Published: 11 May 2007
And the staffing situation has got worse since then!
The short, tragic life of Kimberley Baker brings the issue of child protection and the resources to implement such a service to the top of the agenda.
Amicus/the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association said that the death of an 11-month old Swindon baby highlights the decreasing number of highly trained health professionals able to provide the quality of support needed to help vulnerable families.
Research last month from the Family & Parenting Institute (FPI) revealed that Swindon Primary Care Trust (PCT) employed just one full-time health visitor for every 400 children under the age of five in its care.
The PCT was 103 in a list of 140 PCTs surveyed as to the best ratio of health visitors to young children.
Also, last month the latest NHS workforce statistics disclosed that a full-time health visitor job was being lost every day. This means that an estimated 500,000 visits to families by health visitors are not happening – despite Patricia Hewitt’s claim that the NHS has never had it so good.
Earlier this year, Amicus/CPHVA used the Freedom of Information Act to reveal a 40% cut in health visitor training places in England this year.
Amicus/CPHVA’s own recent research revealed that 29% of health visitors had concerns that their caseloads are so large that they are losing track of vulnerable families.
Cheryll Adams, Lead Professional Officer, Amicus Health Sector said:
“It is against this national backdrop of job losses, frozen posts and a decline in training places that a tragedy such as Kimberley Baker’s happened.
While I can’t comment on the particular circumstances of this case, it is clear that if you have a reduction in the number of health visitors nationally trained to pick up child protection issues, you are creating a problem.
The workloads of health visitors are enormous as the FPI research revealed, yet each day their numbers are being cut.
If this decline is not dramatically reversed, there is no guarantee that that this terrible event won’t be repeated at sometime, somewhere in the UK.
You can’t have ‘child protection’ on the cheap. The Victoria Climbie case should have taught us that; the case of Kimberley just reinforces that message”.
Further information
CPHVA website
Related articles
500,000 Visits to Families are not Happening
Health Cuts hit the Most Vulnerable
40% cut in Health Visitor Training Places
One and a Half Seconds per Child
You can do something about it
No. 10 Petition
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make a commitment to establish a well-funded, well-trained universal health visitor service available to all parents of children under five, with specialist support for the most vulnerable families.
The paragraph above is from a live e-petition on the No.10 website that can be accessed HERE.
Readers are urged to sign up to the petition to help support the campaign for a well-funded, well-trained universal health visitor service.
This is another powerful tool to ensure this is kept on the national agenda. While you may not be a Health Visitor, just think of your own children and those of family and friends, who may be relying on such a service currently or will be in the future.
Please also distribute the link to colleagues, friends, family, clients, etc. who might also like to pledge their support.
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