AIBU: health visitor: “it won’t be looked on favourably”

[Itstheimplication]

Just had a call from the health visitor services in our area, last had a check up when DS was 1 and now it’s the 2-3 check, he’s a couple of months away from 3.

They said they needed to book in an appointment and I asked what sort of thing they will be covering and explained his nursery have just had a health visitor in observing the children for a week and we all get a report via the child’s keyworker, plus we’ve had development markers from nursery and progress reports so I just wanted to see if they would be covering anything different.

The woman on the phone got very snotty, there was a long pause and then she said I could decline the visit but it wouldn’t be “looked upon favourably” when I asked what they meant and who wouldn’t look on it favourably she just repeated it again and then said it was in my best interests to book the appointment so there’s a record of him having been seen.

I was a bit unsettled - I hadn’t been rude or anything I just didn’t see the point on doubling up on the info we already had and I had a terrible experience with our HV last time - but I ended up booking the appointment as it was almost like she was insinuating I would be oj some kind of list of concern if I didn’t.

I looked it up online after and can see it’s completely optional and nothing will be held against me if I don’t take the appointment up.

AIBU to cancel the appointment and complain?!

I also find it quite telling that on threads about health visitors, I have never seen anyone pop up saying that they are a health visitor, like you do with other threads about GPs, nurses, teachers, police officers etc.

Try reading the thread.

on the whole they're as thick as mince, power hungry, dismissive, threatening...
need I continue??

I question why parents wouldn't want a professional observing their child and ensuring their needs are being met

find a competent 'professional & parents wouldn't object. Many of the soend all day with actual professionals.

Just cancel. The service is voluntary for parents to engage in. It is absolutely NOT ok to threaten you, subtly or otherwise, with some suggestion you'd be put on a blacklist or be highlighted as a problem. If you can be arsed, complain. She's probably doing it to everyone she speaks to and it is simply not ok.

And yes, I'm sure there are good HVers and I'm sure some women do get good support. Just, I don't know anyone who has had 'support' from HV say this. The general gist of this thread is that HVers are useless. The most positive response I have ever heard is a friend of a friend saying 'the HV was useless but not harmful'. The HVer that saw me 6 weeks post-natally was a dreadful dreadful woman. It is not exaggeration to say that she significantly worsened my post natal anxiety and depression. Added bonus (not) is that I would never return to the service for help .

The woman on the phone got very snotty, there was a long pause and then she said I could decline the visit but it wouldn’t be “looked upon favourably”
They said this to me. Said they’d have to note on his record that they were unable to gain access to the child to verify his well-being, and this would be a red flag. So if anything else happened there would already be one strike against me, so it was in my best interests to just engage with them and let them check my child was ok.

@SkylightSkylight that's massively offensive to health visitors who are highly trained and yes like any job some are better than others but that's no reason to dismiss an entire service. The problem is some adults need that service and more importantly some children do. If people don't accept their childrens reviews because they think they know better the risk is less money will be invested in the service and then the at risk children who need to be seen may get missed. And why do people think they know better than qualified professionals who are there to help support and advise. Unless you work in that )or similar) field it's quite arrogant really.
For reference I am qualified in early years, I managed a child care business for many years and have worked with vulnerable families . I am trained to teach parenting skills to parents . But I would not think I am qualified to health visitor status nor would I dismiss their input.

HV's seem to be a mixed bag. Generally most I have dealt with (1 dd, 1dn, and 3 dgc) have been professionally kind but with a tendency to be slightly patronising. I rang for an appt for dgc3 as she was a year old and dd wanted a record of weight/height. First appt available was for 3 weeks later. When I asked if her height could be checked during the clinic visit I was told this appt was a weight check only - 4 minutes into a 15 minute appt as I was redressing dgc ready to leave.
Dd had an odd call from HV who wanted to know why she had not contacted them first when dgs2 had Covid as at 4 he was still the responsibility of their team. Dd replied that when he was in Resuss at the local hospital it hadn't occured to her that they would be of any help. [The staff on the 111 line were fantastic that day as were the hospital staff]

My health visitors ignored my child's disability,.implied I was making the whole thing up and set back his provisions significantly. They were so bad and judgemental they implied his motor skills and other cp symptoms were from bad parenting. They gave me pnd and it's disgusting how they are able to treat new mums, particularly when they are so useless when your child actually has problems with development and needs a referral.
It's not just mine either, my friend has an autistic child and HV washed their hands of her because 'they are not experts'.
What's the fucking point of them then?!
Saying that, I got my husband to go to meetings because I knew they'd use it against me if we declined.

