Forecasted Health Visitor Crisis is here

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Published: 03 February 2009

Forecasted Health Visitor Crisis is here

The state of the health visiting crisis has been further highlighted by new research revealing that more than 70% of GP practices are experiencing increased demands for postnatal care – the traditional role of health visitors.

Unite, the largest union in the country, said that it predicted four years ago the increased demand on GPs caused by the health visiting cutbacks.

Unite, which embraces that the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association (CPHVA), said that ‘the chickens are coming home to roost’; as the latest NHS workforce statistics revealed that a full-time health visitor job was being lost every 27 hours.

The survey, carried out by Independent Nurse magazine, showed that 71% of 474 GPs who replied had seen an increase in young mothers seeking help with problems, such as postnatal depression, sleep disorders and feeding problems.

Some GPs said they felt ill-qualified to offer young mothers advice and others warned they could not fill the health visitors’ child protection role.

The new findings dovetail with Unite/CPHVA’s own research last year which showed that more than 40% of health visitors reported that communication with their clients’ GPs had become harder in the previous two years.

Cheryll Adams, Unite Lead Professional Officer, Strategy & Practice Development, said: ‘

“We welcome the new GP findings in as much that it gives further evidence to our campaign to restore the UK’s health visiting service for the benefit of families and communities.

We are unsurprised by the effects of health visitor cuts on GP workloads with young families, as this was predicted four years ago when the serious cuts started.

Health visitors also started to be moved out of GP surgeries to work in neighbourhood-based teams. This trend has made the vital communication between doctors and health visitors more difficult”.

Unite/CPHVA's annual survey in 2008 demonstrated the rising concern:

Q. Over the past two years, has your access to your client’s GPs.

Base: 829	Counts	%
Base	829	100.0%
Significantly worsened	160	19.3%
Become slightly harder to achieve	201	24.2%
Stayed the same	362	43.7%
Become slightly easier to achieve	55	6.6%
Significantly Improved	38	4.6%
Don't know	13	1.6%