Friday 23 February 2007

Health visitor numbers 'falling'

The BBC reports news today from trade union Amicus that the number of health visitors in England has fallen to its lowest level in 12 years.

Even the government admits that health visitors play a vital role in helping new parents, supporting sufferers of post-natal depression, assisting vulnerable families and protecting children in troubled homes. They are particularly important to the government's agenda of bringing healthcare closer to home.

Yet Amicus highlights that there has been a 40% cut in training places for those workers and warned many cases of domestic abuse and post-natal depression may be missed.

Blaming a squeeze on health budgets for the problem, Amicus says that some trusts are looking to replace health visitors with less well-qualified staff.


To show how this affects people directly, the BBC report gives the example of Trudy Ward. Trudy developed post natal depression after the birth of her son Georgie.


She had a couple of cursory visits from health visitors, but she felt there just wasn't time to talk about her problems. Her situation has improved, but she remains concerned about other women facing her problems in the future.

She said, "Any new mother now looking for help from the health visitor is not going to get the support that they need. "

The report also quotes Claire Dent, a health visitor in Kent and spokesperson for the Community Practitioners and Health Visitors Association.


She said, "The government understand the importance of getting to parents early and their own documents speak about supporting parents early, but unfortunately they're not allowing us to do what they're asking us to do in all their public documents."

"We don't pick up that post natal depression until it's too late and they're going to the doctor and they're getting anti-depressants and it's much harder.

"And then when they've lost that attachment to their child because they've never realised how important it is, that child's affected for the whole of their life."

The concerns being highlighted by Amicus are supported by findings from an online survey by the parents support network Netmums. More than 4,500 people replied, with a majority saying that services had got worse.

Responding to the claims, Health minister Ivan Lewis acknowledged that training for health visitors was at a low point,
telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I don't dispute there is a reduction in training places this year and I also don't dispute the need to have a fundamental look at health visiting."

But he did dispute the claimed cause - the squeeze on health budgets - despite all the evidence to the contrary that financial problem in the NHS are behind a wide range of cuts.

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