Government defends health visitor service
Health visitors play a vital role in early child care
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Friday, 23, Feb 2007 12:43
Although the number of training places for health visitors has been considerably reduced the situation will get better once trusts have improved their financial situation, the health minister Ivan Lewis has said today.
His comments come as figures obtained by the Amicus trade union under the Freedom of Information Act showed that there has been a 40 per cent cut in training places.
And a survey by the online parenting support site Netmums this week uncovered dissatisfaction from both parents and health visitors with the current state of the service.
Over 4,600 mothers responded to the survey; more than half said that the service has got worse in the past two years and a third rated it as "poor".
Of the 200 health visitors who responded, it was shown that 83 primary care trusts have lost staff.
More than 80 per cent felt that their caseload had risen in the past two years.
In a statement to the prime minister Tony Blair on the issue Netmums said: "To support parents in bringing up their children to be good, happy and healthy citizens, there must be a support service available to all mothers, not just those that seem to tick the right boxes.
"And that is the role of the health visitors. Please ensure the primary care trusts stop reducing the health visiting support service."
The Health Visitor Association (HVA) said today that a fall in health visitor numbers could seriously affect the wellbeing of many families.
Claire Dent of the HVA told this morning's Today programme that the government does not appear to be following its own guidelines on support.
"Their own documents say 'think 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," she said.
"It may seem a minor thing initially but if we're not going to see people and build relationships with them, we can't ask them the important questions, we don't pick up that postnatal depression until it's too late."
Defending the state of the health visitor service, health minister Ivan Lewis told the same programme that he did not dispute the figure of a 40 per cent cut in training places, but insisted that it needs to be put "in context" of investment in early years intervention and prevention.
"We're not in denial about the need to really look at the role of the modern health visitor in the context of all that's changed in terms of early years support. In some parts of the country the service is excellent, in others it's frankly not good enough, but we should be balanced in the way we present this," Mr Lewis said.
"What I believe will happen is once we've got this situation of budget discipline resolved in this period, then obviously at that point primary care trusts [and] strategic health authorities will go back to investing the full allocation they get from us, which is very, very significant, in the maximum number of training places."