iHV launches new iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting

The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) is delighted to publish the new iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting.

Developed to recognise the higher levels of autonomy and specialist knowledge and skills that health visitors require, beyond their first level registration as registered nurses and registered midwives, this much-needed resource will support best practice for preceptorship programmes for health visitors across the UK.

Newly qualified health visitors represent the future of the profession and are highly valued. It is vital that they are welcomed into the workplace with the right individualised support to enable them to grow and flourish. The provision of high-quality preceptorship for health visitors prepares and enables their leadership development and ongoing practice-based learning – this supports the essential delivery of safe and effective care which contributes to reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for babies, children, families and communities.

Currently, many health visiting services across the UK are experiencing significant shortages and attrition in the health visiting workforce. With challenges to recruitment and retention, health visiting services are looking for ways to reduce the disruption and financial costs of a high staff turnover. The provision of high-quality preceptorship for health visitors is key to attracting and sustaining a highly skilled health visiting workforce.

The iHV UK Preceptorship Framework will complement other relevant country-specific legislation, statutory requirements, organisational policies and procedures for preceptorship for health visiting and keep best practice in mind. We recommend all organisations employing health visitors implement this new Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting.

Amanda Holland – Professional Services Lead, Institute of Health Visiting and Author of the iHV Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting, commented:

“In the current climate, with many organisations experiencing significant challenges to recruitment and retention of a highly skilled health visiting workforce, we know high-quality effective preceptorship can be an important part of the solution. Supporting and enabling newly qualified health visitors to lay strong foundations from the beginning of their career is vital to enable them to grow and thrive and achieve their professional aspiration throughout the preceptorship period and beyond. Enabling a good learning environment, where the preceptee is at the centre of preceptorship, and wellbeing and psychological safety is prioritised is key to success.

“It has been a privilege to lead this project to co-develop an iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visitors and work with a vast group of passionate and dedicated experts and stakeholders from across the UK.”

Marian Judd – Health Visitor and Practice Lead, HCRG Care Group, B&NES and Wiltshire Children’s Community Services, England and Co-Chair of the iHV Practice Education Network, said:

“The new iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting is the fruit of a UK-wide collaboration that has been inspiring and motivating. Its aim and hope is to offer organisations, which employ health visitors from all four nations, a Framework that is preceptee-led, relevant and adaptable to enable new health visitors to embed the NMC Code and NMC 2022 Standards of proficiency for specialist community public health nurse health visitors, evolve into confident practitioners, and thrive to make a difference for babies, children and families.

“This was a wonderful opportunity to co-author this Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting which stemmed from my contribution to the iHV Practice Education Network (PEN) as co-chair. This partnership with iHV continues to inspire and develop my passion for health visitor education alongside my lead role in B&NES and Wiltshire. Leading practice education has been a consistent theme throughout my health visiting career, from one-to-one student support to developing effective learning environments working collaboratively with the Higher Education Institutions in the South and South West of England, local teams and the iHV.”

The iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting provides:

A Preceptorship Framework to support best practice for preceptorship programmes for health visitors
A valuable overview of the research, evidence and policy on preceptorship
Practical guidance including:
- the key ingredients of an effective preceptorship programme
- the iHV Preceptorship Gradient of Growing, Embedding and Thriving (GET)
- the iHV Hierarchy of Learning Needs
- examples of outputs and outcomes of a preceptorship programme
A Framework for implementation and quality assurance in practice

Alison Morton – CEO, Institute of Health Visiting, added:

“I fully support the aims of this much-needed iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting to facilitate a consistent, personalised approach to preceptorship for every health visitor. The iHV seeks to achieve consensus with organisations employing health visitors actively supporting the Preceptorship Framework and ‘signing up’ to use the Framework in developing locally-agreed programmes, as part of their organisation’s quality strategy.”

The iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visitors has been developed through an extensive collaborative process with a wide range of experts and stakeholders from all four nations of the UK – iHV extends huge thanks to them for their expertise, guidance and support during this process.

View iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting

Please use this link to cite the iHV UK Preceptorship Framework for Health Visiting – https://bit.ly/3ATKD7x

Open pdf to read quotes below

Scottish Government publishes updated National Framework for Child Protection Learning and Development

On 1 March 2024, the Scottish Government published its updated version of the National Framework for Child Protection Learning and Development which will be relevant to health visitors working in Scotland.

This updated Framework replaces the previous version, published in 2012 to support the design and delivery of child protection learning and development. It provides a resource for all learning and development relevant to child protection, regardless of which agency practitioners work in and can be used flexibly and alongside single agency frameworks for learning to emphasise the key themes of the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021 – updated 2023 .

The longstanding key message is that safeguarding is ‘Still Everyone’s Job’. All practitioners have a responsibility to remain aware of changes to legislation, policy and practice that impact on how frontline services should respond. The updated Framework incorporates recent legislation and several key policy documents:

The National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021 – updated 2023 (NGCP2023) highlighted important themes for practice, and these will be key to updating all learning and development resources within the ‘Getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) continuum – wellbeing to welfare to protection – supporting a proactive, preventative approach to practice. Key themes are:

rights-based approach (supporting and embracing UNCRC)
needs-led/strengths-based approach (supporting relationship-based practice)
trauma-informed/enhanced practice (supporting understanding of childhood adversity and trauma)
holistic assessment (supporting strengths/resilience, identifying risk/concerns within a child’s experiences)
recognising diversity and inclusion (supporting sensitivity of language, culture and communication differences).

