The Health Visitor Implementation Plan, published in February, promised to recruit an extra 4,200 health visitors to add to the 8,092 that were practising in England as of May 2010.
But more than eight months since the government revealed its plan, official statistics analysed by CYP Now show the overall number of health visitors in the country has dropped by 213 to 7,879.
The implementation plan set out a provisional target to have trained an extra 1,135 health visitors by the end of March 2012. This was broken down into regional targets for each strategic health authority (SHA) to achieve.
Regional health chiefs have insisted sufficient numbers of training places are being commissioned to make the ultimate target achievable.
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