6th October 2023
It’s that time of year again – the opportunity for everyone who works in health visiting to contribute to the largest and most important survey of health visiting across the UK. We cannot stress how important the iHV annual health visiting survey is. The findings provide a powerful collective voice for health visiting and the families that we support.
Make your voice count! You see what is happening behind families’ front doors that is often invisible to other services. Health visiting is in a unique position as it provides the only systematic and proactive way of reaching all families with babies and children across the UK.
Our survey collects vital information on changing trends for child health, development and safety. This provides an important early warning of changing needs, long before they are captured in national child outcome data. Your valuable frontline practitioner intelligence is second to none!
What information is collected: Tell us how the needs of babies, young children and families have changed over the last 12 months? How are health visiting services responding? What’s going well? And what are the challenges that need addressing? Help us to speak up for the profession and make sure that we accurately reflect the realities that you see in practice.
Who can complete the survey? We want to hear from health visitors and anyone working in other roles in health visiting teams. All responses are anonymised to maintain confidentiality, so you can tell it as it is. This is probably one of the most important uses of 20 minutes of your valuable time.
What difference will the findings make? Each year, the iHV uses your valuable frontline practitioner intelligence to influence national policy, across numerous government departments, as well as party manifestos. We also use it in a multitude of evidence submissions to government enquiries, national conference presentations and briefings for government meetings. Last year, the findings attracted significant media interest and received excellent television, radio and print media coverage which helped to raise the profile of health visitors.
Health visitors are making a difference to families – supporting hundreds of thousands of families every year across the UK. With your help, we aim to make the work of health visiting more visible. Over the last year, we achieved a welcomed commitment to invest in health visiting from both the current government and leading opposition party.
But our journey is far from over. As health visitors, we need to keep speaking up and making the case for prevention and early intervention to address the challenges faced by families across the UK. The future health and wellbeing of countless babies, children, and families really do depend on us being a national voice – especially for those that are often invisible to other services and struggle to be heard. Investing in health visiting also makes sound economic sense!
Fill in our survey now to make sure your experience is counted!
If you are an iHV member, you should have received an email in the last day or so with a link to our survey – please email us at [email protected] if you did not receive this.
If you are not an iHV member (and you are a health visitor, or work in a health visiting team) you can still complete our survey – please email us at [email protected].
Help us to get the biggest response ever – this will make the findings harder to ignore!
Thank you for all your support.
