Today’s #HVWeek topic: Transition: Midwife to Health Visitor, Health Visitor to School Nurse. Now that we are more reliant on electronic communication how effective are these key service handovers. What do you do to facilitate them?

Welcome to Day 5 of national #HVweek

Hard to believe, but it is already Day 5 and the end of the national #HVweek for this year!

It has been a fabulous opportunity to hear from you and see you in action. What you have shared continues to demonstrate the variety, complexity and added value of the work of health visitors nationally.

Don’t stop yet – we are keen to extend the reach of last year’s #HVweek, so please continue to tweet and retweet and send us your final contributions for this excellent #HVweek17.

In turn, we will retweet and share as many of them as we are able – to demonstrate the tremendous energy and significant work of a fabulous profession from across all UK regions. Let us all continue to be #ProudtobeaHV.

Here’s a video of Professor Dame Sarah Cowley on the value of the health visiting service – explaining the unique contribution of health visiting and how to market health visiting to other agencies.

Transitions and electronic communication

It is the Institute’s core mission to strengthen the profession by promoting excellence in health visiting practice. To do this we collaborate and work in partnership in many different ways. Our resources are just one example; produced with subject experts and key individuals who can support us to support you.

Whilst we prioritise meeting face-to-face with many of these partners and having a presence where needed, we also increasingly use technology to work remotely and meet virtually. Our use of electronic communication mirrors the increasing reliance on electronic communication in clinical practice, and our collaboration and partnerships also reflect those sound inter-disciplinary relationships that underpin good transitions between Midwife and Health Visitor, and Health Visitor and School Nurse – with the resulting better outcomes for children, families and communities.

For our contribution today, we are continuing to highlight some of the resources and materials we have produced with the aim of promoting those that align with today’s theme. Do take a look in case you missed any when we originally published them.

Midwife to Health Visitor

We have an insightful statement written by researchers at City University (Dr Ellinor Olander, Ryc Aquino and Professor Ros Bryar – COPE Research team) on electronic communication as part of their original research programme incorporating Midwife and Health Visitor collaborative relationships – with links to their published work. Do take time out to have a look at their work and tweet them.

Health Visitor to School Nurse

PHE Updated 4-5-6 integrated infographic for health visiting and school nursing

In November 2016, Public Health England (PHE) published a new integrated 4-5-6 model for health visitors and school nurses.

PHE – Refreshed High Impact Areas 0-19

This cover refreshed High Impact Areas for early years (health visiting) and the High Impact Areas for school aged years (school nursing).

These documents support local authorities and providers in commissioning and delivering children’s public health services aged 0 to 19 years.  They are mainly intended for use by commissioners of health visiting and school nursing, and local authorities, to ensure that health visiting and school nursing services are commissioned effectively.

These documents identify 6 areas where health visitors have the highest impact on the health and wellbeing of children aged 0 to 5 years and a further 6 areas for school aged children from 5 to 19 years.

Some useful blogs previously published:

Resilience

Resilience relates to the ability to recover and bounce back from adversity and hardship. Resilient individuals demonstrate great flexibility, high energy levels, first rate mental agility and consequently can consistently perform at their highest level. They have strong relationships and robust support networks that help them to amplify their productivity and results.  As health visitors, we need to be resilient!  Below are some resources to help you:

  • helps health visitors to build their own emotional health and stay resilient in what are often challenging and complex work environments. Click your way through the tree to find the answers you need.
  • Based on the iHV’s Developing Resilience with Compassion training, this e-learning helps health visitors to update their knowledge and skills for developing resilience with compassion in practice.

 


Please note that some of these resources are available to iHV members only.

Many of the products highlighted will be those that are freely accessible on our website to non-members. However, as a not-for-profit organisation we are reliant on our members to contribute and to support us in our journey supporting you.

Remember, if you do like what you see and you would like to access the full range of resources you can join us as an Associate member or Friend for just £6.50 a month. Your subscriptions for professional membership will attract tax relief as the iHV is now HMRC approved. As a basic rate tax payer, this could mean relief of over £15 a year on your annual subscription.

So do join us now!

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Today’s #HVWeek topic: Maternal and Infant Mental health – a government priority.

What local initiatives have been developed? How do you raise its profile so that families are more easily able to speak out?

