FSRH provides evidence to APPG inquiry on women’s access to contraception

In its submission to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (SRH), FSRH provides evidences the extent to which current commissioning structures and funding cuts to sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) services have threatened equal access to contraception and the training of clinicians to provide contraception effectively.

We also made clear the need for an improvement in data collection to enable action to address these challenges.

Some of the key evidence-based recommendations FSRH has made include:

• A strong recommendation for holistic integrated commissioning of SRH with one body maintaining oversight and holding accountability for all commissioning decisions.

• A call for fully-funded SRH services delivered to FSRH service standards.

• To ensure an adequate workforce to provide contraceptive care, we recommended a ratio of 1 SRH Consultant per 125,000 of the population and for an increase in the number of training posts by one third in relation to current numbers to meet the supply gap.

• Likewise, FSRH made clear that all local authorities should ensure that service specifications for SRH services are designed so as to include training requirements in their contracts and optimise the contraceptive services that the current SRH workforce can offer.

• We reiterated our call for Public Health England to adopt, in its Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF), an indicator for adult (i.e. post-18) unplanned pregnancy – following the long-established model of the London Measure of Unplanned Pregnancy (LMUP).