iHV Expert Adviser for Scotland Health Visiting Policy is appointed

In response to our growing policy portfolio at the iHV and the need to strengthen our policy presence across Scotland, we are delighted to announce that Christopher Sweeney has been appointed as iHV Expert Adviser for Scotland Health Visiting Policy.

Christopher Sweeney, iHV Expert Adviser for Scotland Health Visiting Policy

Christopher will bring his expertise and knowledge of Scottish policy relating to babies, children and families and health visiting practice to the iHV. He will be supporting iHV engagement within Scottish networks to strengthen our involvement in national workstreams which relate to improving outcomes for babies, children and families, and creating excellence in health visiting.

The iHV has a committed and highly regarded team, with professional expertise in numerous public health priority topics for babies, young children, and families. We work with leading experts, practitioners, parents, and carers through our advisory forums, networking events, surveys, and co-production groups. Our growing network of voluntary Expert Advisers ensures our members’ perspectives shape our work, keeping the iHV’s decisions and policy positions grounded in practice and evidence.

Christopher joins this growing network of iHV Expert Advisers, bringing a wealth of experience to the role. He is a Health Visitor and Clinical academic fellow and has previously worked as a Practice Development Nurse and Health Visitor in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and Nurse Activity Manager with Médecins Sans Frontières in South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia.

Christopher completed his master’s research titled ‘Exploring Glasgow parents’ views of the Equal Protection from Assault (Scotland) Bill’ and he is now in the final stages of his PhD where he is exploring how new parents respond to childhood illness and make decisions to use urgent care services.

Christopher is also one of our Scottish iHV Health Visiting Advisory Forum (HVAF) members and he has been supporting our work, including iHV Practice Education and Research workstreams.

Below is a picture of Christopher in action when he attended Parliament during this Summer with Alison Morton, iHV CEO. Alison was giving oral evidence to First 1000 Days Inquiry and invited Christopher and Amanda Hall (another HVAF member) to join her in Parliament.

We are looking forward to working with Christopher and strengthening our engagement and involvement across our Scottish national workstreams and our mission to create excellence in health visiting.

iHV calls for more health visitors in Spending Review submission

Yesterday, the iHV submitted its policy proposals to the government’s Spending Review making the case for rebuilding health visiting services in England. The Spending Review provides an important opportunity for professional bodies to influence government spending over the next three years. The government has stated that they will use the Spending Review to change the way public services are delivered by embedding a mission-led approach, driving forward public service reform and making the best use of technology to better deliver services.

Our response brings together the collective voice of health visitors captured in our annual survey and the wider work of the Institute, outlining the poor state of child health and rising levels of need experienced by babies, children and families that cannot be ignored any longer. We are delighted that our call for investment in health visiting has attracted widespread support from across the child health and early years sector – the message is clear, we need more health visitors!

To improve our nation’s health and reduce pressure on NHS services, much greater attention needs to be given to prevention, early identification of health needs, and early intervention in the critical earliest years of life. Health visitors have a vital role to play as part of the “health” workforce, contributing to multiple clinical pathways through pregnancy, the perinatal period, and 0-5 years (for babies, children and adults).

It is therefore vital that the “broken” state of health visiting is addressed, alongside the NHS, with action to reverse the loss of more than 40% of health visitors since 2015. The cuts to health visiting services have been a false economy, impacting on families’ quality of healthcare and placing additional burdens and costs on other parts of the healthcare system.

Our request aligns with the government’s objectives to prevent ill-health by improving child health, and reform health visiting to reduce spiralling costs of late intervention. Our brief summary sets out our policy proposal:

To address the loss of more than 40% of health visitors (HVs) since 2015 and ensure all families receive support in line with the Healthy Child Programme, ring-fenced funding is needed for 1,000 extra HV posts each year for the next 3 years.
To reform health visitor services and support workforce retention, salary uplift funding is needed for 689 specialist HV posts (providing clinical leadership for government priorities, like perinatal mental health, immunisations and SEND).

Benefits and policy rationale

More health visitors are needed to deliver the government’s ambitions for prevention and early intervention (across health, education and social care), including reducing children’s A&E attendance and improving immunisation uptake, the quality of postnatal care, and early identification and support for “school readiness” and SEND.

Deliverability of proposals: It is far easier to rebuild and reform a tried and tested service like health visiting than invent a new preventative health workforce, with all the regulatory and training infrastructure needed for quality assurance and to protect the public. We welcome the government’s commitment to “reform health visiting”. This will require actions to improve workforce capacity, recruitment and retention.

Costs:

Costs of 1,000 more health visitor posts are £52.9m for year 1, £105.8m for year 2, and £158.7m for year 3.
Salary uplift costs for 689 specialist HV posts are £8.64m per annum (from band 6 to band 7).

