20th April 2026
Alison Morton, CEO at iHV, and Emma Dolan, health visitor with Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust, appeared in several of today’s news items on the BBC to discuss the current state of health visiting, with a call for a safer staffing limit for health visitors. Coverage included families speaking up about the value of health visiting and the difference that their health visitor’s support had meant to them.
The BBC coverage highlighted the urgent action needed to increase the number of health visitors and reduce the size of health visitor caseloads to ensure that all families receive health visiting support during the vital earliest years of life.
Alison described the postcode lottery of health visiting services that families experience, stating that families are paying the price for the decline in the workforce.
“Health visitors are having to prioritise, and actually prioritisation has a human cost.
“They’re having to tell families: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that extra follow-up visit’, when you know it would have made a massive difference to that family.”
Alison described how in some areas, families receive a good service – whereas in other areas, health visitors have caseloads of more than 1,000 children creating a situation in which they are simply firefighting, and families receive virtually no contact.
“We need to set a benchmark, otherwise we’re just going to continue to see this decline with hugely unmanageable, unsafe caseloads which are impossible for health visitors to work within,” she says.
A spokesperson for the DHSC told the BBC that they would be setting out plans for health visitors later this year.
“Following a decade of underinvestment, this government is committed to strengthening health visiting services so that every family has access to the support they need,” a spokesperson said.
“As we shift care from hospital to community, health visitors will play an important role, including by building on their trusted relationships to help protect more children through vaccinations.
“We will set out plans for the profession in the coming months as we strive to raise the healthiest generation of children ever.”
Catch up on the coverage:
- On this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today programme: as part of the BBC Radio 4 project Today’s Babies, the Today programme is following three families over the first five years of their children’s lives.
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme – the news item starts at 1:22:03 into the programme with Alison speaking at 1:26:20 until about 1:27:15. The news items on health visitors ends at about 1:29:41. - heard on this morning’s BBC Radio 5 breakfast programme
- seen on BBC Breakfast – the full news item on BBC Breakfast this morning with Alison speaking at about 1:31 into the piece.
- seen on BBC News at One – the news item on health visitors starts about 21:13 into the piece, with Alison speaking at about 22:36.
Also see BBC News online article – Health visitors call for limits on ‘impossible’ 1,000-family caseloads – BBC News
