Today Programme

The impacts of the pandemic on babies, young children and health visiting have hit the headlines. Alison Morton, iHV CEO, joined the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme on Saturday morning (11 October 2025) in a news item on the week’s proceedings from the COVID-19 Inquiry. The BBC has also produced a podcast on this topic as part of its BBC Sounds series, “The Covid Inquiry Podcast”.

The Radio 4 Today Programme interview was set up following Alison’s oral evidence presented to the COVID-19 Inquiry Module 8 Public Hearings last week relating to the impact of the pandemic on children, young people and their health services (read our news story here).

If you missed Alison’s interview on Saturday morning, the COVID Inquiry news item starts about 1:42:01 into the Today Programme with an article which summarises the week’s proceedings at the Inquiry, including an extract from the hearing for Module 8 which is focused on babies, children and young people. This is followed by a live interview of Alison by Simon Jack of the Today Programme at 1:47:52.

Speaking about the lasting legacy of the pandemic and the need for urgent action to address this, Alison said:

“We actually have some of the poorest child health across the globe, amongst similar nations – it’s nothing to be proud of, we are right at the bottom of league tables and our child safeguarding systems are overwhelmed. We are getting this incredibly wrong. We’re firefighting and we need to go upstream.”

Alison concluded:

“For many adults, the pandemic is a distant memory and, for most people, life has moved on. But actually, for children, it feels a bit more like a tsunami and they’re in the thick of these repeated waves of the pandemic’s aftershocks and the impacts are plain to see. And we have to take this seriously because they are the future of our nation and we need to get things right for children. We are seeing it across all areas of child development and actually services are overwhelmed: you’ve got hugely long waiting lists; children waiting to be seen for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities; we’ve got delayed identification of need – you can’t treat problems unless you find them; and then obviously delays in accessing treatment.

“At the moment, our children’s services are seriously underpowered to meet the needs of our children – and we have to take it seriously… We need to take this seriously way before children start school – that’s too late!”

Listen to Alison on the Today Programme

Recording available for 29 days only from 11 October 2025
Listen to the COVID Inquiry news item which starts about 1:42:01 into the programme
Listen to Alison Morton’s live interview – starts at 1:47:52

Listen to Radio 4 Today Programme - 11 October

BBC Sounds – The Covid Inquiry Podcast– Episode 56 – ‘Needs Soared Through the Roof’

The inquiry hears how the pandemic affected vulnerable children. The Covid Inquiry takes a second week of evidence on how children and young people were affected by the pandemic. During this week, Alison Morton from the Institute of Health Visiting describes the impact of stopping home visits to new parents, and how staff were redeployed. There is also evidence from Chief Nursing Officer for England Duncan Burton, Scottish First Minister John Swinney, and representatives of schools with high numbers of disadvantaged students. Vanessa Clarke reports.

Listen to The Covid Inquiry Podcast- Episode 56

How you can help? Today’s Babies

A special new series from BBC Radio 4 Today Programme launched on Saturday, called Today’s Babies. It is widely recognised that the first few years of a child’s life, those are the crucial years, to their future wellbeing, but little time is dedicated to looking closely at the experience in Britain of those early years and how different it can be for parents across the country.

So, the Today Programme will be following three families who are expecting their first child at the start of next year – checking regularly with the families, from pregnancy right through the first 5 years of the child’s life.

The Today Programme needs your help:

Are you expecting your first baby in the New Year, or your first grandchild?
Do you work with expectant parents?

If any of these apply to you, please contact via email to [email protected] or send a WhatsApp to 0330 123 4346-.

Alison Morton, CEO iHV, joined Mishal Husain as a guest on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning to speak about the state of health visiting in England. The interview was set up in response to yesterday’s hard-hitting report from the Academy of Medical Sciences which was featured on their programme, highlighting a growing crisis across the early years – with wide ranging evidence of declining health that takes root from preconception through pregnancy to the first five years of life.

If you missed Alison’s interview, the news item on the Today programme starts at 53:36 with Mishal Husain summarising the findings from Sir Andrew Pollard’s report and its urgent call for the health of the under 5s to be addressed. Mishal questioned the role of health visitors in addressing some of these issues and asked Alison for her views on why so many families were missing out on this vital support:

Alison said:

“We just heard yesterday, Andrew Pollard’s report talks about how important it is to identify problems and treat them early….. We have a huge problem with the number of health visitors in England.

“All families in England should be entitled to see a health visitor from pregnancy to age of 5…We know many are missing out.

“Health visitors are supporting millions and millions of families every year, but we’ve had a 40% cut in our workforce over the last 9 years and now there aren’t enough health visitors to meet the scale of need. And sitting alongside the increased need that we heard about yesterday, we really should be investing in health visitors rather than cutting the service further.”

When asked if it was an England problem when comparing to the 11 health contacts that Scotland provides and that 9 that Wales provides, Alison commented:

“It’s hugely variable across all the UK nations, and also within England itself. So in some parts of the country, families are getting a pretty good level of support and in other areas families are getting virtually nothing.

“We know many children are not receiving the support that they need. And actually what that does is that it strips out the mechanism to identify problems early, to treat them before they reach crisis point. So, what we’re seeing is knock-on consequences into other services – we’ve heard about the soaring rates of A&E attendance… the under 1s are the highest users of A&E, and the rate has increased by 42% in the last 10 years in England. Whereas, in Scotland, they don’t have this problem, because they have intensive home visiting by health visitors who support families in the heart of the community.”

When asked about the 5 mandated visits in England, Alison commented:

“This is the bare minimum…. That is an opportunity to reach families. Health visitors’ USP is that they reach all families. They are the only service that proactively and systematically reaches families with babies and young children. This is vitally important because we know that babies are our most vulnerable citizens, at the highest risk of harm, and also, we know that the foundations of future health and wellbeing are laid in early childhood, so getting support early really makes a huge difference.”