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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