Has anybody ever found a HV helpful

Yep to get my DD's eyes tested.

To be fair mine weren't interested in me due to one of my neighbours plus what my relations and friends do for a living.

She sounds like a complete bitch. This type of person shouldn't be involved with mums and small kids.

I'd make a detailed and dated note of the conversation including her despicable veiled threat.

Then cancel the appointment.

They are really quite mixed. I had a nice one come when I moved area. But from the previous area, the woman spoke in serious tones which implied that I was injuring my ds when he was a baby. He had a deficient blood factor FFS - instead of supporting me (when I already had a hospital appointment with a consultant), she fucking insinuated that I'd done it. Awful, awful bitch.

I had a lovely health visitor who diagnosed my PND, referred me for counselling and put me in touch with a mum in the same street who had also just had a baby.

waste of time they all give conflicting advice to each other
one told me when my daughter kept crying wrap her up and put her out in the garden this was January time
another told me to try numerous different tests on bottles then put a pin in to make hole bigger !!!
then hold a dummy in her mouth because she kept spitting it out
then when she had encephalitis from an mmr vaccination wouldnt believe me something was wrong and wouldnt refer to a paediatrician had to phone directly in the end and if she went to gt ormond street
18 months later I had my son only went very occasionally to get him weighed never seen anyone leave the room so quick as soon as she saw me
Her and the gp accused me of being a neurotic mother she had only been to the gp about 5 times in the first 4 years of her life
!!
health visitors are awful and just add stress to mums

It's one of the first things they check if your child ever ends up coming to the attention of children's social services, so that's who 'they' probably are. It's one of the quick checks they do to decide whether to pursue an investigation if there is an incident of some kind eg. Injury, possible safeguarding issue.

That's (hopefully) very unlikely to be an issue, though, is it? I can see how refusing to see the HV could be seen as an incriminating factor on top of everything else, if it were suspected that you might be an abusive/neglectful parent; but in isolation, it proves nothing at all.

And in this situation, the OP's child is seen by professionals regularly at nursery (including a HVer!). Whoever the OP spoke to, heard that information and continued to be threatening regardless...

Ours wasn't overly helpful. Stated the obvious a lot when DS was tiny etc.
Most recently told us we needed to give our now 1 year old DS daily vitamin supplements... He probably has the healthiest diet going. Is this normal advice?
(first child and we definitely didn't have them as kids in the 90s!)

I found HV as useful as chocolate teapots with DD and when I told them, when DS was born, I didn’t want their involvement I also got a snotty slightly threatening phone call. I just said this is my second child I’m fine goodbye and never heard from them again.

Alongside the truly wonderful, kind, helpful and professional ones, there seem to be an awful lot of HVs who appear to see themselves as a bosom-hoiking, no-nonsense village matriarch who expect to waltz in and tell these foolish youngsters where they're going wrong.

It's rather worrying, though, when many of them seem to have no more knowledge or wisdom about babies - in general or a specific baby - than the babies' own mothers do.

The one above who either didn't know how to read scales (hardly decoding the human genome, is it?) or didn't realise that the scales were obviously broken is highly concerning. That reminds me of the Saturday kid at the corner shop who will catch the wrong button on the till and try to charge you £238.41 for a loaf of bread and a bag of crisps without the faintest notion that something may be amiss - except that they are not professionals giving advice about looking after babies.

We know that there must be a robust training programme for HVs - as evidenced by the good, thorough, wise ones who are so valuable; so why do so very many not shown any sign of ever having been trained at all? It's kind of ironic if somebody who has completely ignored all the training they had, believing themselves to 'know better', then takes it upon themselves to go in and berate mums for not listening to the experts!

As a profession, it seems crazy to rely on threats about 'not being looked on favourably' and deliberately trying to obscure the fact that it's entirely optional in order to 'stay in business'.

If, as a 'class', they could work their way up to being predominantly recognised as a highly respected, valuable, supportive service, rather than having a very wide reputation as unpleasant, unhelpful, judgmental busybodies, lots more new mums would be clamouring to see them, even if just for a brief check-in.

