To think that health visitors are undervalued

[Reallytired]

I have been lucky that I have had good health visitors with both my children. The health visitor I had with my son was good and the health visitor that I have for my daughter is truely gifted at her job.

In the past there were far more health visitors. In our area many of the health visitors have been replaced with nursery nurses and to pay for surestart. Many of the activites at our local surestart centre are frills. Baby yoga is not essential to bringing up a healthy child. Many of the activites are difficult to access for second time mums.

In the past health visitors had time to work with women with postnatal depression or parenting problems. A mother struggling with the terrible twos may well have depression. a nursery nurse does not have the skills to pick this up.

the only contact i have had with a health visitor left me in tears. had i been somebody that was already struggling/had no family/had pnd or suchlike the health visitor i had would have tipped me over the edge.
in fact she was so bad i phoned to complain about her and made it clear that if i had anymore children in future no h/v would be welcomed into my home.

The qualified nursery nurse who carried out DS2's 2 year check was excellent. A mature woman who, I think would have been as able, if not more able than most of the HV's I've encountered in picking up if I had depression.

Some (maybe alot) are reallytired but I have worked with a few who are judgemental one of whom was my HV unfortunately.
Most are overworked and not giving the service they would like to though (including me).

Message withdrawn

hmm I'm seriously thinking of re-training as a hv (am a mental health nurse/cbt therapist) with a specialism in pnd but given the pasting they get on here I'm not so sure!

Good ones are valued, I'm sure, Minx. Like all the other occupations on here, Drs, teachers, TAs etc.

Having said that, the only ones I've encountered were judgmental and awful.

the HV i have this time is FABULOUS

the HV i had last time was not so fabulous

surely it depends?

What is it that they actually do? I haven't encountered it before and am not really that keen/interested this time either.

A nursery nurse is not trained to diagnose mental health issues. Looking after babies is not as difficult as looking after mothers.

A health visitor is an experienced nurse witha postgraduate qualification. In the past they looked after the health of the whole family.

All the health visitors who I have met are hard working women who do their best. Yes, sometimes they get things wrong, but they aren't mind readers.

Yes I think that good ones are undervalued and it is a shame that they are lacking in funding at the moment (though I think that SureStart is great and has offered me much, much more support than my HV ever has - baby yoga aside, they offer lots of valuable services.) However bad health visitors seem to be awful - a lot of them seem to give outdated and potentially harmful advice, especially regarding early weaning, and I don't think they are seen often enough to build a relationship with, in my experience anyway. As I said above I feel much more relaxed at my local Children's Centre and tend to go there first for advice rather than speak to my health visitor.

Both of my HV were fantastic! I couldn't have asked for better actualy but i guess it's just luck of the draw as my doctor was SHITE!!! moved doctors now though

I have had one fantastic one and a couple of truly dreadful ones.

The biggest issue I have with them is that they seem to want to oush resources/time at people who are fine, and seem to be defensive and more interested if you don't want their help.

With DS1 I would turn up and get weighed and processed and pretty much ignored .
With DS2 who had ASD they were just puzzled but had no real help to offer.
When I had DD and pretty much said 'we are fine, I don't need help, I don't want to come in, I don't need health checks - I will just go to the Doctors if she is unwell' they suddenly were like flies around a nappy .

It can stop being support and get busybodyish really quickly. And yet I suspect if I had just said 'fuck off' and been confrontational, I probably wouldn't have seen much of them either.

I will also never forgive the stupid, ill informed twat who wanted me to see a dietician ( who was useless) and threatenmed social services if I didn't. Once the gP confirmed I was doing everything right with DS she had to back off but had a cats bum face every time I saw her and never apologised for the wasted months

heard a lot of good things, but never experienced it. same as Nancy, one meeting, when DS was 8mths left me in tears, and i ain't no wallflower, she was so patronising and i complained. Yet she didn't know what weetabix was?!!

Good HVs are not so much undervalued as almost imposible to find! (IME).

My first one came in stinking of smoke, looked in my Red Book and said "gosh, a 10lb baby, you'll never manage to feed her all on your own, better get her used to a bottle now", totally missed my raging PND (and I wasn't hiding it!), recommended weaning at 8-10 weeks (this was 10 years ago, but still) and was eventually disciplined when I reported her for handing out copies of a certain book which she had bought with money she had been given to create a parenting book library in the practice!

After that, the merely ineffectual ones who knew nothing about breastfeeding, medication in breastfeeding, nappy rash, febrile convulsions, treating chicken pox and anything to do with sleep were a bit of light releif.

I will never have to see another one. Hooray! I've met good and bad GPs, Practice nurses, CPNs, midwives, hospital consultants of many specialties, podiatrists and SALTs. Sadly, I have never met a good HV.

I have been very lucky with my HV. She has some oddities - she is known to some of my friends as 'vitamin queen' as she does rather bang on about children taking their vitamins.

BUT...if it were not for my HV I would not have got pass 3 months with breast feeding DD. When I went to her in tears, exhausted and fed up with the constant feeding (this was before I found MN), the HV was just great and gave me all the support, encouragement and advice I needed to breastfeed my child. DD self weaned 2 days after her 2nd birthday, having never even tasted forumla

I have known other HVs locally who are not so great, and who have reduced friends to tears. So, I guess like all professions there are some good, and some not so good.

