Practice-based resources to support babies, children and families this winter

Babies under one year of age have the highest Emergency Department (ED) attendance rate, as highlighted in our recent report ‘Understanding the rise in 0-4-year-old Emergency Department (ED) attendances and changing health visiting practice‘. Respiratory illnesses represent 3 of the top 5 reasons for ED attendance and include: upper respiratory tract infections, tonsilitis and bronchiolitis. The report also highlighted that 59% of A&E attendees did not need investigations, treatment, or hospital admission, and were sent home after reassurance.

With this in mind, it is important for health visitors and other healthcare professionals to have knowledge and understanding of current respiratory illnesses, the signs and symptoms, and advice to be able to offer parents to help enable them to look after their children at home and know when to seek further help and support.

Over the last 3 years the iHV has been working closely with NHSE, Barnardo’s, Bliss, Contact and Healthier Together to create resources for parents and healthcare professionals about a variety of winter illnesses, which include:

Bronchiolitis and RSV
Croup
Difficulty breathing and wheeze
Fever, and fever under 3-months
Breathing difficulties in babies under 3-months
Strep A and Scarlet Fever
Flu

The related resources come in a range of formats – from e-learning and webinars for healthcare professionals/practitioners, to resources for parents including “When to worry” written resources, plus filmed and animated resources in the following languages: Bengali, Gujarati, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Spanish and Urdu, as well as English.

Webinar

On Tuesday 16 January 2024, 15:00-16:30, we are delivering a webinar which aims to refresh practitioners’ knowledge and to share the wide range of resources that we have available in more detail. Updates will be provided from each of the partner organisations:

Healthier Together will provide an update from a Lead Paediatrician on the current winter illness context
Bliss Charity will share resources on recognition of illness in babies with Black and Brown skin
Barnardo’s will be discussing damp and mould and the impact this has on respiratory health

Please join us for this important learning event and refresh your knowledge.

Webinar: Practice-based resources to support babies, children & families this winter
Date: Tuesday 16 January 2024
Time: 15:00-16:30
Online

Book your place here - places are limited, book early to avoid disappointment

Preview some of the available resources for practitioners here

New opportunity: Events Manager

Exciting and unique local opportunity with the Institute of Health Visiting

Events Manager
Based: Home-based and the Emsworth Office, Hampshire
Permanent
Full-time

Do you have events management experience? Are you hardworking, flexible, highly organised and efficient? Are you an excellent communicator, reliable and focused on promoting high quality in all you do, with good attention to detail?

Do you want to take the next step in your career at the Institute of Health Visiting, a highly successful and growing UK-wide charity with a clear vision and positive values that make it a great place to work?

If yes, then come and join us. The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) is seeking to appoint a full-time Events Manager with a proven track record of the planning, management and delivery of face-to-face and online events across a broad range of activities from workshops and network meetings to conferences.

The iHV is a fast-paced organisation that operates with a blended working model with team members distributed throughout the UK. The post holder will work predominantly from home, with an expectation to come into our Emsworth office at least 1-2 days per week, with occasional UK travel for meeting and conferences that may require overnight stays.

The post holder will require a high level of both efficiency and initiative, excellent communication skills, and a willingness to plan and manage a number of events at any one time. The successful candidate will have strong project planning, organisational, administrative and IT skills, with a keen eye for detail and a positive attitude to teamwork, learning and development.

The iHV’s portfolio of events and conferences is growing. This is an exciting opportunity for someone to really make their mark in supporting innovation and growth by planning events to meet the needs of the people we serve and improve their experience. You will be rewarded by the opportunity to join a unique and vibrant national charity, with a welcoming and supportive team, where two days are never the same. We know that the people who work at the iHV are its greatest asset and have made it the successful organisation that it is today. We believe that when everyone who works at the iHV is happy and feels supported to do a great job, then they care about the work that they do, which in turn is good for the iHV. You will also be rewarded knowing your work is making a real difference to babies, young children, families and communities, and the health visiting teams that support them.

You will work closely with our Head of Operations, Executive Director and Administrative Team.

If you have the skills and experience required and would relish the opportunity of working within a growing organisation, we would like to hear from you.

Applications close: 12 noon, Monday 12 December 2022

Interviews: Week Commencing 19 December 2022 via Zoom

For Job Description and how to apply

FREE Tax-Free Childcare webinar

A FREE Tax-Free Childcare webinar for local authority/council officers, partners, and family-facing professionals

15 March 2022 – 10:00-11:30

HMRC has asked Hempsall’s to deliver this 90-minute Zoom webinar. It will be useful for local authorities/councils and family-facing professionals across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

You are invited if you are a health visitor, social worker, housing officer, or work in children’s centres, early help, job centres, schools, or if you are someone else who works with families across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

The webinar is designed to share up-to-date information and to raise awareness of Tax-Free Childcare (TFC) and increase understanding of it.

