5th February 2026

Following high profile media coverage on the importance of spotting early signs of atypical development for serious motor conditions (like spinal muscular atrophy and cerebral palsy), this iHV Voices blog by Kathryn Danagher, Health Visitor Team Lead, outlines the trailblazing work in North Tyneside to raise awareness and support practitioner skills development using the iHV Motor Development Ambassador training and toolkit of resources.

Kathryn Danagher, Health Visitor Team Lead at Children’s Public Health Service, North Tyneside

Gross Motor Development:

Health visiting services are ideally placed to support families with their children’s development. Through their universal reach and by developing therapeutic relationships, health visitors and their teams can work in partnership with parents and carers, providing important opportunities for surveillance, screening and review of child development (iHV, 2024).

Motor development is the continuous process of a child gaining control over their body and movement, progressing from large, whole-body actions (gross motor, like crawling) to smaller, precise actions (fine motor, like grasping).

These are fundamental elements to child development – helping a child to explore and understand the world around them.

Health visitors play a crucial role in the early promotion of motor development and the identification of babies and children with developmental delay or signs of atypical motor development requiring more specialist assessment and support (iHV, 2024).

iHV Motor Development Training:

As part of a pilot in the North East region, the Children’s Public Health Service, North Tyneside, were excited to take up the opportunity to undertake bespoke training to become Motor Development Ambassadors. The training day was provided by the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) and developed with sponsorship from Novartis UK.

The training day itself, along with access to a professional toolkit, brought together evidence-based information as well as expert knowledge of professional speakers. The session was incredibly informative and equipped Ambassadors to:

Confidently recognise typical and atypical motor development.
Understand a range of motor development conditions, including Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), Cerebral Palsy, and Muscular Dystrophy.
Have sensitive conversations with families about motor development.
Identify ‘red flags’, make a high-quality referral, whilst continuing to support families while they await assessment.
Identify ‘amber flags’ and support families during the ‘watchful wait’ period.
Offer evidence-based advice to promote motor development and high-quality ongoing support. (iHV, 2025)

Motor Development Ambassadors:

The practitioners who attended the training included health visitor team leads, health visitors, and staff nurses/midwives with a broad range of skills and experience. We all found the training incredibly informative and interactive. Hearing from a Consultant Paediatrician, highly skilled practitioners and parents with lived experience as part of the training was incredibly valuable. As was sharing practice examples with practitioners from across the region.

Following on from the training, I was asked to lead on the cascade of the awareness session and promote the use of the toolkit across the service. I gladly took up the challenge.

Bringing together the fantastic team of Ambassadors, we were able to go through the cascade training materials and the toolkit. The cascade training materials were amazing; they provided a fantastic awareness session and really took any worry away from Ambassadors as facilitators. The session took around an hour to deliver and included a great range of information, illustration and videos of typical and atypical development for a really impactful presentation.

Learning is supported with a bespoke toolkit which includes an array of resources, evidence-based information and videos for practitioners, as well as information and support to share directly with families and carers. Having the information so easily accessible makes it easy to use and incorporate into day-to-day practice. The resources can be used to support information sharing, underpin assessment and, importantly, highlight areas of concern such as ‘red flags’ in a child’s development.

Cascade of Awareness Training and Enhancing Practice:

Across the Children’s Public Health Service, North Tyneside, we are always focused on innovation and practice development. The awareness training and access to the toolkit provided a welcomed opportunity to enhance skills and knowledge across the multiskilled team. The training was accessed by all clinical staff, with positive feedback from each session. Within three months of completing the Motor Development Ambassador training, the Ambassadors had provided cascade training to over 97% of clinical staff.

Through our iHV corporate membership, the whole service is able to access the toolkit to really cement their learning and ensure that this can have a meaningful impact in practice. The cascade training and use of the toolkit provides support with hands-on assessment of motor development, meaningful conversations with parents and carers, as well as early intervention, signposting and referral when needed.

It is well established that early intervention is key when assessing motor development. As frontline practitioners, health visitors and health visiting teams are best placed to carry out assessment of motor development and to support parents and carers to understand their child’s development – at mandated contacts and in response to parent/ carers’ concerns throughout the earliest years. By accessing training with the iHV, our practice can now be enhanced with more robust assessment, meaningful conversations and early intervention.

Some examples of the overwhelmingly positive feedback we have received:

“It’s so important to me to have a health visitor who knows my child – coming to assess her and help me understand her development.” Parent

“I used the toolkit recently; I supported a parent concerned about their child’s gross motor development. Using the toolkit helped me have a really meaningful conversation and provide the right support.” HV

Kathryn Danagher, Health Visitor Team Lead at Children’s Public Health Service, North Tyneside

References:

Institute of Health Visiting (2024) Good Practice Points for Health Visitors Supporting Gross Motor Development in Babies and Children Under 5 Years: Part 1, Available here or bit.ly/4dObQaA
Institute of Health Visiting (2024) Good Practice Points for Health Visitors Supporting Gross Motor Development in Babies and Children Under 5 Years: Part 2, Available here or bit.ly/3wLfzoK

Want to find out more?

If you are a practitioner interested in developing your practice and becoming an iHV Motor Development Ambassador, or a service lead wanting to roll out the training in your service, please contact our Education, Learning and Development team for more details – [email protected]