Family planning provision in the Trent health region: Is it accessible to school aged teenagers?

Strategies to combat existing high teenage pregnancy rates in the UK need t o include contraceptive set-vices that can be easily accessed by young peop le, including those who are still at school. This study concerns the availa bility of family planning services to young people who are still at school. One hundred and eight family planning clinics in the Trent region were sur veyed to determine their clinic opening hours. Hours accessible to school a ged young people were identified as being services provided during school l unch breaks, after school and at weekends. A total of 498 weekly hours of p rovision were identified and 260.5 of these were accessible to school aged young people. There was a lot of variation between health authority areas b oth in terms of the number of hours accessible to this age group and also i n terms of the percentage of clinics not offering any service accessible to school aged people. The recent report from the Social Exclusion Unit identified accessible cont raceptive services as part of its strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy rate s in rite UK. Although these results are descriptive and do not intend to s how any causal relationship, they do show that in all health authority area s there are clinics that are not providing any service that is accessible t o school aged young people.