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Health Visitors - an endangered species

Parents love health visitors. They give a uniquely valuable service that cannot be found elsewhere, parents trust their advice and turn to them easily when they are anxious or concerned about their new child.

In March 2007 YouGov carried out a poll for us which shows that 76 per cent of parents in England want parenting support and advice on their child's health and development from a trained health visitor with up-to-date knowledge.

83 per cent of parents want that support and advice in the home. But we have also surveyed Primary Care Trusts and found that how often or even whether parents get visitors from a health visitor is a post code lottery while health visitor numbers overall are in freefall.

The Family and Parenting Institute believes that health visitors are the key to effective early intervention. We have been campaigning since 2007 to raise the voice of parents in the debate about the future of health visiting, to protect the future of our unique health visiting service by securing a well funded, well trained universal health visitor network accessible to all parents of children under five with additional help for those who need it most.

In our report, Health Visitors - an endangered speciess, we argue for a well-funded, well-trained universal health visitor service available to all parents of children under five, with specialist support for the most vulnerable families.

We are calling for:

• A universal health visitor service with an intensive service for parents who will benefit most

• A preventative health visitor service – the key to unlocking support for vulnerable families who are still missing out

• A well-trained health visitor service with a clearly defined role and a better career structure

 

New report published
Figures released on Friday 1 May 2009 by the Family and Parenting Institute show that there are huge variations in the number of health visitors up and down the country - County Durham PCT has one health visitor for every 165 children whereas some London PCTs have as few as one health visitor for 800 children.

The findings came ahead of the Department of Health and the CPHVA/Unite's summit on health visitors, which took place on 5 May. This followed Lord Laming's recommendation that the number of health visitors needs to be increased.

Read our report and press release

 

Factsheets

Read our short series of fact sheets about Health visitors.
Health Visitors - Where are we now?
Health Visitors - Post-Natal Depression
Health Visitors - Domestic Violence

 

Further reading

Read our latest press release

See our consultation response submitted to Maria Miller MP, Shadow Minister for the Family. The response stresses the importance of training for health visitors and sets out how it should be delivered.

Download our full Health Visitors - an endangered species report here.
Health visitors - an endangered species

Download the YouGov survey and results here.
YouGov report
YouGov results

 

Health visitor campaign news

• In February 2009 the Government promised to recruit more health visitors in its Child Health Strategy. Read our response.
• David Cameron announced a Conservative Government would bring in 4,200 more health visitors. Download policy paper here
• In June 2007 we sent a letter to Gordon Brown, co-signed by 67 other expert organisations
• Annette Brooke put up an early day motion backing our campaign for health visitors

• A Parents' Panel member placed a petition in support of our campaign on the Number 10 website.

 

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