2nd December 2025
iHV and Healthier Together launch new resources to boost parental health literacy and support prevention and early intervention in 0–5-year-olds in the UK.
The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV), in partnership with Healthier Together, has launched a new collection of digital parent-facing resources to support families with babies and young children across the UK.
The newly developed digital resources provide practical, evidence-based guidance on a range of important topics, helping parents to recognise when their child needs support and when and where to seek help. They also aim to help health visitors deliver consistent health messages and provide ‘safety-netting’ advice to families.
With support from Healthier Together, the iHV led the development of these digital resources in collaboration with topic experts, health visitors and parents.
The four new parent resources cover:
- When Should I Worry About My Baby’s Movements?
- When Should I Worry About My Child’s Movements?
- Oral health in children with SEND
- Healthy Eating and Staying Active
The topics were carefully selected following a scoping review to identify gaps in public health topics. The iHV Health Visiting Advisory Forum members, subject experts and parents supported the co-production of these resources, ensuring that the content reflected both professional insight and the real-life needs of families.
Accessibility and inclusivity were key priorities. Each resource was developed using reading age checks and co-production approaches to ensure that information is easy to understand and accessible to all families. Each resource followed an agreed quality assurance process to ensure the resources met quality standards and maintained a robust evidence base.
Dr Sanjay Patel, Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Southampton Children’s Hospital and Programme Lead, Healthier Together, said:
“Providing parents and carers with consistently high-quality, evidence-based information is a core value of the Healthier Together programme. Building on the collaboration that we have forged with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to develop acute illness content for parents, we have adopted a similar approach with the iHV to co-develop content on prevention and early interventions. Through such collaboration, we can ensure that parents have access to resources to help them maximise the potential of their child.”
Maddie Rew, iHV Programme Manager for Health Visiting Professional Services, said:
“It has been a privilege to support this project. These resources are an excellent example of partnership working in action. By combining expert clinical knowledge with the lived experiences of parents, the materials created not only inform but also support families to make confident decisions about their child’s health and wellbeing.”
The partnership between iHV and Healthier Together reflects a shared commitment to improving health outcomes for babies, children and families through prevention and early intervention work. The iHV and Healthier Together plan to continue their partnership in the future to develop more evidence-based parent-facing resources.
Access the new resources here:
