To think Health Visitor home visits should be compulsory by law? Distressing content.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

If you miss one, cancel one, are not in etc, another one should be scheduled within 3 month period and if it is again missed without adequate explanation, then police should be granted access with a HV to check on the children's welfare. Health and well being home visits should be scheduled up to the age of 10 perhaps?

Rather extreme but could this have prevented Hamzah Khan's terrible life and needless, horrifying death?

Agencies were involved with the mother but she was 'obstructive' apparently. That poor boy must have been starved from birth to be so stunted in his growth. No medical reasons have been given and also no medical professionals were aware of it so it seems. No mention that Hamzah was ever seen by a HV. The mother did not seek medical attention either .

Those other 5 DC in the house were also subjected to living in absolute filth and from some of the houses I've sen it is probably the tip of the iceberg.

We are too bloody worried about upsetting parents and not enough focus is on helpless DC IMO. The gloves should be off. If you have DC which are part of society, then society should take a firmer hand into ensuring their well being as it seems all too apparent that some parents can't be trusted.

One life saved or changed would be well worth it IMO.

[passedgo]

Someone mentioned upthread that in Germany (not sure about the restof Europe) there is a compulsory visit to the doctor but if you don't take your child there they will visit at home.

I see nothing wrong with that, of course it should be funded, but worth every penny if it saves a child's life. Usually an abusive family has several children, it could save a lot of pressure on services in the future as well.

It is short sighted to think that being overworked is an excuse not to do it. We need to fight for the funding for this to change.

[Pagwatch]

But your soloution to a massively over stretched system is to try and enforce compulsory checks on people who will not, I the vast majority of cases, need one.

If you have a sensible step I would support it. But making considerably more work for an over stretched service does not seem to be sensible.

[OldSchoolMamma]

I'm sure there is some nice HVs - but I'm yet to meet one. The first one we had didn't know what she was talking about (Something about guidelines changing and having to look answers up to our questions because it was all new?). The second one insulted my dad when she was lecturing me and my hubby about using bath thermometers (we should use our elbows instead ....Long story) and said my dad (who has raised 4 blooming kids) knows nothing.

So unless many HV's are retrained and have some lessons in talking to a new mother, not down to a new mother I don't think they should be compulsory.
Doctors or nurses at 6 month intervals maybe but not HVs.

[PetiteRaleuse]

There is a good system in Luxembourg. You can request, on leaving hospital, a prescription for midwife home visits in the first couple of weeks. There are then six compulsory checks with your paediatrician between 3 weeks and two years - if you do the checks at the end you get €500 extra benefits, one off payment. Worth it. The checks involve being weighed, a full general check up, referral to consultant if any issues flagged (one of minecwas referred for hip xray and the other to a cardiologist for a heart murmur) and the paed also watches the child's interaction with the accompanying parent very carefully.

[AmberLeaf]

Yes the mother is the perpetrator but that argument is bullshit IMO. So basically children with abusive, neglectful, evil mothers/fathers/mother's boyfriends should just have to suck it up if the authorities don't get it right?

No one has said that.

[Lazyjaney]

All these agencies that " fail" these kids are overstretched and have little real power if a parent wants to lead them on a dance.

To not have another dead child you'd have to massively increase their resources and powers to intrude, eg compulsory hV checkups every quarter etc.

There is a limit to what society can do without turning into a big brother nanny state, and the % of these people is very small, so pissing off the large majority of parents who are by and large responsible, or at least not lethal, is never going to fly.

[friday16]

To not have another dead child you'd have to massively increase their resources and powers to intrude, eg compulsory hV checkups every quarter etc.

If you had quarterly heath visitor visits to every child under, say, five you would need to make 20 million visits per year. It's unimaginable that, with oncosts, that could cost less then twenty pounds per visit. Leaving aside the opportunity costs of having trained staff doing something with such a small chance of making a difference, it is highly unlikely that it would prevent more than one death per year. You could spend two hundred million pounds a year and save a damned sight more than one life by other means.

Untargeted interventions avoid the appearance of being judgemental. But they are incredibly expensive, inefficient, and often end up hassling people who will comply while leaving the genuinely at risk (who are usually a lot stroppier) to get on with it.

[GangstersLoveToDance]

I agree with the op - this SHOULD be the case IMO. Any parents who don't like it, tough.

Ds2 had a home visit arranged for his 2 year development check by the HV. A couple of days before he came down with something or other, so I phoned and left a voicemail to cancel it.

Over the next couple of weeks I missed two calls from the HV, who left vm's to call back and rearrange. I always meant to, but with one thing or the other, I never got around to it.

That was 18 months ago. No further attempt was made to contact me, not even a letter...nothing.

