iHV Expert Adviser: Infant Sleep
RGN, NDN. RHV, Cert Ed, BA (Hons) Ed, PG Dip Infant & Child Mental Health, PG Dip Social Innovation, FiHV.
Maggie represents the iHV on the Lullaby Trust Scientific Advisory Group and is delighted to continue to work with the iHV as the Expert Advisor on infant and child sleep.
Maggie Fisher started her SRN training at The London Hospital in 1974 and worked and qualified as a district nurse. Since then, she has worked as a health visitor/Specialist Community Public Health Nurse with 40 years’ experience working in different parts of London and the home counties, in a variety of generic and specialist roles. Her specialist areas of expertise are sleep, parenting, supporting couple relationships, and promoting perinatal and adult mental health. Sleep is an area that affects every aspect of physical and mental health, emotional wellbeing, parenting and relationships.
In the 1990s, Maggie set up and ran a successful sleep support service in Hampshire which ran for many years. Maggie then worked with Christine Bidmead to set up the Netmums parents sleep support information and support, and then Maggie did the same at Channel Mum. Since then, guiding and supporting exhausted parents to understand normal infant and child sleep patterns has been a lifelong passion. Whilst working with the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV), this remit increased to sharing evidence-based practice with practitioners.
Maggie has also worked as an independent consultant and trainer working with a variety of national organisations and published various articles, a book and co-authored 2 other books and chapter in a book. For the last decade, Maggie has been working part-time with the iHV and is also a Fellow of the organisation.
At present, Maggie is working on a major international systematic review on infant sleep, working with researchers in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Maggie presented the emerging findings from this at the World Sleep Symposium in Rome, March 2022, and the iHV Evidence-based Practice Conference in September 2022. When the systematic review is completed and submitted for publication, the aim is to produce evidence-based guidance from the review for professionals and parents.
