Families need health visitor growth plan to get on track
Ravi Chandiramani
Monday, October 3, 2011
Health visiting occupies a privileged position in these times. Unusually for this government, it is a profession with a national strategy driven from the centre.
The Health Visitor Implementation Plan, unveiled back in February, has a goal to create 4,200 extra posts by 2015. It projects that numbers will accelerate as that year approaches. But nowhere in the plan does it state that numbers will continue to decline. Several months down the line, this is unfortunately the case. The figures, provided to us by strategic health authorities, provide a wake-up call about the scale of the task ahead for the government to realise its ambition.
The plan is to train 6,000 health visitors to meet the target, accounting for people leaving the profession. A couple of factors might explain why the planned expansion of the workforce is struggling to get off the ground. First, the profession is itself not currently in the best of health. A survey from the Royal College of Nursing last month found health visitors feeling overworked and undervalued. Many feel unable to provide the wider public role they aspire to hold as their time gets consumed dealing with more acute needs. The result is that they quit. Moreover, a substantial proportion of health visitors in some areas are nearing retiring age.
Second, although there is a national strategy, like just about everything else, budgets for health visiting are not ringfenced. With primary care trusts compelled to make savings, health visiting has no immunity.
The vision for the profession is nevertheless sound. Health visitors would be available to provide universal services for families with newborns; specific help on issues such as postnatal depression or sleepless babies; and support families over time with complex needs. They would be available in children's centres and health centres as well as on home visits. In short, they would provide a vital prevention and intervention service and avert costlier problems from surfacing. To realise that vision and reach the numbers required, plans for a direct entry route into the profession are essential. At present, health visitors have to qualify first as nurses or midwives.
"Growth" is generally hard to come by these days. Let's hope this particular plan for growth is realised.
Ravi Chandiramani, editor, Children & Young People Now
