The cases of Chickenpox and Scarlet Fever have been rising throughout the UK – this can be worrying for families, and it can sometimes be difficult to know when you need to see your GP or get advice from your health visitor.

We are pleased to announce we have just updated our iHV Parent Tips on Chickenpox and Scarlet Fever. These leaflets will give you advice on what to look out for, how to look after your child or baby at home, and where you can get more information and support from.

Remember, if you are worried about your child or baby, contact your health visitor, GP or call NHS 111 for advice and support.

 

We are delighted to share 5 updated Parent Tips (providing advice for parents and families) and an updated Good Practice Points resource providing up-to-date evidence and references for our members.

Updated Parent Tips

(advice to share with parents and families)

 

Updated GPPs

Please note that GPPs are available to iHV members only do remember to sign in to access them:

 


Please note that GPPs 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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In support of Sexual Health Week 2021 #SHW21 (14-19 September 2021), iHV publishes updated Parent Tips (PT) and Good Practice Points (GPP) and also reshares its recently published Interactive Parent Leaflet for Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Interactive Parent Leaflet for Sexual and Reproductive Health

This interactive leaflet will help parents think about having a baby and any questions they may have.

PT – Sex and intimacy: understanding changes to your sexual wellbeing following the birth of your baby

Having a baby is a major change in any couple’s relationship, with many parents feeling less happy in their relationship after the birth of a baby. This isn’t surprising, as a new baby means less sleep, extra work and less time for each other.

We know that this can lead to changes in a couple’s sex life, with one third of couples continuing to experience sexual difficulties up to four years after birth. Sex and intimacy is one of the issues that parents argue about after they have a new baby, but it is also one of the areas that gets talked about the least.

These parent top tips bring together a collection of evidence-based tips that new parents can put into practice today.

GPP – Talking with parents/carers about their sexual wellbeing

These Good Practice Points set out what health visitors need to know on talking with new parents/carers about their sexual wellbeing after having a baby.

Having a baby is usually a happy event, but it’s also a major transition for parents/carers, leading to changes in lifestyle and putting an understandable strain on the couple relationship.



Please note that GPPs 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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We have updated a couple of our Good Practice Points, that are now available on our website. We also have an updated Parent Tip for you to share and point your parents to.

Check them out below.

Our GPPs are just one of the great benefits all iHV Members have!

 

 

GPP | How to reduce unintentional injuries in under 5-year olds

This GPP outline some key points in effective engagement with parents and guidance to reduce injuries along with up-to-date evidence and references.

 

 

 

 


GPP | Keeping infants and young children safe around dogs in the home

This GPP sets out to support health visitors working with families where a baby or young child may be at risk of harm from a dog.

 

 

 

 


PT | Sleep and the older child

Lots of things happen during sleep; babies and children grow, their brains develop, their bodies heal and repair, and their brains process the day. Children who are overtired in the long term can become more active and wanting attention, and this can be mistaken for not being tired.

 

 

 


Please note that GPPs 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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We are delighted to share news of our Changing Conversations Stakeholder event which took place virtually on 25 February. The event was a great opportunity to showcase our brand new coproduced Changing Conversations Toolkit (with many new resources to support those working with children with autism and their parents) and Changing Conversations Ambassador training.

iHV was supported by the Burdett Trust for Nursing to develop and offer a programme of training for health visitors to be “Ambassadors for Changing Conversation” for children with autism and their families. The training has been co-produced by parents and professionals to support health visitors in their role with families.

The new Changing Conversations resources were presented to all those who were involved in the development of the resources and a wide variety of stakeholders including parents, people with lived experience, Department for Education, NHS England & NHS Improvement, Health Education England, various NHS Trusts, charities working in the sector, and universities. For new resources please see links below for new Parent Tips and Good Practice Points.

The stakeholder event provided a great opportunity to share the resources with such enthusiastic people who have a real passion to improve the lives and life outcomes of children with autism and their families. The next step is for us to work with these stakeholders to look at how we can expand these resources and the awareness session to enable more health visitors to access these, and to consider how we address suggestions for development. These included considerations of how the resources can be tailored to meet your local needs as well as wider audiences including the Early Years workforce.

For updates on the project, do ask your local Changing Conversations Ambassador or contact us at [email protected]


New Resources

Parent Tips

To support the Changing Conversations project, iHV has published a series of new Parent Tips for health visitors to share with parents and families:

All families in the UK with children aged 0-5 years have a health visitor. Health visitors lead the “Healthy Child Programme”. This is a national public health programme to improve the health of babies, children and their families to enable a happy, healthy childhood and provide the foundations of good health into adult life.

Speaking, understanding and communicating are important life skills. It may seem that these skills happen naturally. They don’t. Parents have a very important role to play in helping their child’s development.

It can sometimes be hard for parents/carers of children with autism to understand and support their child’s behaviour. This can be frustrating for both the parents/carers and the child. This parent tip offers some simple strategies to support parents/carers to communicate what they would like their child to do.

 

Good Practice Points

To support the Changing Conversations project, iHV has published a series of new Good Practice Points for health visitors on working with children with autism:

One of the key aims of the Healthy Child Programme (2009) is to support ‘school readiness’, which includes the early identification of children showing signs of developmental delay and those who would benefit from early intervention. Speech, language and communication (SLC) skills are a core part of this and the promotion and review of these skills should be a part of every health visitor contact.

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability. Autistic people see, hear and feel the world differently to other people.

