Why are so many health visitors a bit rubbish?

[waiting78]

Just read the thread about spoiling a 3 month old baby by interacting with it and it reminded me of something I've often wondered when reading threads on here.

Health visitors are highly qualified people. They are nurses or midwives who then undertake further study to become HV.

So why oh why do they have such a bad reputation? Loads of threads on here seem to indicate many HVs give bad or outdated advice on weaning, sleeping, breastfeeding etc. From personal experience I know their knowledge on immunisations isn't always up to date. Is it simply that only the bad ones get talked about, or something else?

They have a bad reputation because although many of them of brilliant its the ones that come out with crass comments such as the one that told me that I should try jarred baby food rather than making my own or the one that told me that dairylee on toast was better alternative than homemade food, and was surprised when I told her that the amount of salt in the bread and processed cheese was not good for a nine month old

But that's exactly what I find so odd. They are qualified, educated, intelligent people who's job it is to know about child health and parenting... so how can they genuinely believe that jarred food is better, babies should be left to cry at 2 weeks old etc etc

(not a criticism of jarred food, we all love ellas kitchen on occasion, but surely everyone knows homemade would be more nutritious? )

I think it is because you only hear about the bad ones. MY HV was brilliant and really supportive.

My whole HV team were fabulous, supported my breastfeeding, even through an awful bout of thrush (which they diagnosed) helped me with comfortable feeding positions, brilliant weaning advice, and were all round lovely. I think mainly you only hear about the bad ones because people are more likely to talk about negative experiences.

Highly trained, intelligent people can still be shit at their jobs and we mostly only hear about those ones, same goes for social workers, mid wives, teachers, etc.

My experience with health visitors was a very positive one, who were very helpful and supportive especially when my second one would not breastfeed. I guess most people will be the same but you just don't hear about it.

I haven't experienced a bad one. We only hear of the bad ones.

Are they really that highly qualified? IME you have to get up to a really high level in the NHS to get highly qualified. I am talking consultant level.

They have high caseloads and the giving weaning/sleeping advice to average parents bit is going to be a fairly low priority.

Wow Girlwithnotsttos. So I'm not the only one who had 'better get him used to jars of food in case you leave him with someone who can't cook'

The advice given by HVs is incredibly hit and miss. Hence the poor reputation.

My HV was/is amazing and I can't wait to see her again in Autumn

Mine have all been useless tbh.
One asked if my dd was sleeping through at 4 months and when I said no (coz she's erm - a BABY) she suggested I wean her early. Then suggested I let her cry.
I had one diagnose oral thrush when it was just milk deposits on the tongue (even I could see that).
This time I've been told that dd2 isn't eating 'enough' and that 'they like them to be take x amount at x age' to which I asked if I was to force feed my 4 week old!
I tend to just completely ignore them. One told my friend she had to stop cuddling her 1 year old to sleep and leave the house at bed time and let her husband leave him to cry if she 'didn't have the balls to'.

My 2nd "HV" turned out not to be a qualified HV at all - not that she told me that, she was merrily giving out bonkers advice about all sorts of things I hadn't asked about.

If I hadn't come across my original fantastic HV (who had retired) doing some bank hours I'd never have known and would have assumed that I'd just got a rubbish HV...

Mine have been lovely (one with dd and another with ds), however my friend who lives local had ah horrific one! She keeps staring intently at her and saying things like "so is your husband being supportive? You know men can change when a bay comes along" - repeatedly.

She said it is quite disconcerting to be glared at and constantly asked about the state of her marriage.

I never really saw the point of HVs. Mine was perfectly nice and fairly competently weighed / measured DD, checked we had bf established and assessed me (sort of) for PND but after that I didn't need advice so I didn't see them. Aren't they mainly intended as a first line detection service for child neglect and abuse?

I think the "rubbish HV" thing partly comes from them being asked all sorts of questions about parenting that there is no right answer to, so presumably over time some of them start to think of themselves as an oracle of that kind of advice so start to offer it randomly?

I refused to see a new HV after she outed my second pregnancy to my DM. The HV shouted across the doctors waiting room "I hear congratulations are in order"!

I challenged her and she said she had the right to read my medical records and there was no point in hiding a pregnancy. I complained. She got a slap on the wrist. I refused to see her. She threatened a SS referral for neglect.

Is it because no matter how much training someone has done, it's impossible to fully discount their own experience? So if they let their baby cry they can't admit that it was anything other than the Right Thing To Do?

Also, as a pp said, there are rubbish people in every job but a hv will see a lot more people than your average accountant so more people are aware of their rubbishness.

Wow Beatrice that's terrible. What kind of HCP doesn't understand medical records confidentiality?

I've only seen moderately useless to outright incompetent HVs

Mines awful

mine's awful, giving out advice like "just eat whatever you ate when you pregnant" after we'd been to a&e with ds at 3 weeks old with blood in his nappies (to which she'd said "just keep an eye on it"), diagnosed cmpa and been told by paeds to follow a restricted diet, then told us to start him on solids at 17 weeks to get him to sleep better.. (turns out hes allergic to eggs too, he was waking with a sore tummy)i had hoped it was a stereotype about hvs but it seems not

Mine was bad but not as bad as some of these! Just not really that interested in us rather than actively giving bad advice. She made me feel massively undermined in the early weeks by dismissing all my concerns and refusing to talk about bf problems beyond 'it does hurt you know'.

Haven't seen her since 5 weeks, I didn't return a call once about a visit and dd now 3ms with no contact. Even though I am high risk for PND so should be receiving extra support...(my arse, so lucky I didn't develop it).

Are a lot of them bad because they spend a lot of time visiting alone so no one to question their bad advice? Also agree with trilby - whatever happened with their babies was The Right Thing or The Only Normal Thing or not worthy of referral because It Never Did Mine Any Harm

I think they give conflicting advice that's why they're given a bad reputation. I have a ds 8 and a newborn and the difference in advice given on such a short space of time is incredible. For example when ds1 was born dummies were the devil now it's actively encouraged, peanuts were banned now they're telling you to give peanut butter on toast as too many 7 8 9yr olds have nut allergies, weaning started with baby rice now it's blw, I'm sure there's more. It's a wonder my 8yr old survived.

They can be an adult nurse with one year extra training in HV. One year forchild development, child protection, behavioural advice, health, nutrition. Doesn't sound highly qualified to me?

I think it's a jack of all trades/master of none type job.

I'm a psychologist. I would approach the pnd screen and developmental check completely differently to my HV. But then again I spent a lot longer training how to asses mental health and development.

From my short experience of dealing with health visitors I have found they don't want to commit to anything so they seem to throw about quite opinionated advice but always follow it with "go and see your gp"! I haven't found our health visitor clinic helpful for anything other than weighing. Weirdly the original hv who visited me at home was great: assertive and confident, helpful, sounded really knowledgeable and could tell you why to do things the way she suggested. She was quite senior I think and had been a midwife for 15years or so beforehand and a hv for nearly 10 so maybe it's her experience that helped. Maybe the hvs at the clinics are just the rubbish ones round here. My dd lost some weight when she had a cold recently and one week the hv told me it was dangerous and the cold couldn't cause that amount of weight loss while the next week a hv told me it must have been the cold and it wasn't anything to worry about.