Welcome to Day 4 of national #HVweek

Today’s practice theme focuses on maternal and infant mental health – subjects very close to us here at the Institute. We know that:

  • Mental health problems in the perinatal period effect 1 in 5 women
  • New fathers’ depression rates are double the national average for men in the same age group
  • 122,000 babies under one are living with a parent who has a mental illness
  • The mental health of parents in the perinatal period can have long-term effects on the infant, especially in relation to their later emotional and behavioural development

Please do continue to tweet and send us your contributions this week – we would love to hear about perinatal and infant mental health initiatives in your community and showcase the fantastic work by health visitors out there.

We have a wealth of resources and materials to share with you below, to support you to work with confidence alongside families perinatally, providing evidence-based care underpinned by the growing number of local care pathways for perinatal and infant mental health.

Training

Since 2015, we have trained 550 HV Perinatal Mental Health Champions, and almost 300 HV Infant Mental Health Champions. More recently, we have extended our training to multi-agency audiences (with in excess of another 400 multi-agency PMH and PIMH Champions trained) in recognition of the seamless and integrated working required to support women and their families perinatally for good outcomes.

We are about to launch our new Fathers and PMH training course – so do keep an eye out for it!

e-learning

Based on our Champions training, our e-learning modules are designed to build on the theoretical underpinning that you use in practice, whilst refreshing and updating your practice.  Why not complete a module today?

Good Practice Points (for members only)

If you are a member, why not access our Good Practice Points (GPP) around mental health and wellbeing?

Videos

For those short of time, our videos are excellent, easy-view, short clips from national experts: Dr Jane Hanley on Maternal Mental Health; Dr Liz MacDonald-Clifford on Post-partum Psychosis

 

Parent Tips

We have a selection of top tips for parents on perinatal and infant mental health which we encourage you to share with your families:


Please note that some of these resources are available to iHV members only.

Many of the products highlighted will be those that are freely accessible on our website to non-members. However, as a not-for-profit organisation we are reliant on our members to contribute and to support us in our journey supporting you.

Remember, if you do like what you see and you would like to access the full range of resources you can join us as an Associate member or Friend for just £6.50 a month. Your subscriptions for professional membership will attract tax relief as the iHV is now HMRC approved. As a basic rate tax payer, this could mean relief of over £15 a year on your annual subscription.

So do join us now!

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Today’s #HVWeek topic: The health conversation – nutrition, dental care, lifestyle and exercise, accident prevention, particularly the health of migrant and vulnerable groups.

Due to the pressure created by having less contact time, how do you ensure the right health messages reach families?  It would be great to know how services ensure that vulnerable groups get good access to appropriate services and information.

Welcome back to Day 3 of national #HVweek

It is already Day 3 of national #HVweek17! We have really enjoyed seeing all your tweets and contributions so far this week, especially some of your contributions from children about what health visitors do. If you would like to submit a contribution of what your family thinks you do as a health visitor, please share on social media with #ProudtobeaHV or send it to us to share out.

Today’s theme focuses on health conversations and supporting health and lifestyle changes in families. With so much ground to cover and less contact time, how do you get alongside parents to ensure the right health messages reach families and really make every contact count?

To support your work in this area we are showcasing just some of our wide-ranging resources, including our Good Practice Points for working with minority groups. Why not take a look again at our e-learning, Good Practice Points, Voices blogs, videos and toolkits?

e-learning

Our two e-learning modules on Child Accident Prevention, developed with Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) and iHV Fellow Amanda Whelan, are free to access and designed especially for health visitors.

They are designed especially for health visitors, and are underpinned by research, policy and practice guidance for reducing unintentional injuries to children under the age of 5 in and around the home, as well as existing NICE guidelines on this topic.

The iHV e-learning package on Disability Matters supports both newly-qualified and experienced health visitors in understanding some of the issues faced by families when they receive a diagnosis of disability or learning difficulty for their child/children.

Good Practice Points  (for members only)

Our Good Practice Points make excellent bite-sized CPD to update your practice, and reading and reflecting on them can count towards Individual Learning for your NMC revalidation. All our Good Practice Points are evidence-based, written by subject-specific experts and peer-reviewed prior to publication.

Good Practice Points (GPPs): Working with Minority Groups (for members only)

We also have a series of Good Practice Points (GPPs): Working with Minority Groups which have been designed for Health Visitors (HVs), especially for student and newly qualified HVs and relate to the wide variety of diverse communities we encounter in modern day practice.

