We have been asked to speak at the British Dental Association expert summit on sugar and oral health in November 2018. The meeting will focus on communicating health messages around sugar consumption to the public and whether some messages are more difficult to convey ie. where health visitors would welcome support in relation to oral health.

We would be pleased to have the insights of health visitors and health visiting team members on what is confusing and what is helpful in addressing sugar consumption with families. The survey totals 13 short questions and should take an average of just 6 minutes to complete. Please tell us about some of the challenges regarding sugar consumption / oral health and give us some messages to take with us. Complete our survey now to share your views.

The iHV is committed to raising awareness of Fathers’ mental health – and we want to share a short survey from the Fatherhood Institute www.fatherhoodinstitute.org and Fathers’ Network Scotland http://www.fathersnetwork.org.uk .

The survey asks first-time fathers about their recent (within 5 years) experiences of maternity services in Britain. We think this is an important issue and hope you can spare five minutes to fill it out yourself (if you are eligible) or share it among friends, family and work colleagues.

So far 750 fathers have already shared their experiences in the survey – it would be great to get more feedback for them – so please do share the survey link.

The closing date is 31 May, and the results will be published in time for Father’s Day on 17 June 2018.


As part of the highly acclaimed iHV Perinatal and Infant Mental Health training offers, the iHV has a one-day Fathers and Perinatal Mental Health Champion training programme for all health and social care professionals

For further information please contact [email protected]

 

Families need joined up and integrated breastfeeding support services throughout their whole feeding journey, according to experts speaking at a conference hosted by the Institute of Health Visiting, Royal Society for Public Health and the World Breastfeeding Trends Initiative UK (WBTi) at the Royal Society for Public Health on 19 April.

However, a new survey by the Institute of almost 800 health visitors found that in the past 2 years 28% reported that their ability to support breastfeeding mothers had decreased, and 28% weren’t confident that other members of their teams, nursery nurses or peer supporters would be able to support mothers when they couldn’t.  This will be in part due to the fact that:

  • 50% of those surveyed reported recent cuts to breastfeeding support groups;
  • 54% reported cuts to breastfeeding support specialist services; and
  • 51% reported cuts to peer support programmes.

When asked what the health visitors felt were the most common reasons why mothers stop breastfeeding before they plan to, of the HVs surveyed:

  • 64% reported it was due to the attitudes amongst people around the breastfeeding mothers;
  • 58% felt that another issue was a lack of professional support;
  • 57% that breastfeeding doesn’t have a high enough national profile;
  • 44% that there is a lack of motivation to continue; and
  • 34% felt there is a lack of partner support.

These issues and more will be explored at this national conference (Breastfeeding: a public health priority) with speakers including: Dr Russell Viner (President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health) and Dr Natalie Shenker from the Hearts Milk Bank. Professor Amy Brown from Swansea University will also be presenting her latest research on the impact of breastfeeding on maternal mental health.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director of the Institute of Health Visiting, said:

“Once again we quantify the devastating effects of the cuts to public health budgets which started in 2015. We know that this situation will worsen up until 2020.  Such cuts are so counterproductive to the public’s health.

“Giving every baby the best possible start in life has many benefits for their health throughout the life course.  Breastfeeding is particularly beneficial, as a protective factor for an individual’s future health.”

Shirley Cramer CBE, Chief Executive, RSPH, said:

“Making sure all families have access to the support they need during the critical early stages of a child’s life is an urgent health inequalities issue, yet ongoing cuts to public health budgets are hampering the capacity of health visitors to deliver that support and undermining the public’s health.

“The numerous and well-documented health benefits of breastfeeding, including its role in combatting childhood obesity, mean it is critically important that we strive to improve stubbornly low breastfeeding rates across the UK.

“Breastfeeding can be challenging for many mothers and we must ensure we are proactively working to cultivate an environment and culture where all breastfeeding mothers are fully supported in their communities.”

The WBTi UK report (2016) incorporates the UNICEF UK Baby Friendly standards and recommends:

Integrated services in the community should include:

  • basic health professional training
  • additional social and peer support including the voluntary sector
  • access to specialist lactation support for complex cases
  • Baby Friendly Initiative accredited community settings such as Children’s Centres

Clare Meynell, WBTi Joint Coordinator, said:

“We see health visitors as being the lynchpin of such community support.  However, many mothers need more time and practical “one to one guidance” to get breastfeeding off to a good start.  Every health visiting area should also have an associated trained peer support system to support new mothers through the common ups and downs of life with a new baby.

“In addition, some mothers with complex circumstances will require an access pathway to specialist support, such as a lactation consultant.

“Future families need a warm chain of support services with skilled guidance to support their feeding journey from start to finish. That means all the way through pregnancy, birth, home from hospital, in the community and back to work. All of us have a responsibility to ensure the chain remains unbroken with a wide range of support in place for mothers and babies.”

