Use of Brook services

Over 116,000 young people under the age of 25 used Brook Centres during 2008/09, the latest full year for which data is available.

29,000 young men visited Brook and now form 25% of all clients.

70% of Brook's clients are under the age of 20.

41% of clients choose condoms as their main method of contraception and 24% choose the pill. The long term trend in pill use has been downwards, declining from the choice of 86% of clients in 1982. Pill use tends to increase with the age of the client. 4% of clients were recorded as using a long acting method. It is likely that the number actually using long acting methods is higher but they are not captured in the statistics if they are fitted after their first visit in the year.

6% of clients visiting Brook during 2008/09 were pregnant, the lowest the figure has been since the data was first collected. 60% of clients opted for termination of pregnancy at their first visit and a further 27% were undecided about what to do at that stage.

Brook Centres reached over 106,000 young people through outreach and education work. 47% of contacts (where gender is known) were with young men. 85% of the young people worked with (where age is known) were 18 and under. Most outreach and education work was carried out in schools and further education colleges (61%).

Ask Brook (Brook's national information service) dealt with over 14,500 enquiries during 2008/09. These enquiries comprised around 6,500 calls, 6,000 online and 2,000 text enquiries.

66% of enquiries were from people aged 20 or under and about a quarter of these were under 16. 24% of enquiries were from boys and young men.

The most common subject of enquiry at 15% was contraception (including emergency contraception). 14% of enquiries related to sexually transmitted infections and another 12% were about pregnancy. 8% of enquiries related to abortion and 6% were general sex and relationships queries.

18% of enquirers were referred to their nearest Brook Centre or young people's service, 8% to other contraception services and 6% to infection testing services. 9% of enquiries were answered without requiring a referral.

During 2008/09 over 770,000 people visited the Brook website.