| Abstract: | In order to contribute to the improvement of the clinic-level management of the family planning (FP) programs of the Philippine FP Program, an assessment was made of client-staff interactions. Data were collected during May-June 1990 from 107 FP personnel and 1440 clients using a purposive sampling procedure which identified project sites on the basis of their FP performance; evenly divided the sample between government-sponsored programs and nongovernmental organizations; and randomly drew a sample of clients which included past users, never users, and current users. Data were gathered from a survey and from observations of at least 27 client-staff interactions in each of the four project sites. The observations were followed by in-depth interviews. While the interactions were positively viewed by the clients, some of the service providers (perhaps coping with an overly large case load) tended to shorten the duration of the interaction. The recommendations which arose from this study include: 1) FP personnel in this study, who indicated a preference for recruiting new acceptors rather than motivating past users, should be given a travel allowance and time to use the effective technique of home visits to try to reduce the number of drop-outs; 2) specific topics and counseling techniques should be included in the training courses for FP personnel; 3) the clinic setting must be improved to conform to quality standards and provide privacy for clients; and 4) clinic visits should be personally satisfying for the client as well as efficient. |