We submitted our brief policy summary online on 10 September, alongside our supporting information and costings – available here.

General election 2024 – what we want from the next government

As well as supporting health visitors, one of the iHV’s most important roles is to influence policies that affect the health of babies, children and families. We do this in a number of ways – by working with policymakers and politicians across the UK and by raising the profile of what health visitors do, and its importance in a modern healthcare system.

We are fortunate to live in a time when we have more evidence than any other generation on the importance of getting it right in the earliest years of life – alongside supporting every child to reach their full potential, investing in these formative years also makes sound economic sense.

It is now time for the future government to step up to the plate to make “giving every child the best start in life” a reality!

Alongside tackling the wider determinants of health, all families should expect modern health services during pregnancy, the postnatal period and the earliest years of life that are on a par with the best in the world. Currently, families with babies and young children face a postcode lottery of support, health inequalities are widening, more children are falling behind with their development and are being harmed by conditions that are entirely preventable. Families are calling for better care.

On 4 July, voters will be going to the polls to decide which party they will trust with the leadership of our country, with health as one of the key issues.

The iHV is calling for a significant increase in the number of health visitors in England with three clear asks of the next government:

Policy: All families should receive the full offer of health visiting support as set out in national policy in the Healthy Child Programme and Health Visiting Model for England.

Asks:

Funding: All areas need sufficient funding to deliver the full specification for the national health visiting model and Healthy Child Programme Schedule of Interventions. Long-term investment, with ring-fenced funding, will help services to plan and build world-class services, ending the uncertainty of short funding cycles.
Workforce: The national long-term workforce plan to retain, train and reform the health visiting workforce needs to be delivered in full, alongside funding for substantive posts. Demand-driven workforce modelling is needed to ensure that the workforce plan enables sufficient capacity to deliver the Healthy Child Programme to all babies, children and families as intended – it is estimated that 5,000 more health visitors are needed to meet the scale of families’ needs and replace workforce losses since 2015.
Governance: Update OHID 0-19 Commissioning guidance – providing greater clarity and system levers to ensure equity of health visiting provision throughout England and ending the current postcode lottery of support that families face during pregnancy, postnatally, and through the first five years of their child’s life.

Key Messages:

Children born in England have some of the worst child health outcomes compared to other similar nations, with widening health inequalities, growing concerns about invisible vulnerable children, and soaring costs of late intervention. Tackling this requires a whole system response, including action to address the wider determinants of health. Action is also needed at an individual and community level to prevent, identify and treat problems before they reach crisis point. Health visitors provide an important part of the solution. When sufficiently resourced, they provide a vital infrastructure of support for families with babies and young children – with benefits that accrue across the health, education and social care system.
There are currently no levers to ensure that national policy set out in the Healthy Child Programme and Health Visiting Model for England are delivered. Families face a postcode lottery of support, with health visiting services experiencing significant cuts and role drift from their core “health” functions across numerous clinical pathways during pregnancy, postnatally, and throughout the early years. The needs of babies, children and families do not vary that much between local authority areas to justify the current variation in health visiting services across England.
Health visiting is the only service that proactively and systematically reaches all families from pregnancy and through the first five years of a child’s life. This provides support for all families across a breadth of physical health and mental health needs (for babies, children and adults), child development, social needs and safeguarding, and a vital safety-net for the most vulnerable that is not provided by any other service.
Cuts to health visiting services are having knock-on consequences across the health, education and social care system (for example, falling immunisation rates, fragmented postnatal care, increase in A&E attendance for children 0-4 years, inequalities in obesity rates, poor school readiness and soaring costs of late intervention/ child protection). Through their specialist public health role, health visitors can prevent, identify and work with families to treat problems before they reach crisis point.

For more information on the importance of health visiting, read: The role of the health visitor, where are we now?

Watch our short film: “Health visiting in your community”

To understand how cuts to health visiting impact families and other services, watch our iHV film on soaring rates of A&E attendance in children aged 0-4, “Can you see my baby? Health visitors prevent emergencies”

New opportunity with iHV – Policy and Quality Lead

New and exciting opportunity with the Institute

Are you:

A leader in 0-5 public health policy and practice?
Passionate about the potential of improving babies, young children and their families’ outcomes through a strengthened health visiting service and greater emphasis on evidence-driven prevention and early intervention?
An excellent communicator, motivated by presenting the evidence needed to inform change?

If yes, then come join us. This is an excellent opportunity to join the iHV as our Policy and Quality Lead to support the further development of our policy and quality functions, and particularly to support the Executive Director and wider team activity.

This is a senior position at the iHV and the successful applicant will have a track record of policy development, managing change and quality improvement, with experience of managing and coordinating public health projects and building strong collaborations with stakeholders. As the Policy and Quality Lead, you will have a central role in developing and delivering the iHV policy and quality portfolio, including further development of the iHV Vision for health visiting. You will work in a matrix way across all the departments at the iHV and with external stakeholders to ensure that we achieve our policy and quality objectives.

