|
Foundations…
Foundations of buildings, foundation courses, foundation garments.
Getting the foundations right… buildings, life and learning. Nothing more important than foundations.
It is particularly true of kids. Give them the best and surest start in life you can.
It is so important we once had a policy called just that… Sure Start. A flagship policy. A New Labour Project. At their peak in 2010, there were 3,600 Sure Start centres, with a budget of about £1.8bn.
A study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies found Sure Start centres, in deprived areas that offered high levels of service, delivered major health benefits and millions of pounds in NHS savings through reduced hospitalisation.
Babies, under one, have the highest rate of A&E attendance and the rate of 0–4-year-olds attending A&E has increased by 42% in the last 10 years.
By 2019, cuts in local authority spending meant a 20% fall in the number of youngsters using Sure Start… 1.8 million children used Sure Start centres in England in 2017-18… down from 2.2 million four years earlier… a direct consequence of a 62% cut in council early-years-service spending since 2010.
The rug was pulled, the foundations eroded. It gets worse.
In 2015 the responsibility for health visiting was transferred from health to local authorities. At the same time the public health grant fell by £0.69bn, in real terms.
The upshot… at least 30% of the health visiting workforce has been lost. My guess, you'll find them working in Sainsbury’s for more money.
The arrival of a planned child, into a well resourced, welcoming, loving home is a joy but nevertheless, can be a challenge of sleeplessness, confusion, caution and …
... ‘what do I do’!
The arrival of a little one into poverty and fractured relationships makes a child no less loved but exposed and makes...
... ‘what do I do’, a much more urgent question.
A health visitor, calm, experienced and authoritative is a life-line, the layer of foundations and the builder of a sure start.
The number of health visitors fell by 450 in the 12 months to January 2022. Now, there are 5,692 health visitors … over 2,000 less than pre-Covid levels and…
… over the same period we’ve lost around 10% of school nurses.
Health visitor, visits should mean;
- an antenatal visit at about 28-32 weeks
- a new birth visit when the baby is about 10-14 days old
- a support visit at 6-8 weeks after the birth
- development reviews for the child at 1yr old
- a developmental review at 2-2 ½ years old
I’m told it ain’t happening… what do I know.
I only know what I’m told and I’m told; more than 84,000 babies missed health checks within two weeks of birth… only three quarters of new births had visits, a tad-over-half had 6-7 week postnatal contacts and only 4% of 3-4 months check-ups are carried out by a qualified health visitor.
I also know what I read. The institute of Health Visiting published a survey… it's an insight into the world babies didn't ask to be born into;
- 91% of health visitors reported an increase in poverty affecting families over the past 12 months
- 91% reported an increase in families needing food-banks
- 83% reported an increase in perinatal mental illness
- 75% reported an increase in domestic abuse.
… add to that an increase in children with speech and language delays, behaviour problems and safeguarding worries.
Health visitors have a long history. They’ve been doing their thing since 1860. That must tell us something.
It tells me, who ever the mum is, whatever the family circumstances the arrival of baby, with relentless demands and a living, wriggling, labyrinth of puzzles, traps for the trusting and bewilderment…
... they'll need explanations, encouragement, advice and most important of all, a sympathetic ear and a kind word.
It helps build resilience. An experience shared is life’s way of giving us shortcuts to getting things right-first-time.
Health visitors have no right of access and depend on building relationships. That’s the point…
… this is an unsolicited, free service that has proven its worth over nearly 170 years and it is disappearing…
… and one thing is for sure, what we do, or don’t do, for our kids, now, will come back and bite us, sooner of later.
We might all be victims of our past, some even casualties of the here and now but it will be fatal for us all if we don’t secure the future for our children.
| 
