I'm a health visitor

[HurricaneLane]

So you can AMA?

But as we seem to get such a bad reputation I'm thinking of starting a blog or a social media account to try and show that we are helpful, want to help and really aren't offering what people alot of the time think of us?

Can I ask if you would find this helpful, and whether a blog or social account would be better?

I only have positive experiences of health visitors but know lots of people who haven't. This is mainly due to not feeling heard or feeling judged.

How many years were you a nurse or midwife prior to becoming a health visitor? is this typical?

Any tips for HV training interviews? Paeds nurse with 10+ years experience desperate to get out of acute care

So I'm a nurse both adult and Paediatric. I've been qualified 6 years now and in this role for 2.
We have a variety of different nurses and midwifes, I actually come from neonatal.

We have to do a 1 year course on top of our nursing degree to become a HV, it's done at either postgraduate level or masters level, most of us have done the masters in a year which is pretty full on as its split between practice and study.

I'm well past that stage, so not sure that my views are the most relevant. However, I think the important thing would be to focus on the quality of the content.

My health visitor when dd was small was a really lovely woman and she undoubtedly tried to help. The problem was that she just didn't know very much! Hopefully the training is better these days!

Be yourself, joing the 0-19 student community on Facebook
Look at the trust safeguarding board, the local public health demographics, the healthy child programme.

It's just changed delivery so it used to be universal, universal plus and so on but now we work on a tier system so look up both and the 4/5/6 model, we are using both at the moment due to the crossover

Absolutely Get this, this is what I'd like to address that wr do actually know stuff

Why are yous so pushy and condescending? Is it in the training?

NC fail OP ?

Could you please explain your role?

I've never needed to call my health visitor. Aside from baby weight clinics, if any of my children have needed a HCP my first port of call has always been the GP or A&E obviously in an emergency.

What services do you offer? Perhaps this has been explained to me postnatally and I've been so sleep deprived I've missed the point so apologies if it's a silly question.

Thankyou.

I had a particularly brilliant health visitor when mine were young, felt very lucky. The rest not so much due to feeding issues and awful support.

my question….. how much training do you get on breastfeeding?

Why are some health visitors absolutely wonderful, and others terrible?

DD and I got assigned a wonderful HV. Other mums in my circle have had awful experiences with theirs, to the point I had to help one write a formal complaint to the NHS trust about her HV.

Some HVs either clearly couldn’t care less about mum/baby, or are judgmental, unempathetic, and authoritarian. Why are they - or at least those traits - not filtered out during the HV specialist training?

Why can’t every new mum and baby have a lovely HV like DD and I had, basically?!

Do you get any training about breastfeeding? I had major hurdles to overcome to get to a position of 100% breastfeeding after a SCBU stay, tube feeding, then bottle feeding and wholly expressing when discharged home. It pretty much felt like we had to work it out on our own. The HV at the time didn't seem to have much specialist knowledge and just talked about using formula to "top up" and that was about it. She was genuinely surprised when we managed to move back to full time direct breastfeeding.

The HV I saw for the 12 month check up also asked me how many bottles my DS was having a day, and was initially surprised when I said none... took a short while for her to figure out I was "still" breastfeeding. Is there very little expectation that women might breastfeed at 12 months plus?

@HurricaneLane so interesting. What should the universal plus level get you in terms of support? My DD was prem but not massively so and never went to NICU so had no consultant support. We didn’t have any health visitor input after about 4 weeks even though she was still on a feeding plan etc and no one ever came back or responded to my calls.

Do you think there is a need for a health visitor for everyone? As lots of families really don't need to hear things like ' don't drink how drinks over the babies head', no shit Sherlock and your time would be better spent helping-advising families that may want help or be struggling mentally etc

Hi OP, do you get training in adoption, ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), trauma, attachment, FASD (Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder), PAD (Post Adoption Depression)? I hope things have improved in the last decade but I was really disappointed by the lack of support we got from all our health visitors (never saw the same one twice, and changed counties between adoptions 1 and 2).

Would arrive each time without even knowing child was adopted, no record from previous visits, showed no insight into issues we might be having as a family, the appropriateness of certain advice, recognition that a traumatised child with additional needs might well present as younger than their chronological age, and not be meeting developmental milestones, unable to signpost to help for concerns around behaviour and suspicion of FASD (even with documented prenatal alcohol exposure by social services and police; both children were eventually diagnosed but only with a lot of effort on my part). Insisted I did a dreadfully patronising parenting course with other parents, some of whom had had their children removed to foster care (which as adopter felt terrifying, and not somewhere I felt I could safely share any of my concerns about our circumstances) as a condition of being allowed a referral to CAMHS, which then didn't happen!