Candidates must have at least a masters in a relevant area. You will apply your expertise and knowledge of preventative public health and the policy environment to accelerate progress of the potential within health visiting to address key questions in health inequalities and health improvement for population health (with a focus on babies, young children and their families). You will have significant personal drive and be able to demonstrate that you are passionate about improving the lives of children and families.

The post will suit candidates who have worked in government/the charity sector supporting the development of policy, as well as experienced health visitors and those who have a portfolio of additional skills including research, quality assurance and supporting local or national policy development.

Applications close: 8am Monday 29 March 2021
Interviews: Thursday 1 April 2021

For further details, job description and application form

iHV responds to Children’s care crisis

iHV responds to Local Government Association (LGA)’s analysis on children’s social care, published today, which calls for Government to use the upcoming Spending Round to fully fund the demand on children’s services next year to allow councils to provide the vital support that children and families rely on.

Severe funding shortages and huge demand pressures mean councils were forced to overspend on their children’s social care budgets by nearly £800 million last year in order to try and keep children safe, the Local Government Association reveals today.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director iHV, commented:

“The Institute has long warned that more children entering safeguarding procedures and care would be an inevitable consequence of cutting preventive services such as health visiting which identifies needs in families early, mobilises support for families in need and reduces long-term negative consequences of late identification for these children, such as safeguarding issues and care proceedings. These new figures should be of concern to the whole population as, as well as negatively impacting on the child his/herself and their potential future, these high levels of vulnerable children impact crime rates and criminal justice budgets and increase demand on the NHS from complex health needs.

“One in three health visitors has been lost over the past 4 years and the imposition of unhelpful new ways of working makes it impossible for the profession to adequately offer the necessary long term support that some families need. Alongside the LGA, we also call on the Prime Minister and Treasury to use the upcoming spending review to reinvest into public health, preventative and children’s services. The economic arguments are clear.”

Read LGA article: Children's care crisis: councils forced to overspend almost £800m on children's social care

iHV delighted to announce new Director

The Institute of Health Visiting is delighted to announce the appointment of their first Director, Alison Morton, who joined the Institute today as Director of Policy and Quality.

Alison Morton, Director of Policy and Quality iHV

Alison was one of the Institute’s first five Fellows. Her most recent role has been as Best Start in Life Programme Manager at Public Health England.

Alison commented:

“I am delighted to be joining the Institute at a time when the spotlight is once again shining on the importance of the first few years of a child’s life as a foundation for future health and wellbeing. The evidence is clear that investing in early intervention and prevention is the right thing to do if we are serious about wanting every child to achieve their potential. Yet there remain persistent, unacceptable inequalities in outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with disabilities, as well as unwarranted variation in support for children and their families dependent on where they live. These inequalities result in poorer physical and mental health, academic achievement and employment prospects throughout the life-course.

“Whilst it can be tempting to invent a ‘new wheel’ when faced with a complex set of problems across society, I strongly believe that the health visiting service provides a crucial part of the ‘solution’ for a number of government departments who fund late intervention. Crucially, the evidence highlights the key role that the health visiting service plays in leading the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme (0-5 years), in partnership with a wide range of other agencies. I look forward to working with health visitors throughout the country and partners working in maternity and early years, as well as government departments, to strengthen the health visiting service and ensure that every child truly does have the ‘Best Start in Life’.”

2 new and exciting opportunities with the Institute

We are delighted to share 2 new opportunities with iHV:

Director of Policy and Quality
iHV Practice Development Lead

Director of Policy and Quality

The iHV is seeking to appoint its first Director to take responsibility for the further development of our policy and quality functions, whilst supporting the Executive Director and wider team activity.

The successful applicant will be educated to Doctoral level, or equivalent academic/professional leadership experience, and will have a strong track record of leading policy and quality initiatives, as well as of budgetary management and contracting.

Applications close: 9.00 am, Monday 14 January 2019

Interviews: Tuesday 22 January 2019 (please hold this date in your diary if applying)

For further information or an informal conversation about this post please contact Dr Cheryll Adams, [email protected]

For more information and how to apply

iHV Practice Development Lead

The iHV is seeking to appoint a lead officer for practice development, working across the whole organisation and with the expectation that one day a week will be allocated to supporting iHV training functions.

The postholder, will have minimum of a master’s degree and a strong education and practice development background.

Applications close: 9:00am Friday 11 January 2019

Interviews: afternoon on Monday 21 January 2019 (please hold this time in your diary if applying)

For further information or an informal conversation about this post please contact Dr Cheryll Adams [email protected]

For more information and how to apply