COM0006

 

Written evidence submitted by the Institute of Health Visiting
 

  1. The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) was launched in November 2012 to promote excellence and consistency in health visiting for the benefit of all children, families and communities. Our membership is 9000. The institute gathers, develops and disseminates the evidence base for health visiting making it available to health visitors through its website, education and training opportunities, publications and social media. As such it provides an important central point of contact to gather 'practice insights' that are reflective of the lived experiences of children and their families in our communities today.

 

  1. The iHV welcomes the publication of the Children's Commissioner for England's five commitments for the next five years as set out in Ambitious for Children. This written submission seeks to reflect the importance of a robust universal health visiting service that aims to ensure the health, well-being and safety of children during the all important early years (including unborn children) and, in doing so, can make a considerable contribution to the five areas covered by the commitments.

 

  1. We would wish the Education Committee to note the following in relation to the Commissioner's work on child protection and child welfare:

 

  1. Child maltreatment is fundamentally a public health issue and requires a public health solution that embraces the principles of prevention and early help to families. This will inevitably mean the adoption of a broad approach that ensures that families are first and foremost well-supported and provided with the practical resources needed to promote good parenting. They also require access to timely and appropriate help and advice when needed. A prevailing finding from reviews of serious child care incidents (i.e. serious case reviews) is that opportunities for earlier identification of risk of harm may be missed. We would encourage the promotion of 'services that are easy to reach' rather than a notion of 'families that are difficult to reach' and, whilst we promote the value of a universal service, we recognise that families with additional needs will require additional and timely support.

 

  1. Health visitors, who have contact with all new families, have shared their concerns about the increasing numbers of parents who struggle both financially and practically with the all important role of parenting (a role which is often devalued in contemporary society). Social isolation and poverty impact disproportionally on families with young children, and the associated stresses may lead to exacerbation of parental mental health difficulties and relationship problems (including domestic violence and abuse) and the 'self-medication' of substance misuse. Such difficulties impact on the health and well-being of children and feature prominently in child maltreatment populations.

 

  1. We believe that the full adoption of the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by the UK nearly 25 years ago, is vital to ensuring robust child protection activity and a major reduction in child harm. Whilst the rights of children are long since enshrined in national legislation and policy, we believe more could be achieved in embedding an appreciation of these rights (including provision for welfare and for protection) within professional and lay communities. This includes a need for health, education and social care professionals to embrace the principle of 'child-centredness' in their contact with families, and to ensure that the very real difficulties of parents do not prevent a consideration of the daily lived experiences of the child and the need to take prompt action when concerns are identified. As such, we have promoted the principle of 'authoritative practice', as described by Tuck (2013), through our safeguarding and child protection training programmes and would encourage others to do likewise.

 

  1. Finally, whilst we accept that there will be families and children at a greater risk of harm, including those who are disabled, disadvantaged or marginalised, we strongly believe that universal provision allows an effective and non-stigmatising means to identify any child in need of protection.

 

 

 

References

Tuck, V. (2013) Resistant parents and child protection: knowledge base, pointers for practice and implications for policy. Child Abuse Review 22:5-19.

Dr Cheryll Adams , Executive Director, iHV

Dr Catherine Powell, Safeguarding Children Lead, iHV.

 

 

 

 

October 2015