Reaching out to “vulnerable” young people: “race”, class and the Brook Advisory Centre, 1960s-1990s

This paper evaluates the work done by the Brook Advisory Centres, the first centre to provide contraception to young unmarried people in Britain, to reach out to 'vulnerable' young people between 1965 and 1998.  Taking an intersectional approach, it focuses on three key concerns for BAC members; improving access to sexual health information and services for young people with disabilities; making BAC centres widely known and a place to attend for young people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds; and preventing teenage pregnancies in the under sixteens. Exploring the strategies developed by BAC to reach out to these groups of young people reveals broader contemporary concerns around class and race, and highlights the persistence of certain racist and classist prejudices, while at the same time, stressing attempts at overcoming these prejudices.