to not understand what the purpose of health visitors is?

[RevoltingPeasant]

Okay, this is not intended to be another one of those HV threads. This is a serious question. I did not grow up in this country and this is a really weird concept to me.

So, are they:

a. nurses who effectively act as social workers, and are basically checking up on people's parenting?
b. nurses whose job is to make sure new parents are supported?
c. ?? something else?

Because I always assumed it was b, which seemed fair enough, but since joining MN the general consensus seems to be that it's much closer to a. On another thread today someone was joking that 'luckily' her HV didn't notice what a slattern she was in wearing dirty clothes. I've seen other people comment that their HVs ask them questions about their sex life or comment on their housekeeping.

If this is right, is this really a great idea? Can one refuse this or is it a mandatory thing?

No need to apologise RevoltingPeasant I just don't want you to get worried about having a HV (there are already quite enough things to worry about when having a baby!)

There are obviously some absolute knobs jobsworths out there. But I suppose that is true of every profession. Its is a shame though that some HVs can be so judgemental and unhelpful, especially around how you feed your baby, as that can be soul destroying for a new mother

Health Visitors have done an extra yrs training on top of nurse training.

There are also qualified nurses who support health visitors who also do visits/clinics cos HV's will have a caseload of 100's of children

revoltingpeasant - i will say the lady who went on about contraception wasn't even from my local clinic she was temporary, my health visitor was off... dont know why she thought i'd be out catching stuff, i had about 60 stitches in at the time and a partner of 7years.

the really horrid one who decided ds was diseased was in the weigh in clinic, i think she just took a dislike to me, she did all that in ear shot of other parents too the cow. my best friend use to get "oh your a wonderful parent there should be more like you" and i'd follow her in to how shitty a parent i am.

Why don't you you just ask your HV?!

I had 2 HV both where fab, although I had a favourate :) they came to my house which was a shit hole of a doer upper house, they both said they loved their patch because the work load allowed them the luxury of home visits, both had worked in towns.
I never visited a clinic and my friend used to bitch that I had home visits and she had to go to the clinic in her village with her DS, even thou it was just down the road, she changed her tune when she was pregnant with her DD and having a terrible time as they immediately offered to visit her at home,
I was having home visits because of premmie twins in the depths of winter, twas all the reason they needed, they said if the chice was theirs they would do nothing but home visit.
they never judged (maybe they did, but not to my knowledge) and in fact always backed up my ideas of parenthood, even when looking back I was being an arse :) the time that I remeber most was potty training, I decided at 2 now is the time, asked the HV what she advised, she said something on the lines of, never too early, this is what you need to do.. and gave me useful infomation and ended with "and even if it doesn't work, you have had a practice run and you try again in a while and if it does wow! bang goes the nappy cleaning..."
looking back, I was an arse, but they never made me feel like that.
I got a podiatry appointment in days from a referal made a few weeks before we went to the USA, seen really quickly and due to my worry about sons toes, sorted..I heart HV and I wanted to be one, as in my Nurse training I obvs went out with one and she had children on her books which bless her she concentrated on, as it was part of my Childrens experience, but she specialised in elderly care, which I also got to do, and I loved that! 10 years later the specialisation had gone and elderly care was pushed out, so I gave HV a Miss, I would have loved HV with the mix but specialising in elderly care.

I thought they had a duel role of child protection and support so both a and b - so no conflict there then. I think massive work loads, poor training, incorrect advise and people who really shouldn't do the job do not help.

One HV who'd been to my house several times for no obvious reason decided to have the sex life quiz with door open to waiting room full of bored people waiting for GP and HVs, with another HV and mother with screaming baby in the actual room, my distressed toddler freaked out by other screaming baby and my mother sat right next to me. I didn't need a gun I had my mother .

I've had dealing with 6 HV with three DC only one was any good - the rest gave bad incorrect advise and were very undermining. I never had the confidence to refuse visits worried I'd get marked as someone to watch - I went for smile and nod approach.

Yes of course I'll change all the door handles upside down on a house we don't own and I've just told you were are moving out of shortly because my constant vigilance and presence and every door way having a stair gate on first time parents which is always used correctly to visitors annoyance and which our toddler can't open is clearly not enough and making the door handles not work is definitely the way to go. Then nod.

