21st October 2024
Today, the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care launched a national consultation on the future of the NHS. This provides an important opportunity to shine a light on the vital work of health visiting – we urge you to “have your say” as an individual and also help shape the iHV response.
The consultation invites everyone to join in the conversation, stating that:
“Our NHS is broken, but not beaten. Together we can fix it. The NHS has been there for us for over 76 years. But to make sure the NHS is here for the next 76 years, doing all it can to support the health of everyone, we need your help”.
The consultation questions focus on the government’s proposed three ‘shifts’ in the way health and care services work as they look to shape a new 10-Year Health Plan for England:
- Analogue to digital
- Hospital to community
- Sickness to prevention
Health visiting has a significant contribution to make in all three of these areas – but it will need as many people as possible to speak up about this. What needs to change? Share solutions to fix the challenges you are facing, examples of best practice, and your views on ways to maximise the role of health visiting in the future, to improve our nation’s health.
Individual responses, from members of the public or people working in health and care in England, can be submitted electronically by clicking ‘Start Here’.
If you are contributing as a representative of an organisation, complete the organisation questionnaire which contains five questions to answer. This is an early opportunity to share your insights – the deadline for submissions ends on Monday 2 December at 17:00. Submissions must be no longer than 5,000 words and can include links to supporting documents.
The five questions are:
Q1. What does your organisation want to see included in the 10-Year Health Plan and why?
Q2. What does your organisation see as the biggest challenges and enablers to move more care from hospitals to communities?
Q3. What does your organisation see as the biggest challenges and enablers to making better use of technology in health and care?
Q4. What does your organisation see as the biggest challenges and enablers to spotting illnesses earlier and tackling the causes of ill health?
Q5. Please use this box to share specific policy ideas for change. Please include how you would prioritise these and what timeframe you would expect to see this delivered in, for example:
- Quick to do, that is in the next year or so
- In the middle, that is in the next 2 to 5 years
- Long term change, that will take more than 5 years
The iHV will be submitting an organisation response – there are a number of ways that you can help shape our response:
- Complete our annual health visiting survey, if you have not filled it in already, this closes on 31st October and can be accessed using the link that iHV members will have received by email. If you work in health visiting and are not an iHV member, you can still participate in the survey – please contact [email protected] for the link. We will be using the survey findings as evidence for our response.
- Join one of our online consultation meetings that we will be hosting in early November – be part of the conversation with members of the iHV team and colleagues from across the country. We are currently finalising plans for these events and will circulate details and booking information soon. We also hope to have representatives from the CNO/OHID teams join us for these discussions.
- If you can’t make the meetings – we will also be providing an opportunity for you to share written feedback to the online questions. Look out for details to be announced soon.
