23rd August 2017
Today’s #HVWeek topic: The health conversation – nutrition, dental care, lifestyle and exercise, accident prevention, particularly the health of migrant and vulnerable groups.
Due to the pressure created by having less contact time, how do you ensure the right health messages reach families? It would be great to know how services ensure that vulnerable groups get good access to appropriate services and information.
Welcome back to Day 3 of national #HVweek
It is already Day 3 of national #HVweek17! We have really enjoyed seeing all your tweets and contributions so far this week, especially some of your contributions from children about what health visitors do. If you would like to submit a contribution of what your family thinks you do as a health visitor, please share on social media with #ProudtobeaHV or send it to us to share out.
Today’s theme focuses on health conversations and supporting health and lifestyle changes in families. With so much ground to cover and less contact time, how do you get alongside parents to ensure the right health messages reach families and really make every contact count?
To support your work in this area we are showcasing just some of our wide-ranging resources, including our Good Practice Points for working with minority groups. Why not take a look again at our e-learning, Good Practice Points, Voices blogs, videos and toolkits?
e-learning
Our two e-learning modules on Child Accident Prevention, developed with Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) and iHV Fellow Amanda Whelan, are free to access and designed especially for health visitors.
They are designed especially for health visitors, and are underpinned by research, policy and practice guidance for reducing unintentional injuries to children under the age of 5 in and around the home, as well as existing NICE guidelines on this topic.
The iHV e-learning package on Disability Matters supports both newly-qualified and experienced health visitors in understanding some of the issues faced by families when they receive a diagnosis of disability or learning difficulty for their child/children.
Good Practice Points (for members only)
Our Good Practice Points make excellent bite-sized CPD to update your practice, and reading and reflecting on them can count towards Individual Learning for your NMC revalidation. All our Good Practice Points are evidence-based, written by subject-specific experts and peer-reviewed prior to publication.
Good Practice Points (GPPs): Working with Minority Groups (for members only)
We also have a series of Good Practice Points (GPPs): Working with Minority Groups which have been designed for Health Visitors (HVs), especially for student and newly qualified HVs and relate to the wide variety of diverse communities we encounter in modern day practice.
These include good practice points on working with a variety of diverse communities such as: FGM; Gypsy & Travellers; Chinese families; Special Needs; Homeless to name a few.
Blogs
For more inspiration read our refreshing Voices blogs from some inspirational and motivated practitioners, who share their practice and learning with us, including Trudi Law’s fantastic piece on Reducing Harm to Children from Unintentional Accidents (Homeless Families) or our pieces on the Ready Steady Mums initiative – our volunteer-led community-based socialcise programme for mums (and dads!)
Videos and Toolkits
Take a look at our videos and toolkits for community-based postnatal groups or building community capacity for more inspiration!
First Steps postnatal group resource pack – This accredited First Steps postnatal group resource pack has been developed and piloted by health visitors in Walsall around the six high impact areas for health visiting. The overarching aim of First Steps is to increase social capital and improve self-efficacy for the attending parents, ultimately improving outcomes for children and families.
The course is accredited as a 6-week postnatal group course to be delivered by health visitors as the lead facilitators for the programme.
Building Community Capacity – An Introductory Toolkit for Health Visitors – Health visitors require confidence to extend or renew their capabilities around building community capacity, taking advantage of social capital and resilience present in families and communities, and using the model for the development of the Community level of the service.
Parent Tips
Please share our top tips for parents on reducing accidents – there are quite a few parent tips sheets so here’s a link to the main page:
Please note that some of these resources are available to iHV members only.
If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.
The iHV is a self-funding charity – we can only be successful in our mission to strengthen health visiting practice if the health visiting profession and its supporters join us on our journey. We rely on our membership to develop new resources for our members.
So do join us now!