I think a little from column A, a little from B. They are very very nosy I think and sometimes quite opinionated. Had fairly nice ones with my first 2 children, the one who quite adeptly spotted that I may have pnd after my second child was nice (I opened the door looking slightly demented after cleaning the whole flat from top to bottom, then randomly sobbed all over her ), the one who replaced her was dour and useless.

They also used to do development checks, but I think they must have phased them out around here, don't remember ds2 having one and he's 2 now, the others both had an 8 month and a 2 year check .

You forgot 'D'. Useless at best bints who can sometimes cause more harm than good with, as you said, what purpose. We lived in a Garrison with wives away from their families and frequently husbands. My friends' was, frankly, a liability. If not dangerous to the immediate health an immediate and long term health and well being to mother and child. Mine, luckily was harmless. Wouldn't trust one with a housetrained cat.

BTW, I threw the last one and more particularly, her moustache, out.

Health visitors were brought in, I think, around the time of the first world war when it was discovered that the state of health of the young men of the country, especially poor young men, was extremely low in general - one of the changes in thinking at the time which would eventually lead to the beginning of the NHS. Also happening at this time was the midwives act and the beginnings of ante-natal checkups, which were run as open clinics then.

The original idea was to raise the general health of the population by giving information and also checking that parents were caring for their children adequately. I got the feeling when studying this that it was particularly poor mothers who would be targeted, the poor tended to have the worst health outcomes, unsurprisingly, but the thinking of the time was that it was their own doing, rather than a product of circumstances. So I would not be surprised at all if poor mothers were more scrutinised then, and the ghosts of this attitude live on today in some cases.

So - both, really. Information, and nowadays, support, but child protection too, although they're not supposed to judge on general things like housekeeping, perhaps if it was part of a wider pattern, but definitely not as a one off. Of course they are human, though, and carry all the faults and prejudices that anyone has, and they're massively overstretched too, so it doesn't always work exactly as it should.

(My timing might be skewey because I never was any good with dates, but it's somewhere around there - bit of social history, anyway.)

as they walked into my immaculate, gentile and clearly very affluent home

I don't doubt that you came across a right sod of a Health Visitor and her comment re. breast feeding was out of order, but why on earth do you expect to be given special treatment due to your financial status?

Do you think that the middle-classes aren't capable of neglecting/abusing/ poor parenting?

The gentile comment I don't understand at all, what earthly difference does not being Jewish make?

Every HV I've ever had has answered any direct question about DD with the words 'how long is a piece of string'. It got to be a joke between me and DH. Still, it's nice to know they're there.

The HV who came to visit me when I had DS2 in London was very nice. Utterly useless to me but a nice lady.

She had a cup of tea, measured DS's head, remarked on the shere scale of him and then left. She did ask me to let them know when we were leaving the country so they could take him off their books, but I forgot, so hopefully no-one is freaking out about this missing family!

I think though if I had needed more from her she would have been a valuable resource.

OP, it's a bit of both.

The HV is the only professional who sees a family within the home with a young baby.

They are skilled at identifying potential problems, they can advise, they can support and yes, if they enter a home which gives them cause for concern, they can be one of the professionals involved with SS.

My HV told me that she'd rather go into a home and see a little bit of untidiness than an immaculately presented and tidy home because she'd rather the time was spent with the baby than washing up and hoovering.

Obviously that's different to mouldy food, dog poo, bottles of rancid milk and open dirty nappies lying around.

revolting I'm a bit about a HV discussing socially about removing a child - that's really not good, but the CP cases I know of where HV have been involved were really bad - really bad.

I think iirc a conversation I had with a HV a few years ago their child protection remit was increased post BabyP. So they no longer do developmental checks (which is a shame imo as when I thought I was going mad seeing things in ds1 that weren't there the HV was the one person who also saw it and referred on, unfortunately the professionals she referred on to then completely missed everything but she spotted it. She also provided a lot of support and a listening ear at time when I couldn't talk to anyone else because family etc would refuse to discuss it).

They're not looking for perfection - or something the state defines as perfection. SS described my messy untidy house as 'child friendly' in reports, my HV discussed with me why ds2 and then ds3 weren't vaccinated and said at the end 'okay I would have done the same in your situation'. Of course you might get the occasional dodgy one, but on the whole I think they can be a valuable on-side resource if you need some help.

