7th October 2021
Calling all health visitors and everyone working in health visiting – we need your help more than ever to bring investment back into health visiting to make sure that every baby, young child and family, wherever they live, has access to a well-resourced health visiting service.
This is urgently needed as we currently have a ‘Wild West’ in health visiting in the UK with a postcode lottery of support, which you face the brunt of on a daily basis – things need to change and we need your help to make this happen by filling in our important annual survey.
When I trained as a health visitor, like many of you, I was taught that the best way to drive change and reduce inequalities is to do it ‘with the evidence’. If one person says that things need to change, you might expect a ripple of interest – however, if we have a collective voice speaking together about the realities of health visiting (the bad and the good – as we know there is also a lot of great work taking place) then this makes a powerful case for change.
This is where we need your help – I know you are busy, tired and probably wonder if there is any point as this has gone on for such a long time. You may be thinking that your views don’t count, but they really do – every single one of you reading this post has a different experience and we need to pull this together into a national picture of health visiting.
Will you join with us to do this and help #TurnOffTheTaps and strengthen our case for investment into health visiting?
It’s a fairly simple ‘ask’ – please can you find 20 minutes this week, or over the weekend, to fill in our survey – make a cuppa and tell us how things are for you – the good, the bad… and the ugly.
(We know the survey is quite long, but please can I encourage you to stick with it to the end as we think every question collects a different part of the story we think we need to tell).
Then we will do everything in our power to get your voice heard.
There is power in a ‘united voice’ – please join with us to get this heard!!!
Alison Morton, Executive Director, iHV
How to take part in the annual State of Health Visiting Survey
For those people on our mailing lists (including members and expired members), you will have received an email from us yesterday evening with the survey link. So please do check your emails.
For those health visitors or members of health visiting teams who are not on our mailing lists and would like to complete this vital survey, please contact [email protected] to request the survey link.