Published: 15 October 2007
Cocktail of Stress and Low Morale
Health visitors are facing a virulent cocktail of high stress levels and low morale, as they tackle increasing workloads, a symposium on the profession’s future in London was told last week.
New research by Unite/Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association revealed that the cuts of the last two years had taken their toll, delegates at the A powerful equalizer: regenerating the health visiting profession debate heard.
Unite/CPHVA’s Acting Lead Professional Officer, Cheryll Adams said:
“This research based on interviews with more than 800 health visitors in England reveals a depressing cocktail of a profession under serious pressure.
But we taking heart from the Health Secretary’s recent comments that more health visitors need to be employed to combat public health inequalities”.
Key findings include:
· Three-quarters interviewed said they knew of colleagues off sick suffering work-related stress – and a similar number said they had experienced increased stress themselves
· 32% said they were definitely unable to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable children on their caseload
· Just over half (53%) said that their morale was fairly poor or very poor
Cheryll Adams said that another area of concern was that skill-mix teams – the employment of lesser skilled staff to work with health visitors – were causing concern, and more health visiting hours needed to be allocated to the teams:
“Promoting the health and well-being of children and families, you need the right combination of skills and our members are telling us that skill-mix is turning into grade mix, with serious implications for safe and effective practice and health outcomes”.
The event was organised under the auspices of Brent North MP, Barry Gardiner and was held at Portcullis House, House of Commons.
Further information
CPHVA website
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