Parents face a postcode lottery when accessing health visitors and thenumber of visits depends on location, not need, a report from the Family& Parenting Institute has revealed.
The report, Health Visitors - an endangered species, examines thefindings from a YouGov survey that asked nearly 5,000 parents abouttheir experiences with health visitors. Parents overwhelmingly said theywanted health and parenting advice from health visitors but primary caretrusts across the country have huge variations in the number of healthvisitors they employ.
"There is general uncertainty about health visitors' role, they andtheir work do not figure in any Government targets and they areexpensive to employ," the report states. "They find themselves squeezedby and subject to the decisions of primary care trust managers and whereyou live in the country increasingly determines how or even whether yousee a health visitor."
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