CYP Now - Opinion: Letter - Child protection will suffer

Child protection is quite rightly cited as a reason for keeping health visitors practice-based. Sharing information, particularly speculative personal information, in these cases is already difficult enough but it is more likely to happen if the GP and health visitor are in personal contact and work together from the same base (i.e. a properly organised practice) rather than those that are reliant on telephonic or electronic forms of communication which have been shown to fail in so many recent serious case reviews.

There is no reason why the health visitors cannot visit such places as Sure Start centres, but to be based away from the primary care team is a retrograde step.

Dr Jane Richards, GP in Devon.

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