Opinions on health visitors please!

[weesaidie]

Hello

My mum works in management in NHS and used to be a (fantastic!) health visitor... she wanted me to ask for mumsnets views and experiences, good and bad, of health visitors. So they can work on the system...

So. EVERYONE, please... Tell me what they do right, what they do wrong, personal experiences and so forth. What could be changed/improved?

Thanks very much.

my previous health visitor went out of her way to come to my house to do dd's checks (ie 8 month check) and it was such a relief not having to go out in the cold winter rain. if i wanted to weight dd's, she always had scales in her car. she would sit and have a cup of tea and take an interest in everything to do with the family, not just dd's

when it came to the MMR i was a bit anxious, and she never swayed my decision, and gave me loads of up to date research to read. she was FAB

my new health visitor wont even chat to me over the phone without an appt, and she only does everything by the book

My HV is a bit rough and a heavy heavy smoker and calls me Mum all the time which really winds me up!! She has a hacking cough and doesnt seem like an HV!

She can be OK and helpful-ish though.

Rubbish IMO.

Advice given to me include:

"Make sure you look after your husband because he is the breadwinner."

"Only smoke Jamaican weed, not American as it's more pure." (Note: I don't even smoke ciggies let alone anything more exciting)

"Only take coke at weekends." (Again, only coke I've ever had is of the Diet variety)

"Yes I know your paediatrician brother and your GP father-in-law advised you to give Calpol and Nurofen and keep an eye on her but you really should have rushed her to A&E."

I avoid them like the plague now. Get better advice of MN.

My health visitor is fantastic, my DD3 hearing problems would still have been bad if it wasn't for her.

Pennies, How strange. I'm sure I would have reported a HV who openly gave advice on illegal drugs.

As a maternity nanny working in different health aurthorities i have meet some that were ok and a few that were great and many who hadn't a clue and gave plainly out of date infomation.

On the whole i have found i get better advice from the net than from these 'professionals'.

They need to go on regular training update courses for breast feeding advice and weaning advice and as for allergies, a non starter with most not knowing of special milks available over the counter or on Rx.

Train them in breastfeeding support - properly.

Get them not to talk about offering vegetable purees to a four-month-old to improve his weight gain.

Give them breastfed from birth weight gain charts.

And build a special cage for the truly mental ones so we can all go and throw carrot puree at them.

Advice re. drugs and looking after DH was given to me on first visit after DD1 was born and I was too tired and fazed out to really consider the implications of the advice. I think he (yes, t'was a blokeHV) was sacked shortly afterwards though but to be honest I've not seen much improvement in the replacements.

Teach them about the extremly premature babies

not ones born AFTER 28 weeks or just a few weeks early

It made me soooooooooooo frustrated when HV talk about babies being premature

when they are born after 30 weeks or even worse when they would talk about them being born 4 or 5 weeks early

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! that is completely different

The needs of the family and the baby is COMPLETELY different

Please learn about them

ALSO when one twin dies do not say "AT LEAST YOU HAVE ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I feel they are completely a waste of time because they do NOT understand ANYTHING about it

Our HV is great if you only need the usual help, eg weighing babies, answering general questions about feeding problems, nappy rash etc. She's pretty useless when it comes to children with Special Needs. Ds1 failed his 2yr development check - after I'd called countless times to ask for her advice about why he didn't seem to hear me, didn't babble etc. She referred him for speech therapy and that was the end of it. She didn't ask how ds1 was doing. She didn't even reply to the Paed's invitation to attend ds1's case conference at the child development centre. Still no response when ds1 was diagnosed with autism. Our portage worker (who the speech therapist referred us to as the HV hadn't even told us that portage existed) phoned the HV several times and eventually persuaded her to join the portage worker on a home visit. The HV left after 10 minutes promising to call and let us know if ds1 was entitled to free nappies. That was 2 years ago and still no call......

Ds2 was given a provisional diagnosis of autism earlier this year. Again no response from the HV.

I'd like a HV who takes an interest in families with children with SN. Ds1's portage worker was so frustrated by the lack of support that she actually enlisted the school nurse to offer us support - even though ds1 hadn't yet started school.

Some of them need to be taught to actually listen to what a mum is saying rather than just nod whilst she is talking and then say 'oh well nevermind'.

I've had 1 really really lovely HV who was a star. Have also had 1 extremely awful one whom I complained about and then a couple of ok ones.

