Exclusive Lads Like Us recording is now available to view!

We are delighted to share an exclusive recording of the ‘Lads Like Us’ keynote session at our recent Evidence-based Practice Conference: ‘Hope for the Future’, held in Manchester on 21 September.

‘Lads Like Us’ was set up by Mike Hurst and Danny Wolstencroft who both experienced trauma, including sexual abuse, as children. They now deliver highly acclaimed training all over the country to multi-agency professionals, considering the impact of childhood trauma on mental health, substance misuse, offending behaviour and parenting.

The recording includes a short presentation by Mike followed by a group discussion between Mike and his former health visitor, Louise (Lou) Hamer, who he credits as being the person who ‘turned his life around’. Lou is now the Designated nurse for safeguarding children at Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB).

In his presentation, Mike speaks about how he was unexpectedly reunited with Lou when she attended their ‘Million Pieces’ training session as a delegate. During the training Mike shared the difference that his health visitor had made to him – and then Lou realised that he was speaking about her! Mike describes how Lou’s professional curiosity looked beyond the challenges he faced to understand the ‘why’ in his story and this was the catalyst for change.

Lou shared how much it has meant to her to be reunited with Mike – it has helped her make sense of her career, to see the difference that she had made – although in Lou’s words, she was only doing her job.

We hope that by sharing this story, every health visitor will take encouragement from knowing that they will have their own examples of people like ‘Mike’, whose lives they have impacted for good. However, only a few will have the privilege to meet up again like Mike and Lou.

The session was very impactful and is captured in this comment from one of our delegates:

“The parent voice session with Mike Hurst and Louise Harmer will stay with me for a long time. I will always ‘ask why’ from now on and think of them”.

Watch Mike and Lou’s session below (Advisory: this video contains adult/offensive language):

All iHV conferences set out to encourage and inspire. We are in the final stages of preparation for our annual Leadership Conference: ‘Leading in a complex world’ on 6 December in London and hope you can join us.

We always like to ‘do something different’ within the programme at our conferences to help us connect with the purpose of our work and think ‘outside the box’. At the Leadership conference, we are delighted to be able to showcase a short excerpt from a theatre production developed by the Champions Project to address the invisibility of children living in homeless accommodation. No spoilers – but this powerful production is breaking new ground in driving policy change using innovative approaches. It really is a ‘must see’.

We have a fantastic line up of high-profile speakers including but not limited to:

Dame Ruth May DBE – Chief Nursing Officer for England: A Nursing Strategy for Health Equity
Dr Camilla Kingdon – President RCPCH: Child health challenges: what are the solutions in a cost-of-living crisis?
Professor Bola Oluwabi – Director Health Inequalities NHS England: Tackling inequalities in child health
Toni Estevez – Lived Life Solutions Expert, Shelter: Temporary housing, poverty and health.

Don’t miss out on this great opportunity for professional development and also connect with practitioners from across the UK.

Book your early bird tickets today! Available until 31 October.

See the full programme here.

For further details and ticket pricing

Book your place now

Book 5 or more group tickets to get a further 15% discount

For more details on Lads Like Us please see: https://www.ladslikeus.co.uk/

iHV film supports #CelebratingCommunityServices Week

We are delighted that our film, “Health visiting in your community“, is being used to support the NHS Confederation’s Celebrating Community Services Week.

#CelebratingCommunityServices runs from 16 to 20 October and provides a concerted week-long special focus on community health services – explaining their role, the breadth of what they provide and the impact their services have. Taking place primarily on social media, it will bring services to life and celebrate their successes.

This year’s focus is on children and young people’s services – the breadth of what’s provided in the community, the difference it makes to people’s lives and why it is important to tackle backlogs of care in the community.

We are proud to share our film with NHS Confederation. It showcases the breadth of health visitors’ work and their critical role in supporting the health and wellbeing of thousands and thousands of families every week. So, it is particularly apt for this year’s #CelebratingCommunityServices.

The film captures the voices and stories of parents with a wide variety of different needs – they speak powerfully about the difference that the health visitor’s care and support made to their family when they needed it most. As health visitors often work alone, or in small teams in families’ homes, their work is often hidden and it’s easy to overlook how important it is.
Watch the short film below:

Sepsis resources – helpful for parents/and carers of children

The Clinical Policy Unit at NHS England has provided links to resources around sepsis which would helpful for parents/and carers of children. So please do share with your parents and families.

The resources they recommend are:

NHS Choices video - Spotting the Signs of Sepsis

NHS Choices video - Caring for Children with Fever at Home

The Sepsis Trust - Handbook for parents

For our members, we keep links to resources in our A-Z Library of resources. Please see our Sepsis resource page

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!