Between them they variously seemed more interested in price of our house, number of bedrooms, expressing surprise that DH and I were married "ooh that's unusual for round here isn't it?!" got visibly annoyed with daughter's behaviour (the very thing I was asking for support with!) than actually offering any useful advice or support to our children or family. I did make a written complaint and was invited to what seemed like a really useful discussion with head of the local health visiting team and Sure Start and they assured me that they would make sure their staff received training around these issues, which I hope did happen.

What do you think about cosleeping/bedsharing?

Have you got children and if so what was your HV like?

How much training do you have on breastfeeding?

What are you looking for when you visit a new mum that will reassure or worry you?

If you give a woman your number and tell her to call with any questions do you pick up and are prepared to help?

What’s currently good and bad about the service at the moment?

Do you treat first time mums differently to more experienced ones?

I had amazing support from my HV after leaving my little one's father due to DV. It was an absolute lifesaver and was every week for three months she came to check in and give advice and care. Really got me through a dark dark time.

🤣

Love this question

So I will reply to all of these, they are frequent questions.

So I'd like to think the pushy condescending attitudes are outdated now, we really are trying to help but there are things we must go through as they are dominating public health.

I think post covid yes there's a health visitor role for everyone, it can be a lonely place as a new parent.

Lots of our work is on feeding, transition to parenthood, managing at home, school readiness etc but the majority of our work is safeguarding with cases that often don't meet social care criteria that should.

Everyone should be seen antenatal, new birth, 6 to 8 weeks and then the 2 development reviews.

Yes I give out my number and am guilty of it being on at all times. I always get back to people as do my colleagues but we have a very good trust.

In terms of feeding some of us have more than others. We are a BFI accredited service so we are all in depth trained and due to our different back grounds we can refer to our colleagues. For example I might be asked if I can support a premature baby, but one of my colleagues might be better suited to a family with an older child for feeding support. It's a huge help. I am also tongue tie trained so that helps alot.

I hope I've answered most of these and I'm sorry some of you have had unsupportive Hvs but I'm also really happy to hear some have been amazing. We can help with pretty much most things now

Everyone should have training on this. Most of our work is safeguarding and ACES. We should know this, so to hear this is very disappointing and I'm sorry

The questions I'm afraid are probably us trying to be chatty and be friendly to create that relationship rather than nosiness or being annoying

How long have you been a HV and what has changed in your role since you started?

How has the massive drop in funding for things like sure start, children's centres etc affected the families you support?

What would you do in a typical day/week? Is your work mainly with families with social issues, child protection etc (sorry, I don't know the current terminology for this). Do you have time to weigh healthy babies regularly and reassure anxious new mums anymore? Just wondering as my HV was amazing when I was a worried first time mum and never made me feel stupid for asking for advice when he had a cold etc.

I know you officially work with under 5's but do you do much for the 3 and 4 year olds on your case load or do you mostly work with babies? I found my HV tailed off her involvement when mine went to nursery.

How did your role change during lockdown? Did you have less involvement with your families and how do you think this has affected them?

Is there an equivalent person to a HV for families with children over the age of 5? I know there is a school nurse but I don't know who our local one is or even what she does really. Just wondering as I have children aged between 8 and 16 and there have been times when I wish I still had access to someone like a HV but for older children.

Hope you don't mind all the questions. I have a background in early years but I haven't worked in the field for about 18 years now.

My youngest is 6 and I couldn't wait to get her out the door. "Oh that looks expensive" "where did you get this/that" Beet it hen 🤣 was my thoughts. Having to hide my pre made bottles when they went to wash their hands aka have a nosey. Maybe some people need them but to the majority they are condescending busybodies. If I have another I will be opting out.

So my week is varied with my visits, 3/4 a day each for an hour or more if needed. I also run weight clinics.
Always here for reassurance or help, every baby is different
No question is ever silly, for colds etc I recommend the baby check app but I'm still on hand.

Covid was awful, absolutely heartbreaking and we tried our very best. The aftermath will stay with us for a very long time, especially the mental health side.

Funding has been a nightmare and the cost of living. However, our community resources are amazing. We can source food, equipment, clothes and even help with paperwork and finances, we have separate teams within our teams.

Sure start, we are very lucky to have home start and our own community children's hubs. Our local area has huge public health needs so this is a priority. Sure start is however making a return much to my delight!

I think I've answered them for now....

Please don't think we are busy bodies. How you feed your baby is your choice we have to discuss breastfeeding, we know it's hard but we have one of the lowest rates in the world and we know it can help improve public health, we have to discuss it. I've fed my babies every which way, no judgement at all. Fed baby is best!

So 3/4 is primarily nursery but we are still here but actually we don't get many calls I think people forget about us sometimes. Over 5 is the school nursing team, they are often on hand but work mainly the same as us on differing levels