Jane Hatfield on future plans for the FSRH

Planning the future for FSRH.

Last week our new Board of trustees, Council members, chairs and senior staff gathered together for the afternoon to discuss ‘where next for the FSRH’. It was a lively and engaging session designed to enable us to ‘think big’ about what the Faculty should aim to achieve over the next 5 plus years. A clear strategy is crucial to the success of any organisation – perhaps more so for charities who can be pulled in many different directions by sheer need. And perhaps even more so for membership bodies where balancing what we do for our members with what we are able to provide to the wider community is a constant challenge.

It was truly heartening to see how passionate, enthusiastic and purposeful the afternoon was. Members and trustees want us to build on what we have already achieved over the last 25 years, but also want to ensure we are recognised as THE multi professional membership body in the UK for SRH, engaging a new generation of SRH leaders, with full consumer/patient input, producing tailored and attractive membership packages, developing our international membership and developing further our training and qualifications wherever SRH input is needed.

We are already investing in the development of our education and training packages and this year that will include launching a ‘revamped’ FSRH Diploma. We remain convinced of the need for a qualification aimed at those carrying out contraception/sexual health consultations/choices. It is more important than ever, given the pressures that most doctors and nurses are working under –particularly in primary care – that they have the training and support they need to do this work effectively with patients. If some commissioners are tempted to support training only in the technical aspects of the delivery of LARC, we will challenge this approach. Our vision is that SRH is ‘delivered by multi-disciplinary teams with appropriate competency, training and experience – making effective use of their different skills to achieve shared outcomes’. We want to support that approach, ensuring that the patient is seen by healthcare professionals trained to enable true choice in the uptake of both contraception and other SRH services.

There will be opportunities for you to feed into our strategy development process over the next 6 months and I very much look forward to hearing your views.