Health Visitors
Health Visitors
About the department
The Health Visiting service delivers the Healthy Child Programme for children aged 0 – 5 years, and their families who reside in Buckinghamshire.
It offers four levels of intervention to describe the ongoing support that the children and young people can expect to improve their health and wellbeing: community universal, universal plus and universal partnership plus with safeguarding across all levels.
We work in partnership with other services such as maternity, primary care, early years, social care and mental health services. Overall the service is about improving public health outcomes for children, young people and their families.
What makes it a great place to work? Work colleagues, a great team who are friendly and caring.
About the role
Health visiting is a varied role involving many different aspects, but it is essentially about delivering the Healthy Child Programme (HCP) to children of five years and under, and their parents.
It is an exciting role because no two days are the same – you could be giving breastfeeding support to a mother, carrying out a development review, attending a child protection case conference, facilitating an antenatal group for expecting parents, mentoring a student or visiting a family living in a caravan on a travellers’ site, followed by a family living in a country mansion!
It’s about empowering children, young people and parents to make informed decisions that affect their family’s health and wellbeing and our role is to help improve the health outcomes of the local population through early intervention and prevention.
Career routes
You would need either to be a qualified midwife or a registered nurse (Child/Adult/LD/Mental health). You would then need to apply to undertake the Specialist Community Public Health Nursing (SCPHN – Health Visiting) degree course with a trust, obtain a place at university and successfully complete the course.
Mini case study
Kelly Saunders, Health Visitor
My day to day role as a Health Visitor is incredibly varied. My main role is to support families who are expecting a baby or who have children under the age of five years. I support families and ensure they have access to evidence-based information which enables them to make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing. Monitoring the health, growth and wellbeing of children is a key part of my role, as well as identifying families who require additional support. I am also involved in the safeguarding of children and regularly attend child protection meetings to ensure children are kept safe from harm.
The thing I like most about my role is having the opportunity to work in the community, building positive relationships with families. My role enables me to be flexible and I am able to tailor the service offered to meet the needs of my clients.
I have worked here for seven years and work in a team in which I feel valued and well supported. The Trust are very aware of the stresses some staff face and have developed numerous resources to support staff wellbeing and resilience.
