Health visitors, are they all useless?

[1738hey]

In my experience and many others on here, health visitors know very little, a lot of what they do know is opinion based or old fashioned.
Mine actually told me completely incorrect information about the milk I decided to put my baby on and would've caused baby a lot of stress if I hadn't done my own research on Aptamil website then spoken to GP, so I don't have contact with her anymore.
Can I hear positive HV stories?
No offence to any HV's, perhaps more up to date training is needed? Or maybe I and a few others have just had very bad experiences and the majority know their stuff!

My experiences with health visitors (I have three DC) have all been positive.

I’ve had 5 health visitors, every one of them useless. Completely outdated job that is not needed.

Love this thread!
Normally HV bashing and this is so positive that people are getting a good service x

Mine was shite. I sat in front of her, 3 weeks in a row, weeping, telling her that DD wasn't gaining weight, was screaming during feeds, wasn't OK, and she said "keep doing what you're doing" 3 times, with the exact same inflection, like a fucking robot, while i sobbed and told her i couldn't. She didn't seem at all concerned that i was crying, either.

Next week i took my husband. He told her the exact same thing. She looked him straight in the eye, told him it sounded like silent reflux, weighed DD and told us we should have mentioned something sooner.

She'd fallen off the bottom of the chart in the red book, having been born on the 25th centile. I reported her. Fuck all happened.

The HV saved much nephews life to a point. Sister wouldn't take family advice so when the HV said no things aren't right he needs to go to hospital, he went.

When I had my first I was very young and found the HV’s tended to look down on me and be pretty judgmental. When dc3 was born my first HV was wonderful, very supportive and easy to talk to. Unfortunately she left when he was a few weeks old, and it was a male HV who took over. For various reasons I never felt comfortable with him, and aside from jabs avoided dealing with them completely.

I've had two totally useless ones. I scored something extraordinary on the Edinburgh score and she said "oh dear" and did nothing else. Not even refer the baby that had gone from 80th percentile to 9th and was constantly coughing.

However I had another who came round once a week for a cuppa for a couple of months, just for a chat and some company. And another who chased down an ASD assessment appointment out of nowhere - she was outstanding.

Hello OP, I used to be a HV and left as I got fed up working with HVs like yours.

No regrets leaving either.

FWIW I think many HVs are bogged down with safeguarding work and that’s where their expertise lies. I think most new parents could be seen by a nursery nurse for the box ticking stuff ...most of this is to ensure the baby gets registered with child health .

I can count on one hand where my expertise was needed...one with a baby who had a serious heart condition which had been missed previously. Picked that up as the baby kept going blue while I was weighing her.

I liked seeing new parents and count one parent I saw as a HV as good close friend now. Kept bumping into her and then we joined an art class totally independently and clocked one another immediately.

Loved my job, loved the parents I worked with but didn’t love all the HVs I worked with . Many were great but you always get ones who are a nightmare.

You don't have to have an HV though. You can decline.
I declined for my second DD as the first was just so pointless. Didn't tell me anything I didn't know, or couldn't work out for myself. I am sure they are helpful if you need the support, but if you don't, then let them know.

I've met some fucking nasty ones.

Mine was wonderful, I still wish she'd pop round and see me now 12 years later

I am very lucky in that, in the early 2000s, our community had a fantastic local clinic run by midwives and HVs. My HV was very up to date with her knowledge, she was the senior HV and led a great team of community midwives and HVs and ran a very good integrated community service. She had a wonderful way of giving advice without it sounding like "you should do this". She would say "one of my mums tried X" or "one of my mums tried Y, she did it by doing XYZ". She would always discuss the latest issues in baby and child health.

She was wonderfully warm and calm and really was a great support at a time when I was young, hundreds of miles from any family and the only one of my friendship group to have given birth.

It was a pleasure to have her as my HV again 4 years later when my DS was born. I wish I could track her down as she really gave me the confidence to be a good mum and the gift of enjoying my baby and that is absolutely priceless.

I suppose like all roles there will be a mixed bag of good, bad and some in between. Mine was friendly and helpful and gave out useful, relevant advice during her visits. I got the feeling she was quite busy.

Mine was also the one that spotted that I was heading towards PND and found me a lovely first mums group: we stayed friends for many years.

No idea - saw mine 3 times in first year, then once more. All the support they offered.

In my experience they are mostly crap. But they were mainly pleasant at least.
I saw lots of different ones and all their advice conflicted with each other! They can't all have been right. It was frustrating. Second time around I politely declined their input as it just wasn't needed or wanted.

