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In this 150th year of health visiting, new parents around the country are to receive more support from health visitors in the home and community thanks to an expansion of the health visitor programme.

This is the second phase of a national roll out of improved ways of working for health visitors and sees 23 more areas running the programme.

The first phase of 26 sites, which have now been running for over a year, have included projects such as:

• to advise women on breastfeeding technique and highlighting local restaurants and cafes which are 鈥榖reastfeeding friendly鈥�
• The 鈥楬ello Baby鈥� course created by which gives mothers with young babies who have post natal depression help understanding the unique needs of their baby and increases attachment and bonding.

said:

鈥淔rom their early beginnings in 1862, through to the present day, health visitors have worked to make sure that children have a positive start in life and families with new babies get the support they need. We want to take forward this legacy so families get the best service they can from their health visitors.

鈥淚 have seen first-hand how families benefit from the advice and support through this work and would like to express my thanks to all the health visitors and those who are making this happen. It鈥檚 fantastic that more people will get the benefits from having a personalised health visiting service to meet their own specific needs.鈥�

Viv Bennett, Director of Nursing, talks about the aims of the national health visiting programme as it enters its second year and the learning from the early implementer sites so far in this video.

This expansion of the programme marks progress towards the whole country delivering a health service which is universal, personalised and dynamic. The drive to deliver this new vision takes place alongside the work to recruit another 4,200 health visitors by 2015.

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