Abstract
Recent reorganisation within primary care has seen community ‘family planning’ services become ‘contraception and sexual health’ (CASH) services, many integrating with genitourinary medicine clinics. With this we have seen a decrease in general community contraception clinics with women being asked to access general practitioner (GP) services for their basic contraceptive needs, and a corresponding increase in the development of clinics providing targeted services for specialised contraception and for young people in community settings. Whilst this development has seen benefits in many ways, in contrast to the wide remit of ‘family planning’ clinics in reproductive health, it appears to have focused service delivery firmly on the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and prevention of unintended pregnancies, in line with government guidelines and targets.1 It could be argued that although these are key objectives for CASH services, one crucial aspect of care that now appears to have less emphasis is promotion of pregnancy planning and preconception care.