There are also specialist HV who have a higher level of training and deal with children with disabilities - usually attached to something like a child development centre. I found them very helpful in the past, and they can be very good at ensuring that children who have been flagged up move into the most useful part of the system and start receiving services.

Thanks saintly and everyone

Yeah I don't want to put more detail but she didn't raise it as a topic of conversation, I sort of came into a convo where it was being discussed and she wound it up but not before saying the stuff I'd mentioned. It wasn't like, 'Guess what I did today!'

This has been an interesting and reassuring thread, though I think unless I have a total crisis post-birth I will refuse visits based on what's been said here. The idea that someone will come to my house, but I don't have to worry if it's not perfection, they won't mind - is really alien to me - makes me feel claustrophobic just thinking about it!! Think post-birth it wouldn't be a brilliant thing to add into the hormonal cocktail.

And why do they ask about your sex life? I just don't see it. 'Do you need help with contraception', yes, but asking about sex - ???

Mine didn't ask about my sex life or contRaception abd she didn't look around my home but she did only visit twice. DS is 10 weeks now and she said she doesn't come again. I think the MWs came 3 / 4 times over 2 weeks, then the HV twice over about the next 5 weeks.

I have to say I did clean the house before each MW and HV visit but I honeslty think if I hadn't they would have been able to tell the difference between a filthy house with long term problems and the temporary mess due to a new baby and tired parents. But as I say mine was sweet and It doesnt sound like they all were.

I had 2 different midwives and one clearly wasnt keen on women or babies which did make me wonder why she had chosen that career. She did the first check when I was home, stayed 5 minutes during which time she only really talked about my coffee table and where it came from . She barely glanced at DS

My HV though seemed like a poppet (as was MW No. 2). If you don't like yours I would suggest ringing your GPs surgery and informing them you wish to be seen by a different one.

The thing is though, they get you into the system, so if you refuse the post birth visit then you'll have to trek to a clinic somewhere and sit in a waiting room for half an hour while a bunch of snotty toddlers breathe all over your newborn.

With ds3 I had the initial home visit then didn't bother with the clinic until we were called for a hearing test. Then again for the 2 year check. They weren't really standard at that time but we had one for ds3 because of ds1's problems.

In ds2's case I saw them a lot in the first few weeks as he was losing weight. There was some problem with different scales being used in different places, but when it became apparent that he really was losing a lot of weight (at 6 weeks) it was the HV or got a quick GP appointment and he sent him up to hospital where it was found he had a cord infection. After that was sorted, once it was clear he was putting on weight I didn't go again until the 2 year check.

And yes by the time you see the HV you will already have had midwife appointments at home anyway. They're very similar. Both bring scales, ask the same questions, the only difference is the HV brings the red book and gets you into the baby/child health system.

I was only ever asked about contraception in hospital.

Sorry for bazillion Qs, but what if you are using private HC for your child? If you are seeing a private GP/ paed and they are supervising neonatally, do you still have to have them monitoring you as well?

RevoltingPeasant As has just been discussed on another thread, you are perfectly entitled to remove yourself from the HV system. They probably will visit you once after your baby is born but you can tell them that you don't want a HV after that and you are not obliged to go to any clinic if you don't want to.

Yes, I saw, EC - xpost!!!! Ta.

It's not monitoring as such. You may not have the midwife care, but they are still going to want to get you into the system at some stage. My friend who gave birth in the Portland had HV visits AFAIK.

The HV will be triggered by your GP though as they're attached to certain GP services, so I don't know what happens if your GP is private. You may not automatically get one then.

But you can engage a private one

www.juliaheadland.co.uk/

This sounds as if even with a private GP you'll still get one - you could ask the GP what happens.

My HV pissed me off a treat with the PND thing! Thrust a questionnaire at me, I told her oh not necessary I really am fine (something DP could definitely vouch for) she said "no you have to take it, everyone does, just fill it in!" so i did, she looked at my answers and went "oh, you're fine there" I JUST TOLD YOU THAT! (this being the hv who came round on the wrong days - say she'd tell you she was coming on a Thurs afternoon, she'd turn up on a Wednesday morning-sure she was trying to make me seem like i was the one who was bonkers!)