Hempsall’s will be providing a useful overview of TFC and how it could better benefit children and families. They also want to help and equip attendees with ideas and tools that can motivate parents to sign up and use TFC to pay for childcare, out of school and holiday activities. Helping families and children and the provider in turn.

The webinar will consider:

Information, myth busting and growing awareness/understanding of TFC to support clear information sharing.
How we all can motivate interest and engagement in TFC.
Actions that can support parent and provider sign-up.

Agenda

10:00 Welcome and introduction
Aim and purpose
10:10 TFC: the story so far, evaluation and learning
10:20 Re-imagining TFC
Opportunities to take for families and providers
10:35 The importance of good information
10:45 Extending information through effective reach and engagement
11:00 Motivating behaviours – taking actions
Examples of impact
11:15 What can we all do?
Useful tools and information
11:25 Summary points and evaluation
11:30 Close

The webinar will be recorded, and slides and resources will be shared afterwards.

Find out more about the project here

Book your FREE place here

Bookings open for third Genomics webinar

iHV has teamed up with Genomics Education Programme (GEP) to run three free webinars on genomics – open to all health visitors. We ran the first webinar in December 2021 and the second one in January 2022.

If you would like to watch/hear the first two webinars, please click here.

Our third and final webinar is titled “How can we develop our knowledge of Genomics?”. This will be held on Thursday 24 February 14:00-15:30.

In this webinar, we will be considering how we can adapt our current practice to embed genomics in our work with families. Join Sally Shillaker from iHV, and hear from Dr Ed Miller of Genomics Education Programme, about how we can develop our personal knowledge of genomics.

You don’t need to have attended webinar one or two to book on to this third webinar.

Book your place today

Bookings open for February iHV Insights

Our highly popular iHV Insights webinar programme continues with our next event taking place on Thursday 17 February 2022 from 15:30 to 16:30.

This iHV Insights will cover the topic of Parental awareness of respiratory illness in babies & children – Session 4.

Thanks to specific project funding to support sharing of new resources for this important topic, this iHV Insights event is open to all health visitors to book.

The VSCE-funded iHV Respiratory Project has now successfully delivered 3 webinars, which are available to watch again on the iHV website on our new iHV Respiratory Illness page. This iHV Insights event is the fourth session in the series.

This project aims to share key information and resources on respiratory illnesses in under 3s – with a focus on Fever, Breathing difficulties and Wheeze, Croup, and Bronchiolitis/RSV, and supporting HVs in their role working with families. This includes ensuring the promotion of and access to resources already in use, including the Healthier Together website and iHV Parent Tips on fever and breathing difficulties and wheeze.

This Insights webinar will bring together the project, showcasing our new parent resources which come in a variety of languages and are accessible to those with learning difficulties/disabilities.

We are pleased to announce that our expert panel of speakers includes:

Dr Ben Hughes on the EPNS4 Surge e-learning course which focuses on care and support at home
Eluned Hughes and Erika Radford, The British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK on their helplines

How to book

Thanks to specific project funding to support sharing of new resources for this important topic, this iHV Insights event is open and free to all health visitors to book.

Go to Eventbrite booking page to book your place

New Webinar: Delivering different news to families by healthcare professionals

The iHV is delighted to announce that bookings are open for the ‘Delivering different news to families by healthcare professionals’ webinar.

This ‘must see’ event is scheduled for Friday 4 March 2022 between 13:30–14:30.

The webinar will share research findings on different approaches to delivering different news which will equip healthcare professionals with the skills and knowledge to ensure that parents are supported with care, compassion and sensitivity when they need it the most.

The first 1001 days, from conception to the time a child reaches two years of age, are critical for their physical, emotional and cognitive development. When it is identified that a baby has a disability or illness during this period, it can present as a different parenting journey from the usual expectations. Delivering this type of different news to parents must be done sensitively and compassionately by professionals.

We have some fantastic speakers lined up for this event including:

Angie Emrys-Jones – Parent with lived experience
Angie will talk about her middle child who is gifted with an extra chromosome. She will highlight what made her family extraordinary (yet fantastically ordinary at the same time) that awoke a passion to share the lived family perspective of having a child with a learning disability in today’s world.
Dr Esther Mugweni – Public Health Intelligence Manager
Esther was the chief investigator for the HEE-funded study to develop a training intervention to improve how healthcare professionals inform families about their child having a congenital anomaly in the first 1001 days of life. Esther is an experienced strategic leader in applied Public Health research and evaluation, impacting health, policy and practice.
Dr Judith Johnson – Clinical Psychologist
Judith is an expert in news delivery in obstetric ultrasound. Her INDIRA news delivery guidelines for delivering news in ultrasound have been incorporated into the Society and College of Radiographers and British Medical Ultrasound Society guidelines, and are now acting as the foundation for a Communication Coaching intervention which is being evaluated in sonographers.