According to calculations in the Lancet and research by UNICEF UK, stronger integrated breastfeeding support could actually save the NHS over £48 million a year, and result in a boost of billions to the UK economy in increased cognitive ability across the whole population.

Breastfeeding is a public health priority, and an investment in every child’s future. It is essential that effective support services and skills are commissioned and well integrated into existing services, to avoid families falling through the gaps.

Breastfeeding: a public health priority conference takes place in London on 19 April – for more information

Follow the day’s proceedings on Twitter and hashtag #breastfeeding2018

Improving Performance in Practice (iPiP) is working in collaboration with Public Health England (PHE) to review the role of health visiting and practice nursing in smoking in pregnancy and to develop tools to support their work.

To assist the team in understanding the situation, identifying current practice and to inform the development of training and learning resources, they have developed a survey for health visitors and would like to gather information on:

  • What you currently offer in your clinical practice area
  • What you believe would support you to work effectively and confidently with women and their families

They would appreciate you taking the time to give your views and feedback on Smoking in pregnancy – A Public Health Nursing Approach.

The survey should take no more than 10 minutes.

Survey closing date: Friday 13 April 2018

  • More than 1 in 3 health visitors worry that they are so stretched that there may be a tragedy in their area at some point
  • More than 1 in 5 health visitors are working with caseloads of over 500 children

Results from the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) annual survey 2017 show the worrying impact of a reduction in health visiting services on babies and families since responsibility for the service in England moved from the NHS to cash-strapped local authorities in October 2015.

This year’s iHV survey of over 1400 health visitors shows major concerns around safeguarding and protecting children at risk, with a third of health visitors in England feeling that they are so stretched that there may be a tragedy in their area at some point – this is up from 25% in 2015 and strongly suggests a very unsafe situation for both children and health visitors who must manage that risk and worry, and know they may be blamed if a child is injured.

The survey also disturbingly showed that more than 1 in 5 (21%) health visitors in 2017 are working with caseloads of over 500 children – which is in stark contrast to the 1 in 8 (12%) reported in the iHV survey in 2015 when the funding transferred from NHS to local government, and when a recommended ‘minimum floor’ was set of three whole time equivalent health visitors to cover 1000 children. The Institute recommends an average of one health visitor to 250 children to deliver comprehensive health improvement.

42% of those surveyed reported they can only offer continuity of care to vulnerable children and those subject to child protection processes (26% in 2015). This is worrying when it’s the ability of health visitors to build a trusting relationship with families over time that gives those families the confidence to disclose sensitive areas where they need help promptly.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, executive director of the Institute of Health Visiting, commented:

“Health visitors are advanced specialist practitioners, previously nurses or midwives, who are very skilled at working with families to support them through stressful times.

“We are being told that many families see a health visitor only until their child is 8 weeks old, with less skilled staff carrying out all their later developmental reviews.  Health visitors’ time is being targeted to picking up work once done by social workers in some areas of the country, meaning that these health visitors are not able to deliver their primary preventative role – the only professionals previously able to offer this as a universal service.

“Without a universal preventative service many children and families in need will be missed until their problems become serious, which goes completely against the role and responsibilities of a trained health visitor and where they can have their greatest impact.  Our worry is that the number of children needing care proceedings will increase, even more children will need mental health services, postnatal depression will go undiagnosed, there will be greater demand on GPs and hospital services and more children will enter school less well prepared in terms of their social, emotional and communication skills. Cutting the public health workforce is a false economy.”

Dr Adams continued:

“There is a significant research base that demonstrates the importance of investment in the early years to reduce later costs by up to eight or nine times including the cost of social care, the NHS and criminal justice services*. As a nation, we cannot afford to not invest in our children – they are our future.   There is already a large group of children and families who are affected by the recent reductions to public health budgets, and without new investment this number seems set to increase.”

* See the work of Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman: https://heckmanequation.org/resource/the-heckman-curve/ and Masters et al (2017), Return on investment of public health interventions: a systematic review http://jech.bmj.com/content/71/8/827

NHS England has put together a survey to help better understand the information that women want when making a decision about their maternity care.

They would like information from women who are pregnant or have had a child in the last two years. This will help to improve maternity information and care for women.

NHS England wants to find out what information is important to women, before deciding where to go for care before, during and after birth. They want to know when women want this information, and what format(s) would be most useful to them. This will be an excellent tool to inform how they shape information for women going forward to support them in making choices.

The survey should take about 15 minutes to complete.

They would really appreciate help from health visitors in cascading this survey to women – in particular, if you have links  with harder to reach groups, then that would be really appreciated.

Survey closes 31 March 2017.

Many thanks for your contributions to shaping this survey.

