Including the excluded: an evaluation of a sexual health promotion capacity building intervention among specialist homelessness services in New South Wales

BACKGROUND: In Australia, just as most other settings, existing programs focusing on sexual and reproductive health of young people largely occur within formal school and clinical settings, thereby limiting accessibility to young people experiencing social vulnerabilities such as homelessness. This sub-population are often targeted through the specialist homelessness services (SHS) in Australia. However, growing evidence shows that youth service staff often feel ill-equipped to support the diverse sexual and reproductive health needs of this population. METHODS: This study evaluated and reported scalability, including reach, acceptability, fidelity and adaptation, and effectiveness including implementation infrastructure and sustainability of an intervention targeted at addressing this concern among these services and their staff using a pre-post, mixed-method approach. RESULTS: We found improvement across targeted areas at both organisational and individual staff levels. The evaluated intervention led to better engagement with and services for disadvantaged youth, with a promising potential of ultimately improving the sexual health and wellbeing of this largely underserved priority population. CONCLUSION: The success of the intervention suggests the need for scalable, quality training and intersectoral support to improve services’ capacity to meet the sexual and reproductive health needs of young people experiencing social vulnerabilities.