PHE Guidance – Health matters: reproductive health and pregnancy planning

A resource focusing on reproductive choice and ensuring that pregnancy, if desired, occurs at the right time and when health is optimised.

This resource for professionals working with women and men that may have children in the future focuses on reproductive choice and ensuring that pregnancy, if desired, occurs at the right time and when health is optimised. Effective contraception and planning for pregnancy mean that women and men stay healthy throughout life and take steps to improve the health of the baby.

Go to PHE Guidance

Consultation outcome – Working Together to Safeguard Children: revisions to statutory guidance

Significant changes to local multi-agency arrangements have recently been established through the Children and Social Work 2017. The Act creates new duties for police, health and the local authority to make arrangements locally to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in their area. Following the passage of the Act in April 2017, the Government has worked to revise the statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children, and draft the regulations required to commence the legislation. The public consultation on these draft documents ran from 25 October 2017 to 31 December 2017.

During this period, the Government also held a series of nine regional consultation events across England. The consultation sought sector input on the proposed changes to Working Together to
Safeguard Children, as well as the draft regulations. It attracted 703 responses from a wide variety of interested stakeholders, including representatives from local authorities, health sector bodies, police, youth justice, voluntary and community organisations, social care professionals, safeguarding boards and educational establishments. Nearly 450 delegates attended the regional events and shared their views in person.

This document summarises the results of the consultation, and sets out the Government’s response.

Go to consultation outcome document

PHE Updated Guidance – Child oral health: applying All Our Health

Examples and interventions that are recommended at population, community and individual level to improve dental health for children.

Oral health is part of general health and wellbeing and contributes to the development of a healthy child and school readiness. Tooth decay is the most common oral disease affecting children and young people in England, yet it is largely preventable.

Go to PHE Guidance - Child oral health: applying All Our Health

PHE Guidance – Scarlet fever: managing outbreaks in schools and nurseries

Guidelines to help health protection teams control outbreaks of scarlet fever in schools, nurseries and other childcare settings.

These guidelines were first developed by the national incident management team (IMT) in response to the upsurge in scarlet fever in April 2014 and subsequently updated by a subgroup of the IMT in 2016 and 2017 to reflect the changing epidemiology, evidence and feedback on implementation in practice.

A set of scarlet fever FAQs – intended for health professionals to give to the public – are available at: Scarlet fever: symptoms, diagnosis, treatment.

Please also share our iHV Parent Tips on Coping with Scarlet Fever

Go to PHE Guidance - Scarlet fever: managing outbreaks in schools and nurseries

PHE Guidance: Child vision screening

Vision screening for 4 to 5 year old children is recommended by the UK National Screening Committee and is the responsibility of local authorities as part of the Healthy Child Programme.

Public Heath England has developed a set of national resources to support the commissioning and delivery of high quality, consistent services.

These include:

service specification
screening competencies
teacher information sheets
screening pathway
diagnostic pathway
template letters

Go to PHE Guidance: Child vision screening

National Bereavement Care Pathway for pregnancy and baby loss

The Institute is pleased to be one of the key partners in the project group working to deliver a National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) for England, with the support of Department of Health and All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Baby Loss.

This invaluable project, led by SANDS, includes partners from professional bodies, charities, parents and families with the aim of ensuring that all bereaved parents are offered equal, high quality, individualised, safe and sensitive care following pregnancy and baby loss (up to 1 year of age).

Pilot sites for the roll-out of the pathway and guidance materials were launched on 9 October (to coincide with Baby Loss Awareness Week) and will be independently evaluated, with the second wave of the pilot planned for April 2018.

We are really keen to support the project group with identification of community health providers (which employ health visitors) that are willing to be included in the second pilot phase – to ensure that the pathway offers clear, consistent guidance to health visitors to enable them to work confidently alongside parents, providing compassionate and parent-centred care to those affected through use of the pathway.

If you would like to know more about becoming a pilot site please contact Project Lead Marc Harder ([email protected]).

Look out for further news about the NBCP or tweets with hashtag #nbcp.

Read Marc's latest blog

PHE Guidance – Sepsis in children: advice for health visitors and school nurses

This short guide sets out what health visitors and school nurses need to know about sepsis; and is to designed to raise awareness of sepsis locally amongst health visitors and school nurses and their teams.

This guidance includes:

causes and symptoms of sepsis
support for parents
additional resources for health visitors and school nurses

Parents often have regular contact and an ongoing relationship with health visitors and school nurses; as such they may be the first point of contact for parents who have a concern. Services provided by health visitors and school nurses are not intended to provide a first line treatment or diagnostic service for acutely unwell children, however, when an unwell child attends their service, the practitioner must have the knowledge to support parents to make a decision about the most appropriate course of action and signpost them to the appropriate help based on the child’s presenting symptoms.

Health visitors and school nurses should therefore be aware of the clinical signs and symptoms of sepsis in children and of relevant national guidelines. They need to have clarity on actions that need to be taken and be clear about the advice for parents (NICE CG160, 2013).

Go to PHE Guidance - Sepsis in children: advice for health visitors and school nurses (Oct 2017)

PHE – Hexavalent combination vaccine: programme guidance

Guidance for healthcare professionals on the hexavalent vaccine programme for babies born after 1 August 2017.

From autumn 2017, all babies born on or after 1 August 2017 will become eligible for a hexavalent vaccine which includes hepatitis B (HepB) for their primary immunisations. This vaccine, called Infanrix hexa®, will replace the pentavalent infant vaccines Infanrix®-IPV+Hib and Pediacel®.

This guidance is intended to provide healthcare professionals with more information about vaccinating high risk infants in light of the new universal hepatitis B infant programme.

PHE - Hexavalent combination vaccine: programme guidance

New GPP – Advocating the use of Vitamin D

We are delighted to share these new Good Practice Points on the use of Vitamin D. Health visitors have a central role to play in increasing Vitamin D uptake.

These Good Practice Points, authored by Sara Patience, Registered Health Visitor, Registered Nutritionist, set out what health visitors need to know on advocating the use of Vitamin D.

They outline some evidence and guidance on the use and importance of Vitamin D, along with up-to-date evidence and references.

Go to GPP - Advocating the use of Vitamin D

Please note that this GPP is available to iHV members only.

If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.

The iHV is a self-funding charity – we can only be successful in our mission to strengthen health visiting practice if the health visiting profession and its supporters join us on our journey. We rely on our membership to develop new resources for our members.

So do join us now!

PHE Guidance – Health matters: obesity and the food environment

New guidance published today (31 March) by PHE on obesity and the food environment.

Nearly two-thirds of adults (63%) in England were classed as being overweight (a body mass index of over 25) or obese (a BMI of over 30) in 2015. Nearly a third of children aged 2 to 15 are overweight or obese and younger generations are becoming obese at earlier ages and staying obese for longer.

PHE Obesity in Children infographic

Obesity is a complex problem with many drivers, including:

behaviour
environment
genetics
culture

New Guidance

This guidance covers: