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Health Visitor turned up after I declined appointment

699 replies

AliceBeazley · 21/04/2022 22:42

So, the Health Visitor. I understand it can be a valuable service to some, and it's good we have this available to us if we need it.

That said, I've never really felt the need myself. I had a visit from one once or twice after my first son was born, and she was very nice but it wasn't especially useful and just took up my time when I would rather have been doing something else.

Whenever I've been sent an appointment, I've gone through the checklist and never had any concerns. I've also got various books on child development in the early years and am proactive about checking whether milestones are being met. I've therefore cancelled all HV appointments that have been sent, and other than the office staff seeming a little puzzled, I've never had an issue doing this.

Roll on to baby number 2. I declined the checks from the start, other than arranging for the HV to come and weigh him when he was a few weeks old. When the 1 year check appointment came through I called the office and cancelled again. The woman said she would pass the message on to the HV.

The HV called and left a message to say she had my message and that's fine, but she could come and do another weigh if I wanted to, yada yada yada.

Feeling the matter was resolved, I forgot about it.

This morning the HV turned up at the door for the 9-12 month check. I explained it had been cancelled, and she sort of made noises as if that was a surprise. I said hang on, did you say your name was "Emma", wasn't it you who left a message for me to acknowledge I'd cancelled. She then said "Yes but as I said, it would be nice to meet you both". I said "Well there's lots of people it would be nice to meet, but you can't just turn up at people's doors uninvited". It was this point she obviously could tell I was annoyed at her intrusion and decides to scuttle off again.

I'm pretty annoyed by this to be honest. She knew I wasn't interested but she tried to disregard my wishes and try and come in anyway. I know a lot of people think HV appointments are mandatory and they don't do anything to point out the contrary. I feel like she just wanted to railroad me into letting her in whether I wanted to see her or not. This tactic probably works on some. I have to say I find it quite disturbing that someone acting on behalf of a government funded organisation can decide to turn up at your house and ask to see your children and intrude upon your privacy without any mandate or justification. As if the state knows better than me and I am unable to opt out.

Am I being unreasonable? I feel like complaining about this as its a complete overstep. I've no idea who to complain to or if it would even do any good. I'd appreciate other's thoughts on it. TIA.

OP posts:
Blossomtoes · 24/04/2022 10:53

The interpretation of misogyny gets more and more stretched all the time here. No way does this fit its real definition.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 24/04/2022 10:53

Middleclass Child Abuser:101

Everybody in an official capacity relating to child welfare is a moron/spoilt little madam/nosey parker/mere child/interfering old hag/do gooder/idiot/child stealer/communist/nazi.

They're only interested in stealing your property. But they call your property a child and dare to claim that it has rights of its own. How can it? It came from your body, it's yours and yours alone.

They've got stupid notions about feeding them appropriately, keeping the home clean and safe and not giving them a little tap in the side of their head with your fist when they deserve it.

If they find out you don't agree with their stupid notions, they'll keep interfering and get more do gooders sticking their beak into your business.

The most important thing to do is to ensure that they never come into your home. You can easily just not turn up for appointments outside the home, but the threat to you is when they try and gain entry. You must therefore keep them all out at all costs.

When they continue to try to gain access, you must destroy them. Bring them down a few pegs, send them scuttling off like a spider. Complain about them - but bear in mind that this might make somebody more curious about what you're hiding - you've got to make them sound as pathetic and unpleasant as possible to justify your reaction, which is mild compared to what was actually going through your head at the time, seeing as your head version of dealing with her probably involved something with your fists or a big stick. The stick you use to assert your divine authority over the smaller mammals in your kingdom, two legged or four.

Make sure that you have lots of people ready to agree with you that they're all awful. They might provide useful information for how you can ensure no busybody gets anywhere near your property before it's old enough to understand that they can only say 'I fell over' or 'I'm clumsy' or it'll get twice the battering when it gets home.

Read the news for the stories where people went too far and their child died. Make lots of how sad, the poor little mite comments publicly. Make comments about how these women let any old man into their home. Because only men abuse children. Women like you 'discipline' or have awful, ungrateful things that get themselves hurt when they won't obey. Ensure that all and sundry know that you care deeply about the welfare of dead children. After all, you're not like them. You have the self control to not kill them. OK, there was that time when you nearly pushed that hot iron into the face of the eight year old, but you stopped before it touched. That makes you better. And there was that time when their shoulder made that popping noise and you had to take them to hospital, but they were too young to talk at that point. And it was handy that the doctor said shoulders can go again shortly afterwards, as you thought they'd be all over you when it happened a couple of months later as you were dragging them down the stairs and they tripped over their own clumsy feet. But you've got more sense than to do that again. Mustn't do the twisting thing, either. One of those 'friends' said that spiral fractures are taken as evidence of abuse. Hair, though, if you grab them by all of it, you can still drag them about and there's not a shred of evidence whilst you can explain it as them kicking up a fuss about hairbrushing. And if you let go halfway down the stairs, there won't be the twisting break to explain, there'll just be a few bumps from falling down the stairs. In extremis, you could probably say they fell and you tried to catch them, but it's better to not risk getting caught out in the first place.

Anyhow, back to the point. Keep the do-gooders out. That's the key. If they don't know your home and your children, you just have to keep things at a level where they're not in hospital too often. Stick to non marking things - not the face, not the arms. Everything else can be covered up with clothes and hair.

ESSENTIAL. This starts at birth. Keep them all OUT. That gives you five years before you have to deal with nosey teachers. No midwives, no health visitors, no playgroups, nurseries or pre-schools. And then when the teachers start sticking their noses into your business, well, there's no files or notes of concern from the first five years, so they've got no reason to get social workers poking around. It was easier in bygone years where apart from the odd visit to the doctor, nobody knew about the children until they got to school age and if you sent them to a different infant school to the older ones who were the subject of interference from child protection busybodies, they wouldn't have a clue that there's anything to be nosey about. Although that was nearly ruined when a teacher from the older ones' primary turned up working at the different school and gave a look. So annoying.

I was one of those children/property, along with my siblings.

Every one of you calling it chilling and totalitarian, every one of you saying that they're stupid and dangerous, every one of saying that well, they didn't save the dead children in the papers - you're sounding just like my fucking mother. The abuser.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if some of you have something to hide. The others, oh, how fucking lucky you are that you simply cannot comprehend that people who look and sound like you are just as evil and cruel, but are smart enough to use your arguments to enable their abuse, smart and controlled enough to make sure that they only inflict pain, injury and terror, rather than death. That the first threats to their abuse are represented by the qualified nurse and qualified health visitor trying to check up on people who don't keep or cancel appointments. And that whilst there may well still be dead children in the news, you will never, ever know how many other children are still alive or the danger children were in was reduced just by the fact that the abuser knew that people out there were interested in the welfare of the children as their job.

And I know that my saying that will result in pure rage at the insult and offence I've caused you.

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

Becsie · 24/04/2022 10:55

BuanoKubiamVej · 21/04/2022 22:52

You seem to be a perfectly capable, resilient and well-informed mum who generally has no need of the HV's services.

From their point of view, if all they had is a string of phone calls cancelling appointments, they had no way of knowing the difference between your own confident and happy situation, and an almost identical (as far as their records show) situation of a woman who is being coercively controlled by an abusive partner who is making sure she us isolated from anyone who could help her.

Turning up at your door and seeing for themselves that you know what you want and don't need their help allows them to be reassured that you are genuinely ok.

The alternative scenario does happen. And sadly often sooner or later the woman, and sometimes her child too, end up dead. And when that happens the investigation lists all the touch points of service providers like health visitors who could have spotted that something was dodgy but didn't try to make contact.

She didn't barge into your home, she left you alone when you asked her to. There's no harm done. Please don't complain. Their current procedure will be saving lives. Happily, yours isn't in danger.

This completely. A minor inconvenience to you but a life saver to others. The ones who normally refuse all appointments are the ones we sadly see on the news and everyone wonders why it wasn’t picked up. Fine, don’t go for regular weights but why not have the key checks? What if they pick up something you may have missed. Child first.

Interested in this thread?

Then you might like threads about this subject:

CarryonCovid · 24/04/2022 11:00

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 10:34

Oh lets no play silly. The vast majority of these HVs are for mothers, many whom breastfeed.

It is an inherently misogynistic service, because it is enforcing it on women who feel they have no choice but to accept their privacy invaded upon, because they are not (conveniently) told of their rights to say no.

It's not a service for women it is a service for children (like universal vaccination). Parents can decline on thier children's behalf, however this may be seen as concerning. That is why HV will see children at nursery. The purpose of the checks are to asess pre-school children's growth and development. In which they are much more expert than most parents and most GPs.

LilacPoppy · 24/04/2022 11:00

@Becsie you first know the check are online? The two year check for example is simply a list of questions that you can just answer yourself.

LilacPoppy · 24/04/2022 11:04

@Becsie also the checks are rarely carried out by actual health visitors anyway.

SewingMum46 · 24/04/2022 11:22

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 09:15

This is very concerning that women are not made aware of their rights, and are made to feel they have no choice. One wonders why the HV 'service' hides this. Why? That this information is 'hidden' from them seems misogynistic. The whole service is misogynistic in my view. That they have to 'Opt Out' is absolutely wrong. It should be Opt IN service. Not the default that you have it whether you want to or not, and have to jump through hoops to Opt Out of something you'd never choose to do.

Well, when the HV came to our youngest child (who was almost 3 at the time) just after we’d moved here from overseas, I was at work and DH was the one she saw. She went through all the checks with him and didn’t have a problem that I wasn’t around. Because, as has been pointed out, it was a visit for the child, not the parent. DH didn’t have a problem with it being a female HV either.
I genuinely don’t understand how it can be perceived as misogynistic.

CarryonCovid · 24/04/2022 11:24

It has beem widely acknowdged that "virtual" consultations were probrably insuffficient for certainly the 6-8 week check and ideally the 27m check. The fact that the health visitor actually came to visit OP given the current staffing crisis suggests to me there were some concerns.

Vivi0 · 24/04/2022 11:42

No one thinks the deaths of children is acceptable, but you must be extremely silly to think the HV visit is the key to stopping it

I’m pretty sure the inquiry into Declan Hainey’s death concluded that had the health visitors not been fobbed off by his mother, his death could have been avoided (or his little body discovered sooner, rather than being left to decompose in his crib for months).

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 11:46

Vivi0 · 24/04/2022 11:42

No one thinks the deaths of children is acceptable, but you must be extremely silly to think the HV visit is the key to stopping it

I’m pretty sure the inquiry into Declan Hainey’s death concluded that had the health visitors not been fobbed off by his mother, his death could have been avoided (or his little body discovered sooner, rather than being left to decompose in his crib for months).

Given Baby P had HVs, we can see conclusively that HVs are as useful as an ashtray on a moving motorcycle.

Blossomtoes · 24/04/2022 11:50

So because some HVs were useless 14 years ago, they all are now?

RosesAndHellebores · 24/04/2022 11:50

@NeverDropYourMooncup I am deeply sorry you had a dysfunctional childhood. However, that doesn't mean that more than a minority of infants do. It would be interesting to see the data for the different demographics.

What is most interesting about this thread is the fact that not one of those who claim to be an HCP has set out the statutory obligations of the HV Service and the statutory obligations in relation to the parent in relation to it. Also that nobody other than the parents is responsible for a child or anything pertaining to them in the absence of a court order and that a number of procedural hoops have to be taken before that is issued.

The truth would help.

In relation to my own children I formally wrote and removed us from the HV service due to unacceptable standards of service. When my children were ill or I had concerns they were taken to the GP and referred, usually privately, to the appropriate consultant (ENT, Heart and Lung, General surgery) for repeated ear infections/hearing, intractable asthma, umbilical hernia. When dd fell off her bike, aged 8 and sustained a spiral fracture of the tibia and broken fibre, whilst surgery was undertaken on the NHS (we were away from home) all follow ups were undertaken privately. Between them they had their share of broken bones arm (monkey bars), ankle (football), collarbone (horse), pulled elbow (me, accidentally and the A&E Dr said they had no concerns because I,'d said I did it - by accident and actually without force).

My DC were quickly grommetted due to their ears. Other parents who couldn't pay were being told by their hv's that glue ear wasn't a problem and if their dc were behind they'd probably catch up by 7. All, of course based on the "average". They certainly wouldn't have helped in my DC's case because both children had advanced speech. They didn't, however, need to be in pain and on anti-biotics month after month as was the case for both.

In my opinion, our children received far better health care because we were able to opt out of state provision when necessary. The same applied to their education because all we ever wanted was the very best for them.

Blossomtoes · 24/04/2022 11:55

In my opinion, our children received far better health care because we were able to opt out of state provision when necessary. The same applied to their education because all we ever wanted was the very best for them

In my opinion, our children received far better health care because we were rich enough to pay for it.

The same applied to their education because all we ever wanted was to buy advantage the vast majority of children can’t have because their parents can’t afford it.

Everyone wants the best for their children.

ChardonnaysBeastlyCat · 24/04/2022 11:57

NeverDropYourMooncup · 24/04/2022 10:53

Middleclass Child Abuser:101

Everybody in an official capacity relating to child welfare is a moron/spoilt little madam/nosey parker/mere child/interfering old hag/do gooder/idiot/child stealer/communist/nazi.

They're only interested in stealing your property. But they call your property a child and dare to claim that it has rights of its own. How can it? It came from your body, it's yours and yours alone.

They've got stupid notions about feeding them appropriately, keeping the home clean and safe and not giving them a little tap in the side of their head with your fist when they deserve it.

If they find out you don't agree with their stupid notions, they'll keep interfering and get more do gooders sticking their beak into your business.

The most important thing to do is to ensure that they never come into your home. You can easily just not turn up for appointments outside the home, but the threat to you is when they try and gain entry. You must therefore keep them all out at all costs.

When they continue to try to gain access, you must destroy them. Bring them down a few pegs, send them scuttling off like a spider. Complain about them - but bear in mind that this might make somebody more curious about what you're hiding - you've got to make them sound as pathetic and unpleasant as possible to justify your reaction, which is mild compared to what was actually going through your head at the time, seeing as your head version of dealing with her probably involved something with your fists or a big stick. The stick you use to assert your divine authority over the smaller mammals in your kingdom, two legged or four.

Make sure that you have lots of people ready to agree with you that they're all awful. They might provide useful information for how you can ensure no busybody gets anywhere near your property before it's old enough to understand that they can only say 'I fell over' or 'I'm clumsy' or it'll get twice the battering when it gets home.

Read the news for the stories where people went too far and their child died. Make lots of how sad, the poor little mite comments publicly. Make comments about how these women let any old man into their home. Because only men abuse children. Women like you 'discipline' or have awful, ungrateful things that get themselves hurt when they won't obey. Ensure that all and sundry know that you care deeply about the welfare of dead children. After all, you're not like them. You have the self control to not kill them. OK, there was that time when you nearly pushed that hot iron into the face of the eight year old, but you stopped before it touched. That makes you better. And there was that time when their shoulder made that popping noise and you had to take them to hospital, but they were too young to talk at that point. And it was handy that the doctor said shoulders can go again shortly afterwards, as you thought they'd be all over you when it happened a couple of months later as you were dragging them down the stairs and they tripped over their own clumsy feet. But you've got more sense than to do that again. Mustn't do the twisting thing, either. One of those 'friends' said that spiral fractures are taken as evidence of abuse. Hair, though, if you grab them by all of it, you can still drag them about and there's not a shred of evidence whilst you can explain it as them kicking up a fuss about hairbrushing. And if you let go halfway down the stairs, there won't be the twisting break to explain, there'll just be a few bumps from falling down the stairs. In extremis, you could probably say they fell and you tried to catch them, but it's better to not risk getting caught out in the first place.

Anyhow, back to the point. Keep the do-gooders out. That's the key. If they don't know your home and your children, you just have to keep things at a level where they're not in hospital too often. Stick to non marking things - not the face, not the arms. Everything else can be covered up with clothes and hair.

ESSENTIAL. This starts at birth. Keep them all OUT. That gives you five years before you have to deal with nosey teachers. No midwives, no health visitors, no playgroups, nurseries or pre-schools. And then when the teachers start sticking their noses into your business, well, there's no files or notes of concern from the first five years, so they've got no reason to get social workers poking around. It was easier in bygone years where apart from the odd visit to the doctor, nobody knew about the children until they got to school age and if you sent them to a different infant school to the older ones who were the subject of interference from child protection busybodies, they wouldn't have a clue that there's anything to be nosey about. Although that was nearly ruined when a teacher from the older ones' primary turned up working at the different school and gave a look. So annoying.

I was one of those children/property, along with my siblings.

Every one of you calling it chilling and totalitarian, every one of you saying that they're stupid and dangerous, every one of saying that well, they didn't save the dead children in the papers - you're sounding just like my fucking mother. The abuser.

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if some of you have something to hide. The others, oh, how fucking lucky you are that you simply cannot comprehend that people who look and sound like you are just as evil and cruel, but are smart enough to use your arguments to enable their abuse, smart and controlled enough to make sure that they only inflict pain, injury and terror, rather than death. That the first threats to their abuse are represented by the qualified nurse and qualified health visitor trying to check up on people who don't keep or cancel appointments. And that whilst there may well still be dead children in the news, you will never, ever know how many other children are still alive or the danger children were in was reduced just by the fact that the abuser knew that people out there were interested in the welfare of the children as their job.

And I know that my saying that will result in pure rage at the insult and offence I've caused you.

Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?

You are projecting your own experiences. That's not helpful, for you, or for anybody else.

Maybe deal with your own rage first before throwing unfounded accusations will help.

Wish you all the best in dealing with it. Flowers

RosesAndHellebores · 24/04/2022 12:05

@Blossomtoes happy to take that on the chin. However, I think it's a huge shame that the privileges our children were given, particularly educationally, are not available to all children. It isn't a case of preventing the rich from having privilege but a case of "levelling up" and if that means higher taxes then use we would pay them but in doing so would want to see money spent wisely and training for teachers/HCPs to significantly improve.

Vivi0 · 24/04/2022 12:07

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 11:46

Given Baby P had HVs, we can see conclusively that HVs are as useful as an ashtray on a moving motorcycle.

Since we don’t know the number of instances where HV intervention has prevented outcomes like Baby P and Declan Hainey, we can’t really see anything conclusively now, can we?

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 12:10

Vivi0 · 24/04/2022 12:07

Since we don’t know the number of instances where HV intervention has prevented outcomes like Baby P and Declan Hainey, we can’t really see anything conclusively now, can we?

@Vivi0 Thus likewise, we also can't conclude HVs are good.

Blossomtoes · 24/04/2022 12:10

RosesAndHellebores · 24/04/2022 12:05

@Blossomtoes happy to take that on the chin. However, I think it's a huge shame that the privileges our children were given, particularly educationally, are not available to all children. It isn't a case of preventing the rich from having privilege but a case of "levelling up" and if that means higher taxes then use we would pay them but in doing so would want to see money spent wisely and training for teachers/HCPs to significantly improve.