I think their role is ill defined and hardly anyone seems to know what they are actually for. Half of all mums seem to think that they are experts in everything related to babies and that they Must follow their (often out dated and heavily biased to what they did with their own children, not to mention well beyond their remit or capabilities) advice. The other half just use them as an expensive baby weighing service, as every time they ask the HV a question the answer is either "I don't know", "Top up with formula" or "Do controlled crying".

If we are going to have HVs then they actually DO need to be experts, properly trained and kept up to date in baby care, breastfeeding, weaning etc...and supervised. And parents need to be informed about exactly what the HV role is, so that they can a) ask for appropriate help/advice and b) not feel like they are being watched over by the 1970s NHS sponsored by Nestle.

past

I had very limited contact with my HV with my first DD, but my second DD has had serious health problems. My HVs (and the nursery nurses) have been an enormous support to me and literally saved my sanity on several occasions.

Also, my mum was a HV and she worked in a very deprived area. She was completely devoted to the families in her care and earned their trust. I know from the reaction we got when mum died last year that her work was really appreciated by a lot of those families and other medical/social professionals.

So that's a big YANBU from me

Quite right TheProvincialLady

My wonderful health visitor was wonderful because she worked as hard as she could to find out about ASD as quickely as she could and tried to find resources for me. She was also not scared to say " I don't know - actually you know more about this than I do"

She was trying to find courses to help her support, help and spot soft signs for ASD when I left

All the health visitors I had were amazing, and I am quite harsh about other areas of the NHS. I had no idea that they were cutting back the numbers. It is absurd to replace them with nursery nurses - they are not even vaguely similar jobs. It would be like replacing doctors with classroom assistants.

When I was really upset about some stuff that had happened to my DS at preschool, I phoned the health centre and my health visitor was at my house within 15 mins. I have always found them to be very helpful and professional.

They were great at supporting breastfeeding, weaning and dealing with any health problems me or the children had. They also carried out all the developmental checks and hearing tests etc, which is a nursery nurse is clearly not qualified to do.

They also did classes each week to teach emergency first aid, child health and so on. My child stopped breathing as a baby and it is only because of the first aid I had been taught by my health visiting team that he is still alive.

I really am shocked that numbers have been cut.

I also think community midwives do a really good job.

Our

Due to house moves etc, I have had 6 HV's over the last 12 years. There were 2 awful ones, 2 not annoying, but not helpful either, And 2 were absolute gems. One of those 2 I had as a HV for 4 solid years from when DD was 2yo until I moved out of area when DS2 was 1yo. I really do think it depends on when they trained, and if they have had any children themselves. The 2 awful ones were newly qualified, and had no DC's, the 2 unhelpful ones had been working for 1-2 years after qualifying, but had no children, and the 2 wonderful ones had qualified yonks ago - one 15 yrs previously, one 18yrs previously, and one was an LP with 2 dc's and the other was a WOHM with 3 dc's. My local area no longer has a permanent HV, only a baby clinic once a fortnight, and no surestart either. Glad mine are all older now TBH.

I value all healthcare professionals, expect them to be good at their jobs and generally listen to them and follow their advice. Unfortunately, despite having 4 children I am yet to have a good HV (aware this means I have just not found a good one), I have seen 2 good GPs (out of 20) have had 4 good midwives (out of 20). I find it difficult to find even a basic standard of care. I think Health Visitors particularly need to be trained properly in breastfeeding support.

Mine told me after her first visit that she would be leaving to go back to college. After that we received numerous invitations to attend sessions at lunchtimes despite the fact that I repeatedly pointed out that I was back at work full time from the time my DD was four months old.

We then slipped through the cracks and my DD's two year check thing was only remembered 3 months after the event.

IME, a complete waste of time if your child is thriving. If I had concerns about DD I would have gone to GP, not HV.

My HV Debbie was freaking fabulous. Trish who does baby cafe is also darned good. The amount of effort they put into breastfeeding support is great, the funding however, has been pulled out from under their feet and H1N1 hasn't exactly helped.

NotSureHowH1N1CanStillBeBloodyImpactingBabyCafeButWillFindOutNextTimeTiggaxx

It depends where you are to be honest ... and curiosity is quite right in that HV's need so much more training in breastfeeding. Our PCT has just started using the Little Angels breastfeeding supporters who are utterly fantastic because tbh the breastfeeding rates are shite in my area and the experience of the HVs is non-existent in some cases. The PCT is using the new charts though so less of the advice to wean at 20 weeks when BF babies appear to drop off the centiles (as they did with the old charts).

I absolutely love my job and wouldn't do anything else. I do get frustrated that so much time is taken up with child protection leaving less time for the support part of the role - although I am going back to see a first time mum next week who on my first visit (which co-incided with her hubby going back to work) opened the door with red eyes and looked exhausted. I really felt for her because I can remember feeling that tired and tearful too when DS was a newborn - spent ages with her and am going in again next week. Woukld like to spend much more time doing this side of the job because being a new mum can feel so lonely at times.