18th March 2025
We are delighted to share this Voices blog from Amanda Hall – Family Nurse (FNP)/bank health visitor, Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust on her recent participation in the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Lockdown’s Legacy’.
It was a privilege to have been asked to be part of a BBC Radio 4 and 5 Live programme, “Lockdown’s legacy: Five years on from the UK’s first lockdown” which explored the long-term impacts of the pandemic on babies, children and young people.
Amanda Hall , Family Nurse at the Family Nurse Partnership – Shropshire
I received the request through my role as a member of the iHV Health Visiting Advisory Forum (HVAF). The iHV HVAF was established a number of years ago to provide a voice from practice to assist the iHV in reflecting the views of its members. The Forum comprises members from a breadth of health visiting backgrounds who bring insight into health visiting practice priorities and provide expert professional advice and guidance to influence policy, support innovation and provide constructive challenge. We also support quality assurance and quality improvement of iHV resources through peer review.
We are very fortunate as HVAF members to be provided with a wide array of opportunities, and I was delighted to represent our profession on the “Lockdown’s Legacy” programme.
The radio programme wanted to establish what we have learnt about the effects of lockdown on babies, children and young people, focusing on the covid legacy for the younger generation, its impact on their physical and mental development and in addition, looking at future potential solutions.
Within the interview I was able to share many of my own reflections from working as a health visitor within the pandemic.
My first task was to look back on my camera roll and reflect on my photographs from March 2020, eliciting many emotions from a time that was stressful and frightening both on a personal and professional level.
I was able to share the significant impact that redeployment had on health visitors and our ability to support babies, children and families during lockdown. It is now clear that national policy decisions to redeploy health visitors left our service significantly depleted, with a reduced workforce and consequently much larger caseloads for those who remained in health visiting. As health visitors we had to constantly adapt to an ever-changing landscape, and I was able to share some experiences of this extremely challenging time.
I also discussed within the interview that due to a reduction in face-to-face visits, babies and young children were left unseen, resulting in a corresponding decrease in early identification of need and delayed referrals to other services. Health visitors were unable to easily identify health issues and vulnerabilities in families, leaving babies, children and their families invisible to services that could support them. Babies and families were not protected as they should have been from the wider impacts of the pandemic and they were also isolated from their families, wider support networks and their community which all had a negative impact on their health and wellbeing.
The interview also gave me time to be able to reflect on some of the positives that the lockdowns brought, such as a slower pace of life, enjoying the simple things in life such as the outdoors. In addition, it was positive to reflect on the resilience we had as a health visiting team and how dynamic we were, constantly able to adapt to a changing situation with the advancement of digital technology within the NHS to support our work.
It was also significant to focus on how things could be done differently should the situation arise once more. It is clear that the needs of babies, children and families must be fully considered in emergency planning (and post-emergency recovery) in the future. The need for health visitors not to be redeployed and instead to be seen as a significant service, providing a vital safety-net of support for all babies, children and families. The first five years of a child’s life are the most crucial period of human development, providing a foundation for health, wellbeing, educational and economic success – hence the resulting impact of lockdown is being seen in the lives of the babies born during this time who are now five years old. Whilst we can’t change the past, it is important that we learn from it and ensure that these children are not the “forgotten generation” and are supported to have the “best start in life”.
