Did anyone find the 12 month check useful?

[MillionPramMiles]

I'm woefully late in booking the 12 mth check (my dd is 14 months - she's up to date with all her jabs though). As I'll need to book time off work I wondered how urgent it is, what sort of thing do they check? Is it likely to be intrusive/uncomfortable? And did anyone find it particularly useful? And are social services going to bang on my door if I don't take dd soon :-/

I couldn't go to the clinic when I was supposed to go so I rang the HV team and one of them came to the house to do the check. Basically they weighed him, gave me a pack of free books and leaflets/samples etc and asked me questions about his development/sleeping/language/eating etc. I found it quite useful, because my HV is nice and she answered some questions I had. She also watched him crawl around, said how adorable he was and it was fine.

We got some books from Bookstart and one of them has become DD's favourite.

Umm.... that's it

I don't know what happens if you don't go. I just told work it was a medical appointment and came in a few hours late, so I didn't take time off. It wasn't instrusive at all, but then as DD was doing fine, it didn't feel very useful either. If it would cause hassle by not going I'd just take a day off work, plan something nice to do with your DC, and go to the appointment.

It's entirely voluntary, and IMO not particularly useful!

Thanks all. The bit I resent is the waiting around at the health centre. Even if we make an appointment we end up waiting for ages and dd gets bored. No home visits from friendly hvs in my neck of the woods!

totally not useful at all my dd was 16monts by the time they finally got around to doing it.
it was just a tick box exercise and I was just asked does she do this? for about 5 different skills i was then told how to brush her teeth and given a tube of Colgate and a tooth brush. oh and sone books and told about the importance of reading to her (which we already did)