The Framework aims to provide a resource which clarifies child protection learning needed at four levels – “Wider Workforce, General Workforce, Specific Workforce, and Intensive Workforce”, to:

promote collaborative multi-agency practice to support children’s wellbeing, welfare and protection
support the multi-agency task of assessing, managing and addressing identified need or risk to children, young people or parents/carers
provide a multi-agency learning and development framework adaptable for local learning and development strategies and evaluation
contribute to best practice through the development of a competent and confident workforce
support the design, implementation and evaluation of multi-agency child protection learning
establish agreed competencies, identifying the relevant knowledge and skills required, according to the roles and responsibilities of the various groups that make up multi-agency workforces, including those likely to encounter children, young people and their families as part of their day-to-day work
emphasise the importance of shared learning and collaborative practice to achieve better outcomes for children

Read the revised Framework in full here

Public Health Skills and Knowledge Framework Evaluation

Have you used or looked at the Public Health Skills and Knowledge Framework (PHSKF)?

If so, please could you complete this short online evaluation that is being conducted for Public Health England on behalf of the four UK nations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

The aim is to evaluate Public Health England’s redesigned 2016 PHSKF to determine its impact on the public health workforce and their employers, and its utility.

The survey should take no more than about ten minutes to complete.

The deadline for submission of survey is 8 March 2019.

Go to Public Health Skills and Knowledge Framework Evaluation survey

New report from The Communication Trust

Professional development in speech, language and communication – new report from The Communication Trust.

Last summer, more than 1200 members of the children and young people’s workforce, including many health visitors, responded to a survey from The Communication Trust, which asked about their experiences of professional development in speech, language and communication (SLC). Their responses revealed that, although they were nearly unanimous in their belief in the vital importance of children’s SLC skills, there were significant gaps in their professional development in this area. The majority (53%) reported that they had had little to no initial training in typical speech, language and communication development, and 60% had little to no training in identifying and supporting children with speech, language and communication needs.

In England, there are likely to be at least two children in every primary school classroom with a clinically significant language disorder, and many more with delayed language development. The Communication Trust, in partnership with their consortium, works to maximise the impact of the voluntary sector and collaborate with government to devise effective solutions to improve the support that is provided to children and young people.

The Communication Trust has produced a report presenting the findings of their consultation with the workforce and offering recommendations to government and national bodies, local authorities and commissioners, the voluntary sector and training providers, and the workforce and service providers. Their recommendations were developed in consultation with their consortium and other key sector, practitioner, and academic partners.

Download Communication Trust survey report

Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF)

The Communication Trust works to support the workforce in enabling all the children and young people they work with to communicate to the best of their ability through resources such as the newly updated and improved Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF). The SLCF is a free online professional development tool which sets out the skills and knowledge that everyone working with children and young people need in order to support the speech, language and communication development of those they work with. The SLCF self-evaluation tool enables individuals and groups of practitioners to highlight their professional development needs and to find training, resources or information to ‘fill the gaps’ identified by the SLCF.

Find out more about the SLCF

If you have any queries on this, please contact [email protected]

iHV welcomes new HEE Guidance on Specialist Health Visitors in Perinatal and Infant Mental Health

The Institute of Health Visiting warmly welcomes the new commissioning and workforce development guidance on Specialist Health Visitors in Perinatal and Infant Mental health (PIMH) – What they do and why they matter, published today by Health Education England (HEE). It concludes that all women and their partners should have access to a specialist health visitor in perinatal and infant mental health (PIMH) and recommends at least one for every health visiting service.

Creating Specialist Health Visitor posts in PIMH within every health visiting service will play a valuable part in reducing the incidence and impact of postnatal depression and other perinatal mental health problems. This will be through earlier diagnosis, better intervention and support – creating savings on child and adult mental health services, and improved public health.

Dr Cheryll Adams, Executive Director of the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV), said:

“The iHV is delighted to endorse this new guidance which provides a framework for improvements in the services that health visitors can provide to families to promote their mental health.

“Through the health visiting ‘universal’ service, health visitors are well-placed to identify those families requiring additional support, especially where the mother (or indeed father) may be suffering from perinatal mental illness, or where the bond between parent and baby may be compromised. However, health visitors have many other roles and responsibilities taking their time during this important period of every child’s life and they would benefit from specialist support in this challenging arena.”

The framework sets out the important role of specialist health visitors in PIMH, illustrates the value to parents and other health professionals involved in a mother’s care and recommends that every woman should have access to a specialist Health Visitor as part of the multi-disciplinary team.

Read the full press release

Launch of the new framework for specialist health visitors in perinatal and infant mental health

Monday (18 January) saw the launch of the new framework for specialist health visitors in perinatal and infant mental health – we just need to get them funded everywhere now.

We know some of you already hold these posts but its lovely to have a national endorsement about how important they are.

The Framework is not available yet but it’s coming soon from HEE!