Health visitors/children's centres story

***This could put children at risk of getting limited services, according to Cheryll Adams, executive director of the Institute of Health Visiting.

***As local authorities decide their budgets for the year ahead, many are making cuts to their number of children’s centres. Oxfordshire County Council has proposed closing all 44 of the county’s centres.

“If you take children’s centres away, you’re taking away somewhere that health visitors can refer families to. It will be harder to find solutions for families with needs. Health visitors will find solutions themselves and the solution might not be quite so ideal.”

Adams said this could result in a fall in the quality and efficiency of provision.

“A child goes through journey from midwife to starting school. Each professional works closely with child along that journey, which essential for a child’s development – if you take one stage out, you’re putting the child at risk.”

Dave Munday, Unite’s health visiting lead, said fewer children’s centres is already affecting health visitors.

“Heath visitors are less able to rely on services that need to be there. Health visitors are hugely important and need to be well resourced. They need to refer families to children’s centres, but that facility no longer exists.

“As I travelled across England meeting health visitors in 2014 and 15 they were reporting concerns that the opportunities to direct families to series were diminishing. That will surely increase as we go through the next few years with the implications of government cuts. “

Health visitors will also be affected by 3.9 per cent cuts to local authority public health funding, announced in the spending review last November.

“Public health cuts are already having impact because posts are being frozen,” Adams said.

“Unless the government keeps a close eye on health visitor numbers, it will struggle to deliver policies around perinatal mental health, dental health, weight, breastfeeding and smoking.”

Adams has called for local authorities not to see health visitors as a “soft option” for cuts when deciding on their budgets for the year ahead.

The government launched a scheme in 2011 to increase the health visitor workforce, and committed to increase the workforce by 4,200 to 12,292 by the end of March 2015. Numbers came more than 200 under target, and as of August 2015 this number declined to 650 below target.

As of August 2015 there were 11,642 FTE (full time equivalent) health visitors.