HEALTH VISITORS

Health Visitors are qualified specialist community public health nurses (SCPHN - HV). Their additional training in public health enables them to assess the health needs of individuals, families and the wider community to effectively promote good health and prevent illness.

Our knowledgeable Health Visitors work with children from birth to eleven years of age and their families.

Health Visitors play a crucial role in ensuring children have the best possible start in life, and lead delivery of the Healthy Child Programme (HCP).

The HCP includes five child health and development reviews mandated by the commissioning of services by local authorities. This means our health visiting service will contact you at:

Antenatal contact
7-14 days new birth visit
6-8 week health review
3-4 month health review
9-12 month health review
2 - 2.5 years health review

Learn more about each of these core contacts here.

Our Health Visitors work in a variety of settings:

Families' homes
GP surgeries
Children’s Centres
Primary Schools

Our Health Visitors will continue to offer general advice and support when your child goes to primary school. When your child transitions to secondary school our School Nurses will become your contact point for support with parenting and health matters.

Health Visitors work with families, education settings and communities to improve access, experience, outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

These are the level of services health visitors provide:

Your Community

Describes a range of health services (including GP and community services) for children, young people and families. Health visitors and school nurses will be involved in developing and providing these and making sure you know about them.

Universal Services

Your health visiting and school nursing team provides the Healthy Child Programme to ensure a healthy start for every child. This includes promoting good health through education and health checks, and promoting health through immunisations and identifying problems early.

Universal Plus

Provides a swift response from your health visiting and school nursing service when you need specific expert help, which might be identified through a health check, or through providing accessible services. This could include managing long term health issues and additional health needs, reassurance about a health worry, advice on sexual health, and support for emotional wellbeing and mental health.

Universal Partnership Plus

Delivers ongoing support by your health visiting and school nursing service as part of a range of local services, working together and with you/your family to deal with more complex problems over a longer time period.

There are six high impact areas revealed within the HCP where health visitors aim to make the biggest difference to child health outcomes.

Antenatal

Health Visitors as Public Health Nurses work closely with parents/carers and families to support behaviour change, promote health protection and to keep children safe. The antenatal period is vital time to prepare for parenthood, and therefore health visitors provide support at this stage to promote positive attachment, and help parents/carers to make informed and positive choices for themselves and their child.

Mental Health

Breastfeeding Support

Health Visitors have extensive skills and knowledge in breastfeeding support. They work closely with midwifery services to provide seamless support and care for pregnant women and mothers, giving them an opportunity to learn about infant feeding, the benefits of breastfeeding and improving initiation and sustained breastfeeding. Health Visitors can also provide practical help and advice to mothers on how to breastfeed and help with managing and resolving breastfeeding problems. Health Visitors also promote bonding and secure attachments between all mothers and their babies and ensure the best outcomes possible for babies when they are not breastfed.

Healthy Lifestyles

First Point of Contact

Preparing for School

Health Visitors have a vital role to play in school readiness and preparing families for school. Their focus is on ensuring that all children achieve positive health outcomes and get the best start in life. This includes improving families’ knowledge on the importance of hygiene, particularly after toileting, before eating or preparing food and when children or family members are unwell so that illnesses are not spread through the family. They also play an important role in education of families and children about health protection issues such as immunisation, screening, using antibiotics appropriately and not when they have viral illnesses such as coughs and colds.

Text reminder service

We now have a new text messaging service. You will receive a text confirmation of your next appointment or visit with your Health Visitor or
Nursery Nurse.

You will also receive a reminder text the day before your appointment.

Signing up is easy – we just require written/verbal consent from you. If you change your mobile phone number, please let us know so you can continue to receive texts.

Would you like speak to one of our Health Visiting Teams?

Contact our team

Making Every Contact Count

Every member of our team use the MECC ‘Making Every Contact Count’ approach when working alongside parents to be, children and families. Using this approach ensures that we maximise the collective support we can provide within the local region. Our aim is to fully utilise the multitude of day to day interactions that we have with parents to be, children and families to support positive changes to physical and mental health and wellbeing.

To learn more please click here or to access local directory of Health and Wellbeing support available in the East Riding of Yorkshire, please click the button below:

Learn more