Event details:

Title: Delivering different news to families by healthcare professionals webinar
Date: Friday 4 March 2022
Time: 13:30–14:30.
Location: Online virtual event

Thanks to specific project funding, this webinar is a free event to attendees.

The webinar is suitable for Health Visitors, Midwives, GPs, Obstetricians, Gynaecologists and Radiologists.

To reserve your place for this fantastic event - book here

Download webinar flyer

Webinar: Parental awareness of respiratory illness in babies & children

iHV is delivering the VSCE HW funded project aimed at sharing key information and resources on respiratory illnesses in under 3s; with a focus on Fever, Breathing difficulties and Wheeze, Croup, and Bronchiolitis/RSV and supporting HVs in their role working with families.

As part of this programme of work, we are delighted to offer a series of funded awareness sessions to support health visitors in their role working with families – open to all health visitors.

3rd Awareness Session now booking

Date: Tues 25 January 2022
Time: 15:30-16:30

This is the 3rd in the series of awareness sessions aiming to support health visitors in their role working with families, and builds on the two awareness sessions already held in November and December (recordings of these are available on our Respiratory Illness resources webpage).

Highlights for Awareness Session 3 include presentations from:

Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, DHSC – The importance of the role of health visitors in promoting parental awareness
Lead Paediatrician – A focus on croup
CONTACT – Supporting families of children with disabilities with respiratory illness.

Book your place today for the 3rd Awareness Session

New Respiratory Illness Resources

Access a range of resources through our new open-access webpage on the iHV website, including previous awareness webinars.

This contains all the collated resources from the VSCE-funded project partners to facilitate and streamline access to information, including:

HEE The Respiratory Surge e-learning
Bliss – excellent short animation on bronchiolitis and RSV in English with 5 subtitled versions available
Boloh Helpline provided by Barnado’s – new Bronchiolitis/RSV resources specifically aimed at ethnic minority groups and staff are available on the helpline

See iHV Respiratory Illness resources and previous awareness webinars (open access to all)

Future event – SAVE THE DATE!

17th February – iHV Insight and Awareness Session four: Please save the date. Further information and booking details will be released in due course.

Highlights for this final event include presentations from:

Dr Ben Hughes on EPNS4Surge course which focuses on care and support at home.
The British Lung Foundation and Asthma UK on their helplines.
Alongside introducing new resources from the iHV project team.

Bookings open for iHV Insights Jan 2022

Our highly popular iHV Insights webinar programme for iHV members continues with our next event taking place on Thursday 20 January 2022 from 3:30 to 4:30pm.

This iHV Insights will cover the topic of Supporting eating for children with additional needs.

We have received many requests from our members for information and advice to support families whose children have eating problems, especially those children who have additional needs. In response, we are delighted to offer an iHV Insights webinar for you on this topic.

The Newcastle University FEEDS research team will share their research about “Parent-delivered interventions used at home to improve eating, drinking and swallowing in children with neurodisability: the FEEDS mixed-methods study”, the team will also share practical insights on how, as health visitors, we support children and their families.

The Speakers include a consultant paediatrician, research experts, speech and language therapist and a health visitor.

The webinar will also be recorded and will be available to iHV members on our website after the event.

Please join us.

How to book for iHV members

Go to our Eventbrite booking page and please use your iHV membership number as your access code. If you have any problems or enquiries please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help.

Once you have submitted your details, you will be able to select your ticket and proceed to checkout – please note that this webinar is free to iHV members.

Go to Eventbrite booking page

Spaces are filling quickly so click the link to book your space now.

Not an iHV member?

If you are not an iHV member, join us today to book your place on iHV Insights to access these resources and many other member benefits.

Previous iHV Insights

The great news is that all iHV Insights webinars are available for iHV members to access as a free member benefit after the event, as well as joining the live session. As a member, you can access all of our previous iHV Insights webinar

Click here and log in to catch up on our previous iHV Insights.

“Active Mums Start With You”: This Girl Can launches first campaign for healthcare professionals

Research by Sport England has found that 64% of pregnant women and women with children under 1 have experienced nervousness or anxiety related to being physically active, either during pregnancy or in early motherhood.
A survey among healthcare professionals indicated that 33% rarely or never give advice on physical activity to pregnant women.
‘Active Mums Start With You’ is a new campaign from This Girl Can, to support and encourage healthcare professionals such as GPs, Midwives and Health Visitors to have more conversations with pregnant women and new mothers about the benefits of being active.
The campaign is supported by the Royal College of GPs, the Institute of Health Visiting and The Active Pregnancy Foundation.

