Family planning services in Oxford
On the latest data available (that from 2004), the rate of teenage pregnancy in Oxfordshire has risen by 9.3% since the introduction of the teenage pregnancy strategy (here’s the link: it only works in IE as the webmaster at the TPU is a numpty), bucking the national trend, a decline of 11.1% (link here - yes, only in IE too). (NB: the rate per thousand young women is how you measure falls and rises in teenage pregnancy; talking about more and fewer teenage pregnancies without acknowledging that there aren’t precisely the same number of teenage girls in each age year group is a bit silly, but it doesn’t stop the newspapers doing it. Anyway, that’s a rant for another day.)
In this climate, the decision to close two of the evening sessions of the Alec Turnbull Clinic, the main (only) family planning clinic in Oxford, is indefensible. It follows a several setbacks to contraceptive provision over the last few years in Oxford, including the closure of the outreach clinics on estates such as Rose Hill eighteen months ago, and the move of the clinic from east Oxford, on a good bus route and close to the teenage pregnancy hotspots of the city, to the much less accessible Racliffe Infirmary, in central north Oxford. Now, the sessions on a Thursday and Friday night are to close, because staff shortages mean they can’t be run safely and effectively. On top of this, infuriatingly, when the Radcliffe Infirmary finally closes at Christmas, the clinic will move temporarily to Blackbird Leys - incredibly inaccessible to anyone not from the Leys or without a car - before relocating permanently to Temple Cowley, rather than returning to the newly-rebuilt East Oxford health centre. Really makes you wonder quite how the new Oxfordshire primary care trust proposes to meet that target of halving teenage conceptions by 2010, doesn’t it?
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Antonia,
Given the failure of the teenage pregnancy strategy in Oxford, your complaints about the closure of two evening sessions of the Alec Turnbull clinic don’t make sense.
Clearly, funding contraceptive outlets hasn’t resulted in any decrease in teenage conceptions in Oxford, in fact they have INCREASED. The policy seems to have been *counterproductive*. It is therefore reasonable, not to say sensible for the local authority to stop subsidising a service which doesn’t just not work but may be counterproductive.
Your fiscal judgement must be called into question if you are seriously arguing for taxpayers money to be used to fund demonstratively failing services.
Teenage pregnancy is a serious matter, Antonia and it behoves you to treat it accordingly, not as an abstract political football to kick around as it suits your ideological interests.
I work and live in Central Oxford, and resent the fact that I have to go as far out as Blackbird Leys (where I have never even been before, and had to take many directions over the phone) to get the services that I require. I am in a low paid job, and hate having to spend money on unnecessary bus fare,when previously there has been a good, accessible family planning service in town. Why does there only have to be one? Surely there should be more choice, and therefore more opportunities for women (and men) to get contraceptive advice and assistance without the need to go to places they have never been, and in my case, to question whether it is worth it when the morning after pill is available?
Julie,
Your sense of entitlement is all very well but it would be irrational for the council to fund a failing service, one which may even adversely impact unplanned pregnancy and STI rates just because *you* feel resentful.
If we are to take you at your word and assume you find the notion of pregnancy unthinkable we can also assume that you will take all reasonable steps to avoid such a state, including visiting your GP, buying cheap condoms online or forking out for a bus fare, which can’t be more than £1 either way to the nearest birth control centre.
If all else fails, I’m sure Antonia will stand you the money to get there. Or you could call up one of the many birth-control/abortion groups (ask them to reverse the charges, they’re drowning in money and won’t notice the difference) and they’ll happily tell you how to avoid a pregnancy.