Don't think i have one at all now.

CT I think that is the problem

They are only any good if you have everything "AVERAGE"

Anything that is different they either don't understand your needs or the child or do NOT want to know or give bad/wrong advice

I've had three HV the first was nice and told you what you asked.

The second was a complete cow not a very child freindly one. I made a complaint about her but didn't get any real result and we moved house so she was no longer my HV anyway.

The third is lovely although I don't see her very often as they tend to leave you alone when you have a second.

I've had 2 and they've both been brilliant. First one was excellent in helping me and my PND. Good advice re breastfeeding and no encouragement to wean early.

Agree, train them to help Mother's sentively about breastfeeding, had some very bad HV's as far as thats concerned. Make the point to them that their opinion and way of living is not the only one. I have had HV's lecture me because I choose to for example sleep in bed with my child. Really, inmy opinion they should be presenting options to parents not dictating.

Finally I had one very bad incident with a HV where she refused to give a child a hearing test because I was not Mum. Mum was having problems with work and was scared to take time off work so I offered as she had no concerns about the child's hearing, just having it done because it was time to (I cared for the child about 40hr a week). HV made points about how Mum should make time for her child and how it was outragous I came. Not her place to comment in my opinion.

Heavenis, I don't think its very good they tend to leave you when you have had a second or third etc because in my experience you are more likely to have PND and therefore soemone keeping an eye to help you though that difficult stage. PND being what it is your aren't likely to ask for help or even recongnise you need it early on.

My HV's (We had 2) Were both lovely genuine people. They gave so much help and advice, and even though I've not seen either of them for over 18 months they both remember me and my DD, I took DD for her 3yrs3month jabs and what should of been a ten minute appaointment lasted well over half an hour because we were just chatting and took up most of their dinner break

My health visitor has seen me through a bout of PND, a miscarriage and is currently helping me through a second bout of PND. She comes out to the house to see me if I need to talk and always has the scales in the car incase I want DS weighed. She takes an interest in my family as a whole and makes me feel like a valued memeber of the community. And most importantly she never gives me unsolicited advice!!

However she was off sick recently and her stand in was not much older than me but talked down to me and tried telling me all the things that she thought I was doing wrong instead of focusing on what I had asked her. I objected to being treated like a young first time mum FFS I am 30 and this is my second baby I think I know what I am doing!!

I've never had a problem with the HV team at my surgery, but best friend is a petite Spanish woman and her ds takes after her in build. Because he was small he was presumed to be failing to thrive and she had to have home visits etc. during one of which she was asked "Do you realise that you have to feed him?"

She never went back. Her ds is still small but very definitely thriving. I think there can be too much slavish attention paid to the growth charts (he was bf as well, so likely to gain weight less rapidly).

I have to say my hv is fabulous, always very very bright and cheery, helpful and has a fab memory for detail, so arranges dd's vaccinations around dh's term times.

She called to the house to weigh dd when I couldn't get out (or just didn't want to when it was cr*ppy weather), and recently rang me to offer her support when she found out I had a m/c.

I think personality counts for a lot so I'd say only give h/w jobs to genuinely nice, helpful people and the rude ones can go be traffic wardens

She is a lovely lady and unlike the community midwife I was assigned, didn't treat you differently depending on what mood she was in that day.

My health visitor although nice was extremely useless. never did more than she had too and gave text book answers to questions. I hope I dont get shot down for this but she didnt have kids and after a shortwhile of being a mum, I realised that she didnt have a clue. She had the theory but had never been through it. Im not saying that this would make all childless health visitors bad at their job but I really felt that she didnt understand how exhausted I was or how difficult life can be. It wasnt a huge problem as I just stopped going but i wonder if other first time mums who really needed help would have been a bit lost.

I think I would have got on better if my HV had had her own kids. She was a lady in late middle age, who came and drank tea with me. If she came to weigh ds or anything 'technical' like that then she brought an assistant with her, who actually handled the baby.

By the time ds was 6 months old I knew all about the HV's mother in Scotland, and about her retirement plans, and about how it was shocking that there was a shortage of HVs, but I don't recall her ever imparting any useful info regarding raising a baby.

Message withdrawn

I have an excellent HV. She never minded silly phonecalls about feeding/sleeping/colds that wont go away. She always took an interest in both our welfares at baby clinic even when she was rushed of her feet and yesterday she even called to remind me that DS 2yr check is due.