We wholeheartedly support the Family and Parenting Institute's campaign to secure a well-funded, well-trained universal health visitor service accessible for all parents of children under five.
Children's services also face a postcode lottery when it comes to accessing health visitors. The expectation is that health visitors will be integral to the 'one-stop shop' approach and they will link to other services.
However, while the children's centre agenda is central to Government policy, it is questionable whether it is part of Primary Care Trust (PCT) plans, or given necessary weight.
This means families are in danger of not getting the vital early support they need. Furthermore, with such countrywide variation there is a real question about equality of opportunity for all families to access support.
There is good practice including health visitors linking to children's services, such as parent and toddler groups and pre-schools and some PCTs reorganising from practice to geographically-based areas. But services vary widely - some health visitors carry heavy caseloads in excess of 1,000 children and families and work under extreme pressure.
We are concerned that not all new mothers and babies receive a home visit from a health visitor, while others receive a number of visits plus additional group services.
The Pre-school Learning Alliance is calling for:
* Every family to be visited by a health visitor during at least the first year of a baby's life
* PCTs and Strategic Health Authorities to ensure that support for the children's centres agenda is prioritised in their plans
* Health visitors to be trained in the Early Years Foundation Stage to promote its themes and principles
* We also back the call from Amicus for the health secretary to issue an immediate directive to PCTs and SHAs to reverse the drop in health visitor numbers.