A new survey from Sport England has revealed that 64% of pregnant women or women with children under 1 have experienced nervousness or anxiety related to physical activity ^[1] . For example: worrying that they might harm the baby or themselves, worrying about which forms of activity are safe, or concerns related to their pelvic floor and leakage.

Anxiety about what is and isn’t safe to do when pregnant and after childbirth is one of many factors, alongside fatigue and childcare responsibilities, that can prevent these women from being physically active. However, being active during pregnancy and postnatally can be hugely beneficial in supporting both the physical and mental health of mothers. Regular activity improves emotional wellbeing, reduces depression and hypertensive disorders, and reduces the risk of developing gestational diabetes ^[1].

In response, the award-winning This Girl Can is launching a new campaign, ‘Active Mums Start With You’. The campaign is designed to support GPs, Midwives and Health Visitors to proactively talk to and advise pregnant women and new mothers about activity in order to build their confidence and provide advice if they’re unsure what is safe to do. Healthcare professionals can have a positive influence on people’s activity levels, with 74% of women surveyed saying that they felt, or would have felt, more reassured to become or stay active as a result of receiving safety advice or encouragement from a healthcare professional.

A survey conducted with 393 midwives and health visitors indicated that 33% rarely or never talked about or gave advice on getting active to pregnant women – and 27% rarely or never gave advice to new mums ^[2].

Previous research with healthcare professionals, focusing on GPs, has found that omitting to discuss physical activity in appointments is often down to lack of time, knowledge & skills, confidence in raising physical activity and a lack of training^[[3]][[4]] . There are also many other important topics to raise with pregnant women and new mothers, with appointment times often being brief and time pressures exacerbated by the pandemic.

The campaign features imagery showing pregnant women and new mothers getting active in a variety of dynamic but safe ways – and reminds professionals of the positive influence they can have, stating that “active mums start with you.” The campaign links to a wide range of resources and training materials which support GPs, Midwives and Health Visitors to have these conversations. These include training that has been developed as part of the This Mum Moves project ^[5] as well as a brand-new series of resources developed by the Active Pregnancy Foundation in collaboration with experts, which provide guidance on popular activities such as resistance training, dance and yoga for pregnant women and new mothers.

Webinar for healthcare professionals

To support the launch of the Sport England and This Girl Can healthcare professional-focused campaign, Active Mums Start With You, the Active Pregnancy Foundation and Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) are delighted to bring you a live webinar on the importance of healthcare professionals’ role in supporting and promoting active lifestyles during and beyond pregnancy.

You will be given an overview of:

Current guidance
Resources
Opportunities to support your practice

We will also be sharing the next steps in the This Mum Moves programme, including new training events for March 2022.

DATE: 9 December 2021

TIME: 15:00 – 16:00

LOCATION: Zoom

Book your place here

Limited places available!

[1] Methodology: Savanta ComRes interviewed 1,097 Women in the UK between 19th and 21st November 2021. This included: 122 Pregnant and/or new mothers with children under 1. Data was weighted to be demographically representative of the UK population by gender, age, region, and social grade. Savanta ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

[2] spear (2018-2021), This Mum Moves Final Report, survey with 393 midwives and health visitors

[3] AuYoung M, Linke SE, Pagoto S, Buman MP, Craft LL, Richardson CR, Hutber A, Marcus BH, Estabrooks P, Sheinfeld Gorin S. Integrating physical activity in primary care practice. Am J Med. 2016;129(10):1022–9.

[4] Chatterjee R, Chapman T, Brannan MG, Varney J. GPs’ knowledge, use, and confidence in national physical activity and health guidelines and tools: a questionnaire-based survey of general practice in England. Br J Gen Pract. 2017;67(663):e668-e675. doi:10.3399/bjgp17X692513

[5] The This Mum Moves project was developed by ukactive, Canterbury Christ Church University and the Institute of Health Visiting

RCNi Webinar: Genomics in Routine Care Part 3

Following the success of the first two webinars, watched live by over 1,000 attendees combined, the Genomics Education Programme, NHSE/I and the RCNi would like to invite you to join the third and final part of their free webinar series on 8 September.

This final webinar in the series will feature a range of speakers looking at how genomics is being applied to healthcare and opportunities available for learning, including a look at courses and resources designed to show health professionals how genomics is and will be used in specific areas of practice.

The webinar will be chaired by Professor Chris Morley, Chief Nurse for the North East and Yorkshire NHS Genomic Medicine Service Alliance, with opening remarks delivered by Professor Mark Radford, Chief Nurse for Health Education England.

For those health visitors who have an interest in genomics, Sally Shillaker will be speaking about genomics and the health visiting role during the webinar.

This webinar is CPD-certified and will allow you to gain two hours of participatory CPD towards your revalidation.

To find out more or to reserve your free space now, please visit the registration page.

Book your free place at Webinar 3 - Genomics: It’s my time to learn!