There is nothing sinister in my case...but the HV was not to know that. I would have thought it would ring alarm bells if a parent cancelled a developmental check but with the system atm apparently not.

This needs changing IMO.

[thebody]

what I didn't understand was how a multi agency team had several discussions about this poor child but apparently he hadn't been seen by any HCP since he was 4 weeks.

how can you discuss someone you haven't seen?

surely the other children were raising concerns at school. they must have been dirty, smelly and probably underweight if mum was constantly drunk.

I really find it hard to understand that no one acted.

[Pagwatch]

DD has never seen a health visitor.
Is someone really going to spend the time persuing me and forcing my child to have a visit she doesn't need rather than, you know, spending that on increasing spending on families who are already know to arouse agencies.

What ineffectual nonsense.
Shouting and stamping that parents should be made to do x and y is just designed to make oneself feel better, more caring, without actually achieving anything.

[Pagwatch]

various agencies

[ReallyTired]

I link that linking health checks to benefits is a good idea. Prehaps we could go even further and link having an up to date vacination schedule to child benefit. Or prehaps parents who are anti vacination could register that they are refusing their vacinations if they are refusing benefit. Hamzah Khan might still be alive if the fact that he had had no vacinations had been followed up.

When ds was little the health visiting service was more universal. It became targetted after the death of Baby P.

It would be interesting to see which countries have a low incidence of child murder and what polices they have.

[friday16]

what I didn't understand was how a multi agency team had several discussions about this poor child

Exactly. Which is why the talk about "sending health visitors to see every child in the country" is so totally missing the point. There were massive concerns about the family, to the point that case conferences (plural) were convened. Those conferences were dysfunctional and ineffective, but they were convened. We haven't seen the SCR yet, but I suspect it will be a car crash: a concerned school, endless reports of DV and alcohol abuse, an overworked and/or naive social worker focussing on the mother's drinking as a problem to be solved, rather than as a risk to be managed. The problem wasn't a failure a health visitor to see a random child; the failure was in social workers who were calling case conferences not taking measures to see the child.

Should children who are known to be at risk be the focus of child protection work, rather than being distracted into worrying about the poor misunderstood parents? Yes. Should professionals make sure that they see children in dysfunctional, at risk households alone, and make sure that the parents are not able to conceal them or their condition? Yes. Should professionals be much more sceptical of the accounts of injury given by mothers (usually) and fathers of children seen as being at risk? Yes. Any of these changes would have saved the lives of Keanu Williams, Hamzah Khan, Kyra Ishak, Daniel Pelska, Peter Connolley and Victoria Climbie (just to mention well-known cases). In each of those cases, devious parents/carers of children well known to social services were allowed to kill their children without anyone noticing. There is no need to posit random inspections of families where there is no concern: these were children known to social services already, who were failed by poor practice and unclear priorities.

[Binkyridesagain]

I am waiting to be contacted by a HV, to check on my dog.

14 year old DS was playing with the dog, his finger was cut by one of the dogs teeth, we took DS to A&E to get it dressed and some anti biotics, it was nothing serious, it was purely an accident. But A&E have informed us that there will be a visit from the HV, this was a month ago.

Is this another role that the HV has had to take on? I can't see how a HV check is going to be of any benefit, and I am sure their services can be better used elsewhere.

[OldSchoolMamma]

Vaccinations being linked to benefits would be a stupid idea. "Your child will have this vaccine or you won't have enough money to eat" - Yeah real interesting

[passedgo]

You can request, on leaving hospital, a prescription for midwife home visits in the first couple of weeks. There are then six compulsory checks with your paediatrician between 3 weeks and two years - if you do the checks at the end you get €500 extra benefits, one off payment

Wow - in Luxembourg they bribe people to get their babies checked!

An excellent idea.

At least the Luxembourg system acknowledges that it's a joint effort with a mutually coercive type arrangement. They are not forcing anyone into it but they also know that people that don't conform perhaps have something to hide.

I don't see how they can afford to cover regular checks in Europe and not here. It's not about saving one life, it's about saving money long term when families cost the state huge amounts due to being dysfunctional/abusive/dangerous.

[friday16]

It would be interesting to see which countries have a low incidence of child murder and what polices they have.

So Britain, then. What makes you think that our murder rate is higher than other comparable countries?

[MammaTJ]

I had an awesome HV who was the only reason I did not change doctors when it was impossible to get an appointment with a doctor.

I finally caved in and changed and never bothered with the HV.

She rang me a few times when my DCs showed up at A&E but that is all. She told me to leave my DS to cry and ignore him at night because he wasn't sleeping well. Even if he had a shitty nappy. One of the main issues with his sleeping was his poos and the fact that they were constant, liquid and making his poor little bum sore within minutes. She knew this!