By way of analogy, I've noticed that some of the smaller utility/contract companies that are confident of their top-quality service and high value to very happy customers are also the ones who put a prominent link for how to leave them/end your contract on their homepage; whereas the big ones who muddle along with terrible service and reliability, counting on customers' inertia, just enough willing to put up with them and lack of realisation that there may be much better alternatives out there, will make it nigh on impossible to manage to leave them.

Mine was wonderful, a real advocate for my DC who has now been diagnosed with autism. She got him referrals which eventually got him the diagnosis without us having to fight to be taken seriously. Nursery also pushed for these and were fobbed off, so without the health visitor we wouldn't have got the support. If you have any concerns at all it's definitely worth doing the checks, health visitors can make such a difference.

My HV was a great support to me. She knew I was struggling and in a bit of a mess, the MH lot didn’t want to know because I wasn’t suicidal or going to harm my DTs, so she came round weekly to chat with me/watch the babies so I could do stuff, generally just support me.

After she moved areas, the next HV we had I found to be quite patronising, but to give her her due she was wonderful and pushing referrals and annoying other depts until my kids got the appointments they needed.

I know generally HV might as well be avoided assuming you’ve no MH issues or concerns about your child’s development, but I did find them to be helpful overall.

I had one who told me when I attended the clinic for weighing that all my baby needed was more love from me. I was trying to raise that I thought he had reflux and wasn't keeping milk down as he projectile vomited many times a day (I was right).

I gave her my full polite outrage. Later that day, the doctor from the same surgery called not me but my husband (which made me much more mad, I am an educated professional) and threatened him with needing our baby weighed every 3 days. We were about to go on holiday (in the UK, baby was 12 weeks). We were told we HAD to walk into A&E to get him weighed whilst we were away (with the full implication of them calling social services if we didn't). We never heard from them again!

He was on medication for reflux until he was nearly 2 but we ended up paying to see a private wonderful paediatrician when we got back from holiday. Yes he had reflux but I spent the entire week really worried, the private paediatrician thought it was ridiculous. He needed treatment but wasn't so bad he needed weighing twice a week.

I have no time for health visitors. With my 2nd, we had one visit and then never heard from them again. No 1 Year check even!

My issue isn’t that I think i
know better than the health visitor it was that I was trying to ascertain whether the visit at his nursery would have assessed the same
things. We are in the south east by the way to the poster who asked - I had no idea it was something that happened at the nursery until we got the newsletter letting us know it was happening recently.

i don’t have any concerns about DS and would have happily had the check up but she got my back up with the kind of threatening tone.

With DS1, the HV insisted he was referred to the GP due to his “massive head circumference”. I had terrible anxiety and was convinced something was terribly wrong. I remember sitting in the waiting room shaking with fear. The GP took one look at him and said he was perfectly in proportion, and wondered why on earth we’d been sent to see her.

DS2 was like an alarm clock for his feeds, and would SCREAM until he got his milk. I took him to be weighed when he was 7 months or so, and was accused of over feeding him. I explained that he would scream until he was full up. She said that I needed to tell him off and explain screaming was unacceptable. I laughed, until I realised she was being serious.
We then got summoned for his age 3 check, and I declined as we had a community paediatrician appointment for an autism diagnosis. They tried to tell me that wouldn’t be as thorough as the HV check. I’ve never heard from them since.

health visitors can be helpful and it’s also another set of eyes on a child who may be at risk in some cases!

Just cancel the appointment.

I barely bothered with health visitors after one tried to tell me that it was a dreadful problem when my just turned one year old DD1 still just wanted smooth and puréed food from a spoon, no lumps. She would pick up and eat any other food put in front of her (toast, sliced fruit, pasta, some veggies and strips of meat) so it wasn't a concern to me, but the HV was off on one and not listening.

DD was simply waiting until she could manage a spoon herself, which happened just a few weeks later. Then she wasn't bothered what was on it and just got on with it.

I pretty much ignored the HV "service" after that. I can see that it is one tool to pick up on children who are in problematic situations and at risk of harm, but far too many of them just patronise perfectly good (but vulnerable) new mums. Hence why they have their current poor reputation.

Cancel and ignore. What a joke.

Wasn't too much of an issue when they completely stopped working in lockdown (well did in my area anyway!) I had my first baby in April 2020. No HV at all until a Phonecall when he was 2. Unsurprisingly he's thriving without the input of a random woman.