Health visiting matters: re-establishing health visiting
Abstract
2012 is not just Olympic year. It marks 150 years after the ‘Salford Ladies’ first employed a health visitor. In 2007 this struck a chord with many as the health visiting service was in major decline. That same year, the Family and Parenting Institute (FPI) published a report on declining health visitor numbers and a report of an independent Review of health visiting was also being formulated (Lowe 2007), which identified some of the barriers to delivering a universal health visiting service.
The UK Public Health Association’s (UKPHA’s) Special Interest Group (SIG) for Health Visiting and Public Health issued a response to this Review and, in honour of those first ‘Salford Ladies’, pushed for the momentum around the issue not to be lost. The UKPHA Health Visiting and Public Health SIG’s response to the health visiting Review identified the need for a specific regeneration project, focusing upon five broad areas of critical importance to ensuring a ‘fit for purpose’ health visiting service for the 21st Century. In October 2007 the UKPHA organised a symposium at Portcullis House which brought together key leaders, opinion formers and practitioners from across the country to begin the process of developing these five areas.
Taking its name from the title of a WHO Report published that same year, “A Powerful Equalizer: Regenerating The Health Visiting Profession”, the Symposium articulated the need for a Steering Group to be set up which would progress thinking and agree a way forward. As a result, a multi-agency Steering Group, coordinated by the UKPHA, developed a proposal seeking funding through a public health workforce development programme at the Department of Health to appoint a co-ordinator to bring working groups together to explore these issues, and agree recommendations about how best to deliver a regenerated health visiting service. A preliminary report was considered at a multiagency workshop, again planned and organised by the UKPHA, in September 2009 and the draft recommendations discussed and refined.
This, the final report was launched at the House of Commons at the end of November 2009 and is also available to download from www.ukpha.org.uk.