[higgle]

When my children were little I quickly realised that HV were time wasting ineffectual busybodies and declined visits. I also refused to record progress in the patronising booklet they provided. Thankfully we do not live in a police state and my wishes were respected.

[ReallyTired]

" Britain, then. What makes you think that our murder rate is higher than other comparable countries?"

All the recent child abuse cases in the news. However I have idea if there are similar cases in other EU countries.

I don't think there are any international tables like the PISA education league tables. I have no idea if there is a higher incidence of child abuse in say Sweden or France or Germany. I think it would be interesting to know how we compare with the rest of the world. Somehow I doult that British children are the safest or the most abused in the westen world.

We need research based policy rather than knee jerk reactions like the suggestions that hv visists should be complusory.

[hackmum]

It always seems to emerge in these cases that the mother is "obstructive". I suppose the question then is to what extent you can force someone who is being obstructive to co-operate.

I was also struck in the reports this morning by the fact that when the school reported their concerns, the mother was visited shortly after by a police officer who didn't see anything wrong - everything seemed clean and the children well looked after. Either the mother must have done a very swift clean-up job or the police officer was decidedly unobservant.

This case was particularly heartrending. So many opportunities to intervene, and yet nothing (for whatever reason) was done.

[cory]

Worth every penny if it saves a child's life unfortunately has to be weighed against all the other measures that would also be worth every penny if they saved a child's life- better cancer care, better care for children in care homes, better support for children who run away from home, better training for SS and police who suspect child abuse.

Spending all the money on compulsory visits if we can't afford the extra SS and police resources and haven't got enough foster homes to ensure that children who are taken into care are safe is likely to be a waste of money.

Some of these children were seen by professionals. Their mothers were accomplished liars. And some health conditions do mimic the symptoms of abuse.

What might have saved Daniel Pelka would have been if the doctor had been savvy enough to ask to see the initial diagnosis of his fictitious health condition. Which would have meant money spent not on compulsory home visits but on joined-up computer systems and possibly translators (if she claimed he had been seen in Poland).

Or if he had done what a doctor did to my daughter 9 years ago: said "well, we don't know what is causing these symptoms but there is a risk it could be abuse so we are keeping her in for now until we have investigated thoroughly and she has been interviewed by a trained child psychologist". Which would have meant money spent on more NHS beds. And in fact dd was sent home before the interview- because they ran out of beds. Fortunately she wasn't being abused.

Nobody is disputing that these children should be saved. Just whether compulsory home visits is the way to do it.

[IamSlave]

I am not sure that HV compulsory visits is the key. These people, baby p's mum etc did expose their tortured and battered children to health care professionals, and little Daniel was not hidden away from sight, he went to school every day.

Maybe its something to do with training looking for other signs, or maybe on at risk cases, the power to pop round and see the child without warning.

Maybe that would give them more chance to turn up when the perpetrator is in the middle of something, so could have turned up when little daniel had just been put in the bath etc.

"Not convenient" on at risk cases, would not wash.

Maybe that would also help to stop the violence if people knew by law, the HV could turn up at any moment and demand to see the child?

sorry if this has already been mentioned.

[thebody]

it is still an incredible thing that no one at all saw this child from 4 weeks.

I have to say this but dsil and myself found my lovely fil dead at home after not hearing from him for 3 days.

the flies were clustered around the windows and doors. tge smell in the house was really bad.

how on earth this child decomposed for 4 YEARS and no one, not the neighbours or teachers of the other children, they would have had very smelly clothes, the police officer who visited!!! no one.

it beggars belief.

[ClutchingPearls]

I have at least one health care professional in my home almost daily. (That's because of DSs health not because I would harm my children.)

I don't think a HV would be able to tell in a 1/2 hour visit if I was harming my child, equally any one HCP.

I think "multi agencys" in any form don't talk enough. DS ends up in hospital but noone tells the others and either they turn up at home or after he's home they don't know he's been in, had meds changed or on a different plan. There's delays in letters or notes that may or may not turn up or be relevant when they do.

I'm relied upon as his main carer to connect the dots, If I didn't do this then no one would know what's going on in the different areas.

Its a complete mind field. I feel I am "managing" DSs care. If there were concerns I could imagine many situations where that could be hidden.

I don't think having one person legally obliged to check on children would change anything. I think its about having a blue print clearly setting out who's had contact and what's happened. Everyone going in blind isn't going to help, if everyone goes in knowing all the facts/concerns right from the get go then maybe they can ask the right questions and make conscious, informed and considered decisions.