Research shows that many young people feel alienated from South Africa’s public healthcare facilities, see clinics as a place for only the very sick, and perceive health providers clinics to be unsympathetic or intimidating, especially on sexual health issues. As a result, many young people receive no counselling, screening, or treatment for HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and other problems.

In response, loveLife and the Department of Health have teamed up to develop Youth Friendly Services (YFS), a standards-based quality assurance programme designed to strengthen primary care services, and make services more acceptable and accessible to young people.

YFS primarily focuses on the prevention of HIV, STIs, and unintended pregnancy – and on mitigating the impact of violence, which is often sexual in nature in South Africa. YFS also focuses on strengthening counselling services and the provision of contraceptives with a focus on dual-method protection. For pregnant teenagers, YFS advocates for age-appropriate antenatal and postnatal care, as well as age-appropriate pre- and post-termination counselling and referral.

For optimal results, YFS believes that clinical services must be supported by ongoing community sensitisation; youth-led educational activities that simultaneously address young people’s health and their developmental needs and interests; structured family involvement; and a well-functioning referral network between healthcare facilities and other youth service providers.

A set of well-defined service standards has also been developed to guide the delivery of services. These standards provide a practical mechanism for determining the extent to which existing services are ‘youth-friendly’ and for identifying specific areas for improvements. Secondly, given the South African Department of Health’s target to implement YFS in all primary care facilities, a standardised and easily implementable method for assessing the ‘youth-friendliness’ of significant numbers of facilities was also required. Furthermore, because providing services specifically tailored to the needs of young people is a new approach for many clinics, clear guidance was required on how to adapt current primary care services, or initiate new services, according to the needs and preferences of their youth clientele.

The YFS Toolkit

A collection of user-friendly programme tools, known as the YFS Toolkit has been developed by loveLife to enrich the way that YFS is managed, delivered and evaluated. The YFS Toolkit describes both the components necessary to inculcate a culture of high quality and youth-friendly service delivery and how to facilitate processes to reach the goals of this initiative. It also presents a step-by-step programme implementation framework to ensure that YFS becomes an integral and sustainable part of a clinic’s organisation – by providing a wide range of practical information and tools and by drawing heavily on the experiences of implementing YFS and other facets of the loveLife campaign in communities across South Africa.

YFS Training

loveLife currently offers three training programmes to support the Department of Health’s technical, managerial, and leadership expertise for YFS: YFS Orientation Training for YFS Programme Managers, Programme Coordinators and Trainers at the National, Provincial, District and Sub-District levels; YFS Assessors Training for a select team of personnel who have demonstrated leadership and innovation in implementing the programme; and YFS Strategic Planning Training for the Department of Health’s senior leadership.

YFS trainings encompass a wide range of participatory learning activities, coupled with practical application in the field with the benefit of telephonic mentorship and on-site support from loveLife.

Furthermore, because the YFS model espouses the tenants of the loveLife campaign, we ensure that other members of our provincial and regional teams are involved with YFS trainings. This approach helps to expand our mentorship to Department of Health trainees on how we implement facets of the loveLife campaign and how we try to create an intersection between national HIV prevention and youth development objectives in our work.