01 June 2023
The CQC has today published a report into the well-led aspects of the national BPAS service. This report raises some concerns around governance and oversight at our organisation centrally that we are taking action to address.
BPAS delivers abortion care on behalf of the NHS on a not-for-profit basis to over 100,000 women annually. Over the past three years, we have cared for record numbers of women and are proud to have preserved access during the pandemic through the development of our world-leading telemedical abortion service. The pace of change has been intense, and the rise in women’s needs has increased the pressure on our organisation. After a period of significant growth at a service-level, we are now focused on ensuring that our policies, procedures, and structures are fully suited to the size and scale of the charity we have become.
As highlighted by the CQC in their report, we know we have changes to make to ensure we have clear and effective governance and oversight of our services across the UK – including improving risk escalation processes and involvement from floor to board, ensuring data are better reported and analysed so we can offer continual improvement, and meeting structures and cycles reviewed. We are looking at all these areas in detail, and are working closely with NHS England. We look forward to sharing our progress with the CQC.
We are proud of our dedicated staff who work to support women every day in centres across the country, and pleased to see increasingly positive ratings by the CQC of those units.
We are absolutely committed to the continued delivery of services which meet the individual needs of our clients. We will shortly publish a comprehensive strategy and improvement plan for the next two years which will lay out the key goals we want to achieve for BPAS - including excellence in service delivery to women alongside research and advocacy to improve women’s access to services, and secure their reproductive rights more broadly.
ENDS
For further information, please contact Katherine O’Brien, BPAS Associate Director of Campaigns and Communications, on katherine.o’brien@bpas.org or 07881 265276.
About BPAS
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, is a charity that sees over 100,000 women a year for reproductive healthcare services including pregnancy counselling, abortion care, miscarriage management and contraception at clinics across Great Britain.
BPAS exists to further women’s reproductive choices. We believe all women should have the right to make their own decisions in and around pregnancy, from the contraception they use to avoid pregnancy right the way through to how they decide to feed their newborn baby, with access to evidence-based information to underpin their choices and high-quality services and support to exercise them.
BPAS also runs the Centre for Reproductive Research and Communication, CRRC. Through rigorous multidisciplinary research and impactful communication, the CRRC aims to inform policy, practice, and public discourse. You can find out more here.