Women's Views on News |
- Protect our family planning services
- Parental leave reforms don’t go far enough
- Adieu Rebecca Adlington – and thanks
| Protect our family planning services Posted: 12 Feb 2013 09:31 AM PST A new report commissioned by two of the UK's leading family planning charities claims cuts to contraception and sexual health services could lead to an increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Increases which could saddle the UK with a £136.7 billion NHS and welfare burden by 2020. Last year the Advisory Group on Contraception found that 3.2m women of child bearing age faced restrictions to accessing contraception. And in the areas where restrictions were greatest, the abortion rate was 9.75 per cent higher than areas with no restrictions. The Family Planning Association (FPA) and Brook commissioned Unprotected Nation to look at what might happen if access to sexual health services remained the same, got better or worsened between now and 2020. If access remains the same, unintended pregnancy and STIs could cost the UK between £84.4 billion and £127 billion. If cuts continue and there is worsened access – with more people being denied access to contraceptive methods and information – the additional cost to the NHS plus wider public sector costs could total between£8.3 billion and £10 billion, a tenth of the total NHS budget in 2012-13. If there is improved access, the NHS and the public sector could save between £3.7 billion and £5.1 billion by 2020. Simon Blake, Brook's chief executive, said that the national sexual health and teenage pregnancy strategies had ended and the NHS was under intense pressure to make savings. "This report makes very clear just how short-sighted restrictions to contraception services are – particularly for young people who have to navigate this void alongside a black hole in sex and relationships education programmes," he said "The wheels of this crisis are firmly in motion. “Investment in sexual health saves money, but if national and local government ignore the warnings and continue stripping away services, advice and information, the bleak predictions in this report will come true," added Dr Audrey Simpson, acting chief executive, FPA. As a result, the charities have launched a campaign called XES – We Can’t Go Backward to raise awareness about the consequences of cuts to sexual health services. They are asking supporters to sign up to a Bill of Rights to guarantee women accessible, confidential and timely sexual health and contraception services across the UK, write to their MP asking them to support these aims and to rate their own experiences of contraception and sexual health services on an on-line map. Anne Connolly, a GP in Bradford and chair of the Primary Care Women's Health Forum, said: "Maintaining progress requires investment and if we are brave enough to invest money at a time when there is pressure to disinvest there are massive cost savings as well as quality of life savings to be made."  |
| Parental leave reforms don’t go far enough Posted: 12 Feb 2013 05:58 AM PST
Last week the government announced changes to parental leave rules which will give women a right to up to a year's maternity leave, but enable her to return to work after two weeks if she wishes and share the remaining leave and maternity payments with her partner, as long as they qualify. Fathers will be entitled to unpaid leave from work to attend up to two ante-natal appointments, and adopters will be entitled to the same pay and leave as birth parents. All employees will now be able to request flexible working. Ros Bragg, from Valuing Maternity, a campaign for better employment protection for pregnant women and new mothers said: "We are really pleased that women's rights are protected for up to 52 weeks of maternity leave and that women have the option to share leave with fathers and partners. But she added that the campaign had concerns about other aspects of the reforms. In a guest blog, Emma Pickett, lactation consultant and co-chair of Association of Breastfeeding Mothers, called for clear rights to breastfeed on return to work. In the UK, a breastfeeding mother had the legal right to 'rest' but not to express and store her milk. Health and safety guidance might suggest that an employer could provide a room and a time for a mother to pump but they are only required to allow her to rest. "We don't want to rest. Give us 10 minutes to use our double electric breast pump perhaps 3 times in a working day and most of us will be able to continue to give our baby's breast milk for as long as we want to," she said. "It will make continuing to breastfeed while working normal and manageable. We need never assume that a woman returning early to work would of course be ending breastfeeding." Valuing Maternity produced a checklist of measures which would promote real equality in shared parental leave. These include paid time off for fathers and partners to attend anti-natal appointments, four weeks paid leave for all fathers and partners and statutory pay for paternity leave and additional paternity leave to match maternity pay.  |
| Adieu Rebecca Adlington – and thanks Posted: 12 Feb 2013 03:00 AM PST
Writing in the Telegraph, Simon Hart says Rebecca Adlington’s recent decision to end her racing career is a huge loss to British swimming, not least in terms of the medals that she could be relied upon to win at every championship. After all, her two bronzes in London were, he points out, two-thirds of Britain's total medal haul in the pool at the 2012 Games. Before her golden double in Beijing, British swimmers could be forgiven for thinking that Olympic gold medals were not for the likes of them. The last time a British swimmer had won Olympic gold was when Adrian Moorhouse triumphed in 1988. The last British woman to win was Anita Lonsbrough in 1960. And when she won her second Beijing gold, Adlington not only became the sport’s first British double Olympic swimming champion since Henry Taylor in 1908, but was also the first British woman to achieve that honour. She has, Hart continues, helped Britain shed its inferiority complex in one of the toughest and most competitive Olympic sports. Adlington’s former team-mate Cassie Patten, who finished eighth in the Beijing 800m final and won 10km open water bronze at the same Games, points out that Adlington’s achievement was a huge moment for the status of women’s swimming in Britain. “If you look back, swimming had been a male-dominated sport for a long time and then Becky came through and became a household name,” Patten told the BBC. And on a more personal level, with her Olympic golds in the 400m and 800m freestyle in Beijing in 2008 – the latter in a world-record time of 8min 14.10sec that still stands – the two bronzes she won in London and 13 other medals garnered from world and European Championships and the Commonwealth Games, she is without question the greatest British swimmer of all time, said Hart. But although her competitive career is over, Adlington says her involvement with swimming is not. She has recently qualified as a ‘level two' swimming teacher, and plans to go into partnership with a leisure operator to roll out a learn-to-swim programme for young children entitled 'Becky Adlington's Swim Stars'. She wants to create a legacy, trying to get every single child to be able to swim 25 metres before they leave primary school. In the meantime, in October 2012 Adlington joined British Swimmers Olympic bronze medallist Joanne Jackson, former Commonwealth champion Ross Davenport and Sport in Action ambassador and swimming medallist Melanie Marshall, and made up part of a team of ten cyclists who bicycled 450km from Livingstone to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia in four days. The aim was to raise as much money as possible to support the work of Sport in Action, Zambia, and HIV/AIDS hospice care in Lusaka. To donate to Bike for Africa click here.  |
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