So nice to hear everyone's stories- thank you.
In my case I took the incentive to put ds on comfort milk because he was severely constipated (not pooing for days, screaming, then hard pellet poos🥴). HVs advice only consisted of giving water which he wouldn't drink and so didn't help.
When I told her this she was practically livid saying I should wean him off it within the ne t few weeks and I shouldn't prescribe specialised milk myself. I was terrified but I dint know why I let her get to me because he was no longer constipated and was a brand new happy baby. Spoke to gp who said it was fine and to carrry on. He's still on it now at 6 months and is a very happy baby😄
In reality I know that you will get anomaly's in all professions and most will be lovely, but it really put me off and we have survived the past 5 months without one!
I am glad that their main duties are in safeguarding as I think that's where they would be useful and that's where they should put their attention.

Mine was poor, she recorded that my son could only say a handful of words at his two year review, she refused to record the fact that he could say multiple words in Urdu and use 2-3 word sentences.

She also said his hearing aids were an unsafe choke hazard and attempted to remove them.

Mine was great, but I only ever spoke to her 3 times. I haven't heard from her since DD was 6 weeks old, and she's 6 months next week.

We seem to have dropped off the radar for her and after a few months of calling and not getting through, I just started going to the GP if there were any issues. I'm not sure if the lack of support is Covid related or not, but I do wish we were more of a priority to her.

Mine is lovely, I've had the same one for both children. I'd say they are definitely more geared towards safeguarding though, if I have ever had a medical problem I've gone to the GP.

You are being incredibly offensive to a whole profession (and no, I'm not a HV, nor related to any)

As you say in your last post you will get anomaly's in all professions and most will be lovely - so why be so rude in your title ?

HVs are incredibly overworked. They have ridiculous caseloads and can't possibly do their jobs in the way they would like to do, due to the horrific understaffing, plus jobs they can't fill even where the posts exist. I very much feel for the poor people who are trying their best, in awfully underfunded profession.

Mine were lovely and referred for something I wouldn't have thought was needed, based on my husband's childhood medical history.

Mine was nice. Was horrified by the swaddle we used and told me very kindly that we havent swaddled babies in Denmark for 40 years. I pointed out that we havent left our babies to sleep outside in the pram in the uk for 40 yrs and if I was going to do that then she could live with the swaddle. She did concede fair point

I think HVs get a very unfair time on Mumsnet. People are so quick to write off HVs in general if they've had a poor experience with theirs without actually any understanding of all the many different things a HV does. I am a qualified HV though no longer working as one as I'm now a specialist in another field but I'm currently on maternity leave with my first baby. I disliked my HV; she offered terrible advice about feeding and allowed me to leave her clinic in tears worried (completely unnecessarily because she actually got it wrong) about my baby's health which is something I would never have done as a practitioner myself. So I know first hand that there are good HVs and bad HVs and I also know there are good HVs who are not amazing at everything. I was a HV who worked predominantly with safeguarding so understandably, if you ask a fair chunk of the clients I worked with, they would probably say they don't like me at all. But also, that is what I was good at; safeguarding was my bread and butter and what I felt most competent doing and whether the parents I was working with liked me or not, I know I was doing a good job and was a fierce advocate for the children I worked for. Breastfeeding, however, was not something I felt overly confident with as it just didn't come up that often for me so although I was trained to offer support; day to day it just didn't come up that much and I became deskilled. There are definitely better HVs for breastfeeding advice out there than me. That doesn't mean I'm a bad HV. And therefore I have to acknowledge that just because I didn't like my HV doesn't automatically mean she was a bad HV either (though her people skills leave an awful lot to be desired regardless of how forgivable her misinformation might be).
But anyway, ultimately; it is an extremely complex role and it's not fair to say HVs are useless just because you didn't like that one. I don't know may health care professionals who get the same level of generalised contempt as HVs despite the fact that every profession is always going to have good and bad levels of practice going on.

I think HVs get a very unfair time on Mumsnet

I agree. I had a fabulous health visitor. DD developed some serious health issues that meant I couldn't take her out in the car on my own to HV clinics. The HV came to see me at home. She had been an ICU nurse previously so she completely understood the issues I was facing.

She was massively supportive, and helped get me through a period when DD wouldn't eat. She was brilliant.

I ignored mine as she was useless but I do know of some that are good. But I never encountered them.