partnership

In 1999, the Scottish Executive released the White Paper ‘Towards a Healthier Scotland’ which outlined plans for the creation of four National Demonstration Projects targeting specific areas of health promotion and protection in Scotland, one of which saw the formation of what is known as 'Healthy Respect.'

Healthy Respect, created and hosted by NHS Lothian, began working in February 2001. It was set up to look at ways of supporting young people in making positive choices about relationships, sexual health and well-being, with a vision to demonstrate how working with young people from specific areas of Lothian, using a multi-faceted approach, can enable them to form and develop a healthy respect and a positive attitude to their own sexuality and that of others.

The Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES) was established by the Catholic Education Commission (CEC) on behalf of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, and is the operational arm of the CEC which sets out national policy on all educational matters on behalf of the Scottish Roman Catholic Bishops. The core business of SCES is the promotion and support of Catholic schools and education throughout Scotland.

As a result of discussions between Healthy Respect and SCES, funding was granted for two years by the Scottish Executive enabling the setting up of ‘Called to Love’, a partnership project between SCES and Healthy Respect, and this commenced in August 2005.

The ‘Called to Love’ project aimed to produce resources and support materials for the teaching of Relationships and Moral Education (RME) to pupils attending Catholic secondary schools across Scotland and was piloted in a number of schools from ten local authorities within five of the Catholic Dioceses.

The project outcomes have now been made available to all Scottish secondary schools, including those in the non-denominational sector, and can be purchased through SCES.