Health visitor and HE

[weirdthing]

The health visitor called at our door today for a visit (which I rang up and cancelled with the receptionist) - apparently a standard one following my son's visit to A&E due to falling and cutting his head on his brother's bookcase. Anyway, I told her that I'd cancelled the appointment and that I had no need for a visit. (He came out of the room and stood beside me.) Now I am panicking - should I have let her in? Will they think that because I also HE that I have something to hide?

For the record, we do structured work every day and have loads of evidence. We also have a yearly visit from the LEA lady who is happy with what we do (mainly as I am an ex-teacher and she thinks that we home ed 'properly')

I just hate being micro-managed and don't see why the hell I should let a stranger that I have never met before into my home just because my child has had a one-off normal childhood accident. Now I think I've made a mistake and they'll put 2+2 together and get 10. To make it worse, we were both still in our onesies at lunchtime...

You've done nothing wrong at all. You had cancelled your appointment, and it's your house, so you absolutely do not need to worry that you didn't let her in.

Besides, if there's any come back, you can explain that you were in the middle of an important lesson, and just as any healthcare would not be allowed access to a classroom without an appointment, you had your morning's learning planned out, and it would not have been appropriate for it to have been interrupted !

I love, love, love that you were in your onsies at lunchtime!

I might phone up and offer to reschedule the appointment though, at least it shows willing. And to be fair, it's quite reassuring to know that incidents are being followed up, hopefully, genuine cases of neglect/abuse will cease to fall through the net if all HV are a bit more vigilant.

Tbh, if I were you, I'd be disappointed if she didn't get back in contact to try and reschedule, because next time, it might be a vunerable child who needs intervention.

Keep us posted, please OP!

• inapporpriate!

Thanks Misfitless. I won't be remaking the appointment though. The reason I cancelled is because it quite simply would have been a waste of her and my time. I am super safety conscious but even I could not have forseen my son deciding to 'wear' a cardboard box and fall back in exactly the right place to hit his head on the edge of his brother's bookcase and cut it. It was just one of those things. I can't see how a home visit would prevent that type of accident in the future.

No, you're right! Hope your DC's head is healing OK.

Thanks :)

You can reschedule to see her at the clinic if you don't want her in your home. I used to do this with my HV occasionally simply because I worked and the clinic was easier to do on the childminder to train station run and still get to to work by 10am. If she'd met me at home it would have meant an entire morning off work just cos of traffic, train times and the usual morning logistics.

Head injuries can be peculiar things so it makes sense to let a 3rd party trained eye follow them up tbh. If you don't let the HV see then at least book a follow up check at the GP's surgery with the practice nurse.

The head injury was 2 months ago!

long term effects can take a while to show up - brains are strange