Women with mental health problems during and after pregnancy reveal the impact of low rates of specialist referral, long waits, as well as lack of consensus over medication and little support for their partners, in a survey published today (22 February) by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and supported by the Maternal Mental Health Alliance (MMHA).

The survey of over 2,300 women who had given birth in the last five years in the UK, explores their experiences of perinatal mental health problems, engagement with healthcare professionals and the quality of care they received.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, executive director, iHV, said:

“The Institute of Health Visiting, a member of the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, welcomes the results of the ‘Women’s Voices’ survey run by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and launched today.

“This survey gives real life evidence on the level of support that women receive when suffering from perinatal mental illness (PMI) – and the variation there is in the level of services across the country.  Health visitors are key healthcare professionals who are well-placed to identify and offer support to women suffering with PMI.  However, our own surveys have shown that, although parents will turn to their health visitor for support,  there is often insufficient time for the health visitor to offer the level of support required.

“We, at the iHV, deliver perinatal mental health (PMH) and infant mental health training to ensure standardised practice for health visitor professionals and the families they work with.  Our PMH training has now been delivered to well over 10,000 health visitors and others across England. However, for this training to have the impact it should, more health visitors need the time to use what they have learnt to improve services, especially at the recommended contacts.

“Perinatal mental health is an incredibly important area of healthcare which can have a negative effect on the health and wellbeing of babies and families and ultimately on our society when we don’t recognise it early. Health visitors have always made a huge contribution to supporting pre-school children and their families and are the best-placed professional to help give all children the best start in life during the early years of life.”

Professional development in speech, language and communication – new report from The Communication Trust.

Last summer, more than 1200 members of the children and young people’s workforce, including many health visitors, responded to a survey from The Communication Trust, which asked about their experiences of professional development in speech, language and communication (SLC). Their responses revealed that, although they were nearly unanimous in their belief in the vital importance of children’s SLC skills, there were significant gaps in their professional development in this area. The majority (53%) reported that they had had little to no initial training in typical speech, language and communication development, and 60% had little to no training in identifying and supporting children with speech, language and communication needs.

In England, there are likely to be at least two children in every primary school classroom with a clinically significant language disorder, and many more with delayed language development. The Communication Trust, in partnership with their consortium, works to maximise the impact of the voluntary sector and collaborate with government to devise effective solutions to improve the support that is provided to children and young people.

The Communication Trust has produced a report presenting the findings of their consultation with the workforce and offering recommendations to government and national bodies, local authorities and commissioners, the voluntary sector and training providers, and the workforce and service providers. Their recommendations were developed in consultation with their consortium and other key sector, practitioner, and academic partners.

Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF)

The Communication Trust works to support the workforce in enabling all the children and young people they work with to communicate to the best of their ability through resources such as the newly updated and improved Speech, Language and Communication Framework (SLCF). The SLCF is a free online professional development tool which sets out the skills and knowledge that everyone working with children and young people need in order to support the speech, language and communication development of those they work with. The SLCF self-evaluation tool enables individuals and groups of practitioners to highlight their professional development needs and to find training, resources or information to ‘fill the gaps’ identified by the SLCF.

If you have any queries on this, please contact [email protected]

The Contraception Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) launches its second survey to whittle down its long list to 25 research uncertainties.  On Monday 13 February, the Contraception Priority Setting Partnership’s second survey went live.

Since the close of its first survey, in which over 200 service users and healthcare professionals suggested around 500 questions that they want contraceptive care research to address, the Steering Group has followed the JLA process (James Lind Alliance process) to arrive at a long list of 57 verified unanswered research questions.

Now, they are asking service users and healthcare professionals to tell them which of these 57 questions they think are most important for research to answer, by ranking their top 10 from their long list.

They want to hear from:

  • individuals and their partners, who are using, have used or have thought about using contraception
  • healthcare professionals who provide contraceptive information, support and/or care

From this ranking, they hope to arrive at 25-30 questions that will be taken to the Contraception Priority Setting Partnership’s final prioritisation workshop on Friday 21 April.

PHE Children, Young People and Families team is seeking views of colleagues involved in the local commissioning and delivery of the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) on the existing resources that Public Health England (PHE) provides to support the programme.

They would greatly appreciate you taking the time to complete the survey. The survey asks for your views on the NCMP Operational Guidance, national template letters, leaflets for parents, and elected members briefing.

Your feedback will inform PHE’s work programme in updating these resources for the next school year. Please feel free to forward this email to colleagues involved in the NCMP who may also like to take part in the survey.

Please complete the survey by 31 January 2017.

Survey  now closed.

Please note that if your session remains idle for more than 5 minutes, the survey will automatically close and your survey will show as incomplete.  PHE therefore recommends that you set aside 10-20 minutes to complete this survey.  To end the survey correctly click ‘done’ on the final page.

Please contact [email protected] if you have any queries.  Feel free to forward to colleagues who may wish to participate.