To the point...

So it is now official that the Government has been cutting back on the numbers of training places for health visitors. Ask around in any area of the country and you will probably find that their health visitor complement is below what it was several years ago.

The current money-saving dodge is to augment depleted health visitor teams with nursery nurses. Nursery nurses do an excellent job and the extra talents that they bring to helping some stressed families are welcome. But by no stretch of the imagination can they replace the hard-won and specialist skills of a health visitor.

Trying to keep to an inadequate budget by diluting services is an attractive option for hard-pressed health providers, as the impact gets shunted into the future. Everyone who has a concern for the welfare of babies and young children should be both extremely worried by these cutbacks - and up in arms.

Bother your MP and local newspaper - that is what they are there for - and make the life of your Primary Care Trust a misery as well. Babies cannot stand up for themselves, so we have to do this for them.

Health visitors are the best early warning system that we have for the next generation. They are the country's most important resource for adult health, both physical and mental. Perhaps that is the problem. This viewpoint asks politicians to think 20 years ahead and forget the next election - not something they are noted for, as it will be someone else's problem then!

There is no other profession so well placed to notice when a baby's physical or psychological development is in danger of becoming compromised.

Trying to penny-pinch by suggesting that health visitors should only concentrate on high-risk families is about the stupidest idea imaginable.

Not only would this turn a common service into one that becomes stigmatising, but the notion that events can take a turn for the worst only in certain families and not others is just plain silly.

When I visited America to look at their infant mental health provision, everyone I spoke to was extremely impressed by both the universality and the invisibility of our health visiting provision. In the States, a home visitor is often seen by the families they are trying to help as a sign that something is wrong. They are often turned away. We really do not want to go down that track.

Robin Balbernie is a consultant child psychotherapist in Gloucestershire