These include good practice points on working with a variety of diverse communities such as: FGM; Gypsy & Travellers; Chinese families; Special Needs; Homeless to name a few.

Blogs

For more inspiration read our refreshing Voices blogs from some inspirational and motivated practitioners, who share their practice and learning with us, including Trudi Law’s fantastic piece on Reducing Harm to Children from Unintentional Accidents (Homeless Families) or our pieces on the Ready Steady Mums initiative – our volunteer-led community-based socialcise programme for mums (and dads!)

Videos and Toolkits

Take a look at our videos and toolkits for community-based postnatal groups or building community capacity for more inspiration!

First Steps postnatal group resource pack – This accredited First Steps postnatal group resource pack has been developed and piloted by health visitors in Walsall around the six high impact areas for health visiting. The overarching aim of First Steps is to increase social capital and improve self-efficacy for the attending parents, ultimately improving outcomes for children and families.

The course is accredited as a 6-week postnatal group course to be delivered by health visitors as the lead facilitators for the programme.

Building Community Capacity – An Introductory Toolkit for Health Visitors – Health visitors require confidence to extend or renew their capabilities around building community capacity, taking advantage of social capital and resilience present in families and communities, and using the model for the development of the Community level of the service.

Parent Tips

Please share our top tips for parents on reducing accidents – there are quite a few parent tips sheets so here’s a link to the main page:


Please note that some of these resources are 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!

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Today’s #HVWeek topic: Healthy weight and the family – how you impact on the information and advice given to families to help them make better choices.

Welcome back to national #HVweek

We have really enjoyed reading your contributions on yesterday’s theme and hearing about your plans for this week. National HV week presents a phenomenal opportunity for us to showcase the best of health visiting practice, to show our impact and to share examples of good practice with our colleagues and commissioners around the four UK regions. We really are #ProudtobeaHV.

Today’s theme focuses on Healthy Weight and the family. The last 12 months have seen us take to the road with a grant-funded programme of Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition Champions training, with the outcome of 300 Champions created across England and Northern Ireland.

Training

Our Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition training focuses on the very broad, ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory evidence base for practice around healthy weight using a life course approach from pre-conception onwards. Increasing health visitor confidence in the current evidence base around family nutritional health is central to supporting authoritative practice that will see health visitors working confidently alongside parents around their choices for their families.

e-learning

The associated Healthy Weight, Health Nutrition e-learning is free to access and is provided over 5 separate modules – why not complete a module today?

Good Practice Points (for members only)

If you are a member, why not access our breastfeeding and infant feeding Good Practice Points (GPP)?

Videos

For those short of time our videos are excellent, easy-view, short clips from national experts Dr Helen Crawley (First Steps Nutrition) and Liz Ginty (HV and Baby Friendly Initiative) talking about the value of health visitor input working alongside family to help them make healthy choices around infant feeding.

Parent Tips

We have a selection of top tips for parents on breastfeeding and infant feeding which we encourage you to share with your families:


Please note that some of these resources are 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!

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Here at the Institute, we pride ourselves on our history of collaboration and partnership working, with our involvement in national #HVweek as a clear example of this.

The quality of our current partnerships and valuable working relationships mirror those that we previously enjoyed as practising health visitors; our relationships with our families, our colleagues, supervisors and most importantly our multi-agency relationships and partnerships with other professionals all central to reducing risk and improving outcomes for children and their families.

Today’s #HVWeek theme focuses on Safeguarding and the importance of good relationships and multi-professional working – and here are some of our resources to support you:

e-learning

In 2014, we delivered over 250 Domestic Violence and Abuse Champions and almost 200 Contemporary Issues in Safeguarding and Child Protection Champions, supported by the Department of Health. Our e-learning for both programmes is still open access to all practitioners who would like a refresher to support authoritative practice in these areas.  In addition, this year we have developed new e-learning to support a government campaign to reduce domestic slavery – this is also open access to all.

iHV Professional Guidance

For those short of time why not read our excellent iHV Professional Guidance (for iHV members only) –  Serious Case Reviews (SCRs): messages for health visiting practice by our expert Dr Catherine Powell, originally published in January this year.

