Tags: men

iHV welcomes England’s Men’s Health Strategy

The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) welcomes the publication of England’s first-ever Men’s Health Strategy, launched today on International Men’s Day. The Strategy marks an important national commitment to improving health outcomes for men and boys and includes a strong focus on inequalities, mental health and suicide prevention, and supporting men to access care earlier.

Men experience poorer health outcomes across many areas, are less likely to seek help early, and account for three-quarters of all suicides. The Strategy’s focus on improving access, tackling stigma, and meeting men ‘where they are’, including through community settings, workplaces and a new partnership with the Premier League, is therefore strongly welcomed.

The Strategy acknowledges the importance of men’s roles within families and the wider community, recognising that men’s health is shaped across the life course, including during key transitions such as early fatherhood. This aligns strongly with the iHV’s longstanding work to strengthen support for fathers and co-parents. Health visitors play a vital role in engaging fathers during pregnancy, at the birth of their baby, and throughout the early years. In our response to the Men’s Health Strategy consultation earlier this year, and through our wider work in research, training, evidence-based resources and professional guidance, we have continually championed the importance of father-inclusive practice in improving outcomes for the whole family.

The Strategy’s emphasis on strong social, community and family networks, as one of its six key levers for change, reinforces the need for integrated services that recognise fathers as active partners in their child’s health and development. Health visitors are uniquely positioned to support this ambition through their universal contact with families, trusted relationships and expertise in early intervention.

Several areas of the Strategy are directly relevant to health visitors’ work with men and fathers, including:

  • Investing £3.6 million in suicide prevention projects targeting middle-aged men, alongside the Premier League’s Together Against Suicide initiative to tackle stigma and raise awareness in settings where men are already engaged.
  • Improving access to care, including the expansion of neighbourhood health centres and enhanced digital tools within the NHS App, to support earlier help-seeking.
  • £3 million for community-based men’s health programmes, designed to reach underserved groups and those less likely to engage with traditional services.
  • New e-learning for professionals to support men’s health training, which will complement existing father-inclusive practice training within health visiting.
  • A commitment to co-designing services with men, including new fathers, to improve responsiveness and trust.

Dr Sharin Baldwin, iHV Senior Health Visitor Research Lead said:

“The publication of the Men’s Health Strategy is good news for men and for society as a whole. At the iHV, we have been working for many years to highlight the importance of men’s health issues, particularly during the perinatal period. The new Men’s Health Strategy represents a significant step forward. We look forward to working with Government and partners to ensure that fathers and male caregivers are fully included as the strategy is implemented, helping to improve outcomes for men, their children and families, and the wider community.”

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iHV responds to national review “The Myth of Invisible Men”

The publication of yesterday’s hard hitting national review, “The Myth of Invisible Men”, by the independent Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel, provides a stark reminder that babies are being let down in this country and, for some, the consequences are catastrophic and life-changing.

Alison Morton, Executive Director iHV, said:

“This hard hitting report highlights yet again that babies pay the ultimate price for the failings in the systems designed to safeguard and protect them. Babies cannot speak – they rely on the adults around them to protect them and, when this is not possible or their parents need additional help and support, they need to live in a world where there are skilled professionals who can spot their distress and step in to help. This is why we are calling on the Government to invest in health visiting as a vital safety net for babies and young children.”

The report highlights that 35% of all serious incident notifications involve serious harm to babies, the vast majority involving physical injury or death. This is the biggest category of all notifications that the Panel sees. In the majority of cases where babies have been injured or killed, men are the perpetrators – research suggests that men are between 2 and 15 times more likely than women to cause this type of harm in under 1s. The greater prevalence of male abusers sits alongside a description of men as too often being ‘hidden’ or ‘invisible’ to safeguarding agencies.

The review focuses on non-accidental injury (NAI) in infants under the age of 1 and seeks to answer the following questions:

  • ‘How well does the safeguarding system understand the role of the father/male carer?’
  • ‘How can the safeguarding system be more effective at engaging, assessing and planning for and with men in the protection of children (or those for whom they have a parenting responsibility)?’

The review concludes that there is “an urgent need to improve how the system sees, responds to and intervenes with men who may represent a risk to the babies they are caring for. For this group of men, the role that they play in a child’s life, their history of parenting and their own experiences as children and how this effects them as adults, are too frequently overlooked by the services with responsibilities for safeguarding children and for supporting parents.”

Read review - The Myth of Invisible Men