Huge genuine respect for that response. Absolutely, I couldn’t agree with you more.

Vivi0 · 24/04/2022 12:14

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 12:10

@Vivi0 Thus likewise, we also can't conclude HVs are good.

Actually, in Scotland, many of the published Judgements in cases relating to child welfare often start with health visitors raising concerns.

NeverDropYourMooncup · 24/04/2022 12:53

ChardonnaysBeastlyCat · 24/04/2022 11:57

You are projecting your own experiences. That's not helpful, for you, or for anybody else.

Maybe deal with your own rage first before throwing unfounded accusations will help.

Wish you all the best in dealing with it. Flowers

Of course I am. Because I had the experience of being kept off the radar for malevolent purposes. With exactly the same rhetoric and statements about professionals being used as you and others here are using - including the 'they're throwing around unfounded accusations because they were abused/mentally ill'. It's a very common thing to see to demean and dismiss people on the basis of mental illness; 'oh, it's all in her head', 'she needs professional help', 'she does get these funny ideas and dreams sometimes'.

Rage? Not so much. Rage is what abusers exhibit. Especially when they know they're free to exact retribution/revenge/punishment upon their victims with impunity. They let the beast out behind closed doors. Rage is where you lose control and a) I am not that person, and b) you can't afford to lose control when you're being abused - you might provoke another walloping, you might let slip what's happening to you, you might lose any contact with somebody who in some small way protects you or makes your life that little bit more bearable. You can't lose control and cry. You have to keep that inside, patch up your cuts and bruises and swollen feet from them being stamped on. If you lose control, you're more vulnerable, you give them ways in which to hurt you over and above mere punches, you show them exactly how to exact more damage.

Contempt for abusers, contempt for the stupidity of those who think it can't possibly be people like them, can't possibly be happening at the hands of an oh, so very respectable/intelligent woman? Absolutely.

It's interesting to hear the voice of the abusers so loudly on this thread. Especially when some of them aren't actually abusive and have no idea that's what they're saying.

It's also all too predictable that they take offence at somebody who knows they are speaking with an abuser's voice and imply that person is overemotional, hysterical, angry, raging or otherwise in need of psychiatric assistance.

But people who have experienced abuse still see you. Not necessarily crying and sobbing and shaking or smashing shit up - but completely dispassionately. They see you all for what you are. A collection of both intentional and unintentional facilitators of abuse.

Musicalmaestro · 24/04/2022 13:52

Well said Mooncup

MichelleScarn · 24/04/2022 14:04

@ChardonnaysBeastlyCat *You are projecting your own experiences. That's not helpful, for you, or for anybody else.

Maybe deal with your own rage first before throwing unfounded accusations will help.

Wish you all the best in dealing with it. [Flowers]
this is a ridiculous snide response to @NeverDropYourMooncup and the passive aggressive flowers at the end? Behave.

TalkingCat · 24/04/2022 14:24

@NeverDropYourMooncup Nothing ever justifies taking away a woman and mother's agency and right to privacy in her own home. Nothing. Not one thing you've said justifies it when no other country (to my knowledge) has the backwards HV regime that the UK does, so they manage well. It's called Doctors appointments. Yearly checkups, weigh-ins.

Blossomtoes · 24/04/2022 14:35

MichelleScarn · 24/04/2022 14:04

@ChardonnaysBeastlyCat *You are projecting your own experiences. That's not helpful, for you, or for anybody else.

Maybe deal with your own rage first before throwing unfounded accusations will help.

Wish you all the best in dealing with it. [Flowers]
this is a ridiculous snide response to @NeverDropYourMooncup and the passive aggressive flowers at the end? Behave.

This. The aggression of some on this thread is appalling. It really makes me wonder what’s going on behind their closed doors.

BadNomad · 24/04/2022 14:43

I'm guessing it's because some people don't like being called abusers/abuse apologists/bad parents because they don't feel they need the help of health visitors or appreciate the bad care they received in the past.