to critical instructional information (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). In their sexual education classes, the vast majority of LGBTQ+ adolescents in Massachusetts learn little about how to stay as healthy and safe as LGBTQ+ youth. It's no surprise that they have considerably more challenges with their sexual health than their classmates. To make matters worse, neither they nor their peers can be certain that they will learn substantially accurate facts or content about consent. We will continue to fail our LGBTQ youth and their peers if we refuse to acknowledge that they require better sex education. That's why the Massachusetts state legislature should enact H.673/S.318, An Act Relative to Healthy Youth, which would mandate schools that offer sex education classes to have a medically correct, LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum. Parents, educators, students, and campaigners are all in agreement that now is the moment for gender-inclusive education. A student from the Greater Boston Area states “The education for LGBTQ issues is lacking at best. The information we receive in health classes is either overgeneralized or inaccurate. I remember in 10th grade I was essentially teaching my health class for my teacher because he just was not well educated on what he was talking about” (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). According to data from the Department of Education's report on Massachusetts Youth's Health and Risk Behaviors, 41.3 percent of transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) students who learned anything about trans/GNC sexual health in

4 school were taught negative, stigmatizing information about trans/GNC people (Healthy Youth Act. massequality, 2021). Adolescents in Massachusetts are currently facing a serious health crisis. In the previous decade, chlamydia rates in Massachusetts have nearly doubled, while gonorrhea and syphilis rates have tripled (Healthy youth act. massequality, 2021). Young adults aged 15 to 24 reported over two-thirds of chlamydia cases and nearly half of gonorrhea cases in Massachusetts in 2015, although accounting for only a quarter of people having sex. Providing young people with comprehensive sex education is the best method to prevent STIs well as unplanned pregnancies and other sexual health risks. Comprehensive sexual health education is the only proven approach to lower adolescent risks, according to a major meta-analysis of over 6,500 reports on the effectiveness of school health courses compiled over two decades. It resulted in significant improvements in every outcome studied, including pregnancy, STI rates, sexual activity frequency, and age (Parenthood, 2021). According to research, the Healthy Youth Act could be a starting step toward eliminating the culture of homophobia and transphobia that makes many LGBTQ students feel unsafe in our schools. Even in Massachusetts, one out of every five LGBTQ youth has experienced bullying at school that has escalated to physical harassment, and one out of every six LGBTQ students has skipped school in the last month due to fear of being harassed. When LGBTQ students are scared to enter the classroom - or when their schools' toxic climates contribute to mental health issues that have led to almost a quarter of them attempting suicide in the last year - they cannot receive a safe, equal education (Healthy youth act massequality, 2021).

5 Since 2011, when the Healthy Youth Act was initially introduced in Massachusetts, advocates have worked relentlessly to progress it (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). The Healthy Youth Act has passed the Senate twice in the last four legislative sessions, but it has been repeatedly stopped from being submitted in the House. Representative Paul and Representative James O'Day introduced House Bill 410 in an attempt to pass the Healthy Youth Act again in 2019. Additional initiatives to promote sex education have been made in a variety of ways. In collaboration with organizations such as ANSWER, the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and Advocates for Youth, funding from the Departments of Education and Secondary Education (DESE) and Public Health assists districts in selecting and obtaining training on high equality sex education (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). Because Massachusetts schools are not mandated to teach sex education to kids, school districts are free to decide what kind of sex education they provide to students, if any at all. Mandating local autonomy over sex education poses particular issues, resulting in a significant gap in the quality of sex education received by adolescents. The Rights, Respect, and Responsibility (3R's) curriculum are used by many districts, including Boston Public Schools, while over 70% of districts employ "abstinence-plus" instructional materials (Massachusetts State Profile. SIECUS, 2021). Advocates are attempting to establish a non- gender-segregated sex education curriculum because the current curriculum can be alienating to transgender, nonbinary, and/or gender nonconforming young people. The DESE is also working to amend the Health Curriculum Framework to ensure that consent discussions are gender-inclusive and trauma-informed. By removing these obstacles from the sex education

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