Supporting parental awareness of respiratory illness in babies and children through health visiting leadership and delivery of the Healthy Child Programme – Funded by NHS Health and Wellbeing Fund
The aim of the project was to raise awareness of respiratory illness in babies and children under 3-years old. This was due to the anticipated surge in unseasonal respiratory infections and possible increase of Bronchiolitis in the winter.
iHV partnered with Healthier Together on this project. It built on current iHV and Healthier Together resources, adapting them into accessible formats to meet the wider needs of families where English was an additional language or where parents have learning difficulties. The project also aimed to upskill the health visitor workforce to support families with babies and young children who have respiratory illnesses, by increasing their knowledge and understanding of the surge in unseasonal respiratory infections and the possible increase of Bronchiolitis in the winter. Health visitors are ideally placed to reach all families through their universal work and leadership of the Healthy Child Programme.
The project developed a webpage to host written and video resources in the 5 most spoken languages in the UK after English according to ONS:
- Bengali
- Gujarati
- Polish
- Punjabi
- Urdu
All resources were peer-reviewed by those who spoke and read the languages. Pathway Associates supported the creation of the Easy Read resources. Learning from creating resources in different languages and formats will be used in future projects to support the creation of accessible resources.
The information was shared over 4 webinars with other national organisations and their resources are also available via our webpage:
- Asthma + Lung UK
- Bardardo’s Boloh helpline
- Bliss
- Contact
Evaluation: Before the first webinar and after each webinar, attendees were encouraged to complete an evaluation. This supported our ongoing cycle of quality improvement throughout the project, to ensure that all resources were tailored to our users’ needs.