The Balanced Counseling Strategy: A Toolkit for Family Planning Service Providers
The Balanced Counseling Strategy (BCS) is a strategy designed to be interactive and client-friendly. It uses three key job aids to guide comprehensive and high-quality reproductive health and family planning counseling to clients. The BCS toolkit incorporates international family planning norms and guidance as recommended by the World Health Organization, including the 2004 Medical Eligibility Criteria for Contraceptive Use and the 2007 Family Planning Global Handbook. The process, tested and refined in several countries, involves a set of steps to determine the method that best suits the client according to her/his preferences and reproductive health intentions. The BCS toolkit includes: 1. An algorithm that summarizes the 11 steps needed to implement the strategy, 2. Counseling cards with basic information about 15 family planning methods, plus a card with the checklist to be reasonably sure a woman is not pregnant, and 3. Brochures on each of the methods for the client to take once a method is chosen: The pill, Emergency contraception, Female condoms, Tubal ligation, Hormonal implants, Intrauterine device, Progestin-only injectables, Monthly injectable, Spermicides, Minipill,TwoDay Method®, Vasectomy, Standard Days Method®, Male condoms, Lactational amenorrhea method
Source: Population Council
Date of Publication: October 15, 2021
SIMILIAR RESOURCES
Tools
Examples
- Community Communication MNCH e-Manual: Participatory Health Promotion Sessions
- The ECHO Study Report
- Guidance for Providing Informed-Choice Counseling on Sexual Health for Women Interested in PrEP: Kenya and South Africa
- Birth Spacing and Family Welfare Sermons
- Lessons Learned from an Integrated Approach for Reaching First-time Young Parents in Nigeria
- Advocating for Change for Adolescents’ Toolkit
- The (re)solve Project
- Creating Mobile Health Solutions for Behaviour Change: A Study of Eight Services in the mNutrition Initiative Portfolio
- Connect: Increasing Use of Pospartum Family Planning by First-Time Parents
- HIV and Sexual and Reproductive Health Programming: Innovative Approaches to Integrated Service Delivery
- Family Planning IPC Guide
- Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy (HTSP): For Healthy Babies, Healthy Mothers, and Healthy Communities
- Handoff Package for Postpartum Family Planning and Improved Counselling
- Speaking About Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision (VMMC) [Flipchart, Kenya]
- Community IPC Guide - Malaria