To mark our 60th anniversary we held the inaugural Antony Grey memorial lecture in Magdalene College Cambridge on April 16th 2019 with our guest speaker, Peter Tatchell.

Peter spoke about relationships and sex education (RSE) in schools, and this is the theme for Albany's awareness raising campaign to highlight the importance of relationships and sexual wellbeing in young people towards good mental health throughout life.

Our view is that good relationships and sex education requires expertise in mental health and that when this part of the school curriculum is developed it should be delivered by trained counsellors who have experience in helping young people with difficulties in relationships.

This expertise should include working with issues around sexual and gender identity, and the potential impact of stigma and rejection towards young LGBT people, sometimes from within their own families, and who may suffer from depression and anxiety as a result.

Albany believes that teaching the RSE curriculum should not be left to school staff who may not feel confident to deal with these subjects, nor to parents or to local faith groups, who may want to promote their own religious values but fail to respect the diverse, tolerant values that reflect British society today.

We would like to develop a set of resources for RSE in schools, therefore, and to raise funds so that we can offer to provide these free to schools, delivered by trained counsellors.

If you would like to find out more about supporting our work, please get in touch.