Learning from SCRs plays a critical role in improving practice and in the prevention and early identification of children who are at risk of significant harm and many of the messages revolve around relationships and seamless working. Succinct, brilliantly collated and well-received, do look again if you missed it the first time around.

Good Practice Points

We have a wide range of Good Practice Points for Health Visitors – a few a listed below to support today’s #HVweek theme around Safeguarding:

Other resources

SAFER Communications Tool

These are guidelines for communications between health visitors and local authority children’s social care teams using the SAFER process when a child may be suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm*.
All verbal communications can be carried out using the SAFER process. It can also be used for ‘no name consultations’. The use of SAFER will ensure a uniform approach to communicating the level of risk to a child/children.


Please note that some of these resources are 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!

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The Institute of Health Visiting is delighted to offer partnership support once again to the national HV week 2017 – upcoming next week – 21 – 25 August 2017.

The themes for the week have just been published by CPHVA with a different clinical practice focus for each day of the week.

  • Monday (21 Aug) focus – materials to support safeguarding practice
  • Tuesday (22 Aug) focus – resources for healthy weight and the family
  • Wednesday (23 Aug) focus – supporting the health conversation – oral health, accidents, lifestyle and exercise and thinking about the needs of migrants and vulnerable groups
  • Thursday (24 Aug) focus – raising the profile of maternal and infant mental health
  • Friday (25 Aug) focus – Transition: midwife to health visitor, health visitor to school nurse

iHV Support for #HVWeek

For our part, we are planning to support and reinvigorate your practice by highlighting different iHV resources that will support excellence in your practice aligned to each of the published themes.

We are really looking forward to sharing our bite-sized CPD once again with you – from excellent iHV e-learning programmes, to peer-reviewed, evidence-based iHV Good Practice Points and invaluable iHV Parent Tips, and finally our brilliantly reflective Voices blogs from practitioners.

Do check our website, Facebook and Twitter feeds for news and resources throughout the week in support of our national health visiting week #HVweek.


Some of the products highlighted will be those that are freely accessible on our website to non-members. However, if you like what you see and would like to access our extensive full range of resources join us for just £6.50 a month. Remember subscriptions for our professional membership attract tax relief as the iHV is now HMRC approved. As a basic rate tax payer, this could mean relief of over £15 a year on your annual subscription.


We are also really keen to hear from youpractitioners, Associate members, Champions and Fellows about any of your activity during national HV week – share your news with us!

  • Let’s try and beat the reach of last year – tell us about your local contributions in your local community on each day – using our hashtag #ProudtobeaHV.
  • If you would still like to write a short Voices piece for our website during #HVweek around one of the themes do get in touch as it is not too late. Contact: [email protected]

Healthy Child Wales, a programme that will ensure every child up to the age of seven receives consistent and universal health services in Wales, was launched by the Minister for Social Services and Public Health Rebecca Evans today (26 September 2016) during #HVweek.

Next week is health visitor week.  The intention is to make health visiting as conspicuous as possible and we need your help.

Do take a few moments over the weekend/ on Monday with colleagues to think about how you could respond to this request.  If you have a selfie stick it might come in useful too!!

#ProudtobeaHV – Celebrate #HVWeek with your photos and stories

In support of #HVweek, we are encouraging all health visitors to share their photos, short videos, stories on Social Media (eg. Twitter and Facebook) about what makes them #ProudtobeaHV  – and using this hashtag to share it.

How are you making a difference to children’s lives?

Share what you do as an HV.

What makes you get out of bed every morning to do your HV work?

Take a photo of a colleague, take a short video of colleagues doing their work, post onto social media using the hashtag #ProudtobeaHV – and we will retweet/share/like your posts.

Let’s see how many fantastic stories, photos, videos and posts we can share next week.

So get ready to be #ProudtobeaHV – we think you’re all fantastic and doing a great job – so let’s make sure that everyone else knows too!

Join us in #HVweek and be #ProudtobeaHV

You might also like to ask some of your clients if they would like to put out a photo  with the slightly different hashtag #ProudofmyHV

Heres to a great week!!  Let’s make sure everyone knows about health visitors and health visiting – and join us on social media to share!

Do join the TwitterChat conversation on #iHVForum in support of #HVweek:

Monday 26 September – 7-8pm

Topic: Early support and the role of the HV

What are your thoughts?

Please do join us at 7pm on Monday 26 Sept on Twitter by following the hashtag #iHVForum.