Relationship Education: Homeschool Enrichment

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Let us walk alongside your family as you have conversations about intimacy and relationships.

The Relationship Education program at Hope Clinic for Women offers a unique Homeschool Tutorial that takes a family-centric approach to cultivating social skills for healthy intimate relationships and avoiding sexual risk.  We pair our parent workshop series with our interactive student program to equip parents and teens to navigate topics of intimacy and relationships.  Our goal is to help teens guard their hearts now and set them up for a healthy future and thriving relationships.  You know your child best and know what’s best for them, so we want to come alongside you and pass on our expertise and resources to be a source of continued support in your ongoing conversations about intimacy and relationships. 

At Hope Clinic for Women, we know how to talk to people about uncomfortable topics. From the top down, our CEO talks frankly with supporters, community leaders, and especially parents. We have mastered addressing sensitive topics with people of diverse backgrounds and belief systems while finding common ground as we point towards healthy behavior and equipping people to make informed choices. Parents of youth and young adults find themselves knowing they need to talk with their children about relationships and boundaries, but many don’t know where to start.  We can help by equipping them with knowledge, skills, strategies, and resources.  Our Relationship Education program is a service we want the homeschool community to take advantage of, and we know how important it is for youth to hear and discuss these topics with their parents and other trusted adults. 

One of our most innovative practices is our online family-oriented approach that allows parents to participate in a three-session online workshop series where they are equipped to navigate sensitive topics with their children and receive ongoing support from Hope Clinic for Women staff certified in the REAL Essentials curricula.  Parents also have the option to allow their children to participate in a virtual classroom led by those same trained facilitators for 6 hours of instruction.   

Homeschool Parent Workshop Overview 

Available online. 

Italicized content was added in for a faith-based option

Student Programs 

In our education classes, we begin by developing intrinsic motivation for making healthy life choices. We strive to help students cultivate healthy and safe relationships and expand their concept of intimacy far beyond mere physical interaction.  We also provide medically accurate information about anatomy, STIs, pregnancy, and contraception.  Finally, we discuss the social and emotional impacts of technology in relationships and conduct capstone activities designed to weave the concepts together to create actionable, realistic steps for students to make healthy life choices.  The goal of Hope Clinic for Women’s Relationship Education program is to ensure students are empowered with accurate information and powerful personal experiences to make healthy choices for their own lives.  It is our experience that, equipped with knowledge and strategies within a safe and trusting environment, adolescents have the ability and inclination to refrain from non-marital sexual activity and other risky behaviors, seeing them as obstacles to their own goals and dreams. 

High School Program

In the first hour, the high school program begins with developing self-knowledge and intrinsic motivation to fuel long-term behavior change and healthy choices across multiple aspects of life. Sexual risk avoidance is also addressed.  Success sequencing for poverty prevention is offered as a compelling source of intrinsic motivation.  In the second hour, participants are invited to consider the freedoms and safety healthy boundaries can provide in a variety of relationships, particularly intimate relationships.  Consent is defined, myths are challenged, and applicable state laws are explained.  The third hour introduces the holistic nature of intimacy and establishes communication and a steady progression as key to healthy relationships.  Physical intimacy is also addressed at a deeper level since it contains much of the risk the program is designed to help students avoid.  In the fourth hour, specific and broad influences on teens’ perceptions of sex are addressed and the risk of STI transmission is highlighted in an object lesson.  Medically accurate information related to STIs is provided without using fear or shame as motivators for behavior change.  In hour five, facilitators discuss biological and developmental differences between the sexes and invite students to consider the ramifications of an unplanned pregnancy or STI infection.  Additionally, medically accurate information regarding contraception published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is provided.  In the final hour, the nature of technology in relationships is addressed, including social media use, “sexting,” and pornography.  The ramifications of impaired intimacy, inaccurate perceptions of intimacy, and other public health concerns are emphasized.  Capstone activities invite students to weave together and apply concepts learned in SRAE programming and local resources, including Hope Clinic for Women, are described. 

There are three essential elements to the parent workshop series: review of student content, key application principles, and role play practice.  All student content for appropriate level of programming is summarized and, where possible, adults participate in student activities and online modules to gain an experiential understanding of the content delivery.  This content is combined with practical application tips; educational, psychological, and public health theories; and subject matter expertise to prepare parents or teachers to competently address these topics with their children or students.  Finally, participants engage in role play practice to apply learned content and principles in preparation to respond to their teen’s or student’s experience in Hope Clinic’s Relationship Education program or to teach the concepts within their own households. 

Facilitators provide referrals for other beneficial services not provided by Hope Clinic for Women (including, but not limited to, suicide prevention, sexual assault awareness and recovery, and substance abuse prevention and recovery).  Participants are also given a resource guide at the outset of programming that includes referrals to Hope Clinic for Women for pregnancy, medical and mental health services, as well as referrals to other local and state agencies. 

Homeschool Tutorial – High School Overview: REAL Essentials ADVANCE

Available online. 

(M) Indicates an activity paired with an online learning module developed by CRE    

* Indicates activity is eliminated from online programming 

Italicized content was added in for a faith-based option

Why REAL Essentials? 
 

The REAL Essentials suite of curricula offers a variety of benefits: it is based on empirical evidence and recognized theories of learning; it is certified by the FYSB for medical accuracy and maintains that status with regular and free updates; dynamic facilitator certification trainings are available; excellent ongoing support for facilitators and program staff is provided by Center for Relationship Education staff; the curriculum is modular and easily adaptable to variety of programming settings and lengths; and the Center for Relationship Education has been highly innovative and responsive to the needs of their customers and the program participants.  The Summative Evaluation of REAL Essentials Research lays out the exhaustive research done to verify the efficacy of the curriculum and highlights that there has been significant behavior change in Colorado, where the Center for Relationship Education is based and where these curricula are widely used.

Program Cost