Concerns that council plans to cut health visitors will 'cause preventable harm'

Both Hampshire County Council and Stoke-on-Trent City Council have put forward proposals to cut their number of health visitors in order to make savings to their budget.

Hampshire has proposed to cut 47 public health staff – health visitors, school nurses and community staff nurses - which the local authority admits within its consultation would mean the ‘health needs of pregnant women, babies, children and families may not be identified as early, and support and early intervention not provided at the optimal time’.

Under the plans, only one mandated Healthy Child Programme (HCP) review will be offered to all children from birth to age five. The remaining four reviews will be ‘risk assessed to decide whether they should be completed face-to-face, by video or telephone’.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s proposals include reducing health visitors by ‘seven whole-time equivalents’, along with scrapping a number of community staff roles and a specialist health visitor for young people.

Unite the union has said that ‘thousands of families’ living within the local authority could be impacted by the plans, while organisations that advocate for women’s health have warned that the proposals by Hampshire County Council ‘introduce unacceptable risks’, that if implemented, will ‘cause preventable harm and widen inequalities’.

In a letter to the leader of the council, Councillor Keith Mans, the Royal College of Midwives, the NCT (National Childbirth Trust), Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists and Sands – the stillbirth & neonatal death charity, state, ‘Reducing the number of staff posts who are available to support families will reduce the amount of time that health visitors have available to support women and their babies. This will drive an even higher threshold for support and reduce opportunities to identify need/vulnerability. ‘

It goes on to say, ‘Non face-to-face methods for delivering the Healthy Child Programme are currently untested. We do not have enough evidence on their effectiveness as an alternative method of providing support and identifying risk and vulnerability.

‘We are concerned that this approach relies on the “agency” of individuals to step forward and ask for support when they need it.’

It concludes by recommending the council ‘re-examine’, as a matter of urgency, the impact the proposed changes will have on pregnant women, parents and children, their statutory safeguarding responsibilities,

Councillor Liz Fairhurst, Hampshire County Council’s executive lead member for Adult Services and Public Health, said, ‘Thank you to all who responded to the recent public health consultation.

‘I must stress that no final decisions have been made. I will be giving full consideration to all responses to the consultation later in the year.’

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has been contacted for a response.