The key to a successful start at school, for children with complex health needs / SEND, lies in partnership working during preparation, transition and follow up. The number of children with complex health needs / SEND is increasing year on year. 3.3% of all pupils in schools in England have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan, a rise from 3.1% in 2019. A further 12.1% of all pupils have SEN support, without an EHC plan, up from 11.9% in 2019.

This GPP aims to support understanding of the what’s behind behaviour so that timely advice and support can be offered to families, tailored to the needs of the child. Behaviour, even when it appears different, is always about meeting a need. Everything we do is driven by our needs, which are common to all adults and children. People and children with autism have some additional needs. By understanding underlying behaviours, we can support children to explore their potential and to have their needs met in a different way if their behaviour is harmful or challenging.

 


Please note that these GPPs are available to Changing Conversations Ambassadors, those they have trained and iHV members.

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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Working in a pandemic has brought many challenges to both families and the health visiting service – but, unsurprisingly, the health visiting service in many areas has risen to these challenges with great professionalism, developing many innovations and workarounds to ensure that children and families receive the support that they need.

But you can’t pour from an empty cup and it is still important for health visitors to have time to reflect and learn during this pandemic which may continue for many weeks. To help you, we are pleased to publish today a bundle of five fabulous Good Practice Points, as well as hold our first virtual online iHV Member Event tomorrow (Thursday) on “COVID-19 in children and managing minor childhood illnesses”.

As a Centre of Excellence, the Institute supports the development of universally high quality health visiting practice so that health visitors can effectively respond to the health needs of all children, families and communities, enabling them to achieve their optimum level of health, thereby reducing health inequalities. To achieve our aim, we are constantly working to improve and develop benefits for our health visitor Associate and Student members, and our Friend members who work closely with health visiting  services.

We know through feedback from our membership surveys that our Good Practice Points (GPPs) are the resources most valued by our members. We try to write Good Practice Points that are relevant to health visitors and where there might be gaps currently.  We write GPPs with the help of authors that are experts and informative, give the evidence base and enable health visitors to be better equipped in their clinical practice.

Good Practice Points (GPPs) are available for members of the iHV; and Parent Tips (PTs) are available to parents who access our website or via health visitors sharing them – we work with parents to develop our Parent Tips.

New resources

Today, we are pleased to publish a selection of new GPPs to support our members in practice. These are:

Any new GPP/PT Topics or would you like to be involved?

We would really love to hear from you if you have any specific topics that you think would benefit from having  a GPP and/ or PT created, or if you would like to write a GPP or PT, or if you would like to be involved in our peer review process.  Peer reviewers look at all GPPs and PTs during our production process and we feed their comments back to the author.

Please contact [email protected]  if you would like to find out more about getting involved or with your thoughts and ideas of new GPPs and PTs.


Please note that GPPs 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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While the impact of COVID-19 on children is thought to be minimal, evidence is emerging that children and families are unsure about how to manage common childhood illnesses and when/ where to seek medical advice.

The Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health (RCPCH) has raised concerns that families are worried about the risks of infection from COVID-19 and are not accessing medical advice as soon as is needed. To support parents, the RCPCH and “Healthier Together” have produced a guide, “Advice for parents during coronavirus”.

The iHV has also been working with “Healthier Together” and today we are launching five newParent Tips” on managing the most common childhood illnesses, with signposting to further advice for parents to help ensure children get the right care at the right time and right place.

We have also developed a new Good Practice Point to support health visitors make the best use of these Parent Tip resources and provide evidence-based advice when parents are unsure what to do when their child is unwell.

Acknowledgement and thanks:

The content of these Parent Tip advice sheets was developed by “Healthier Together” and adapted by the Institute of Health Visiting with permission from Dr Sanjay Patel. More information on the full range of Healthier Together resources and what to do if you are worried that your child is unwell are available here:

 

We are delighted to share updated Good Practice Points and Parent Tips, published in support of our updated Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition training programme.

Updated Parent Tips

(advice to share with parents and families)

Updated GPPs

Please note that GPPs are available to iHV members only. Electronic versions of these updated Good Practice Points (providing up-to-date evidence and references for our members) are available to our members on the links below – do remember to sign in to access them:

 


Please note that GPPs 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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It’s #safersleepweek – the iHV is delighted to share updated resources for parents and health visitors on safer sleep!

Parent Tips – Safer sleep for your baby

Please share these updated Parent Tips on safer sleep with parents and families:

 

Good Practice Points – Safer sleep (iHV members only)

This revised and updated GPP on safer sleep provides up-to-date evidence and references for our Associate members:


Please note that GPPs 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 iHV is delighted to share updated Good Practice Points (providing up-to-date evidence and references for our Associate members) and updated Parent Tips on Umbilical Granuloma.

Umbilical granulomas are one of the most common umbilical conditions to occur in neonates. A granuloma results from an overgrowth of cord tissue remaining after separation of the cord.

Updated GPP – Treatment of Umbilical Granuloma using Household Salt.

These Good Practice Points (updated 2017), authored by Alison Timmins, Health Visitor, Leicestershire Partnership Trust, set out what health visitors need to know about the Treatment of Umbilical Granuloma using Household Salt. Health visitors are well-placed to assess umbilical granuloma and offer advice on its treatment. This GPP provides up-to-date evidence and references.

Updated Parent Tips – Understanding Umbilical Granuloma

An umbilical granuloma is an overgrowth of tissue during the healing process of the belly button (umbilicus). It usually looks like a soft pink or red lump and often is wet or leaks small amounts of clear or yellow fluid. It is most common in the first few weeks of a baby’s life. These Parent Tips explain to parents what could happen with their baby’s tummy button.


Please note that  GPPs 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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