We are listening – to parents

Hello, my name is Susan,

Coatbridge Health Visiting Team has been offering a developmental review for children aged between 12-15 months since September 2014.

Health Visitors review the child’s development with the family, considering nine developmental domains that include; gross motor; speech and language; social interaction and manipulative skills. Parents are given advice about the next steps in their child’s development and how they can support and nurture them. Resources such as, Play at Home Toddler; Ready Steady Toddler; Book Bug; Talking Tips for Toddlers; Safety at Home are provided to support the advice and guidance given. 

We strive to deliver person-centred care to all our patients and their families; this includes ” personal contact”  which means the timing and methods by which you contact and use services or supports are flexible and can be adapted to your personal needs as much as possible.

 We have worked with parents to provide appointment times that suit the family, to include dads, grandparents and carers. We now provide appointments on a Saturday morning, Tuesday night and also offer home appointments to meet the needs of individual families. This flexibility has seen an increase in the number of dads attending appointments with their children.

Making sure you have understandable information is also a key consideration, so we have developed “family friendly” invitation letters with parents who have used our service and these are now used throughout Lanarkshire.

We have also developed parental guidance information resources to support parents during their child’s development. As a result of evaluation feedback we have enhanced the information we provide and produced additional information about talking, safety, vitamin use and diet.

The benefits for parents of children undergoing a wellbeing review between 12-15 months are; knowing what to expect next for their child’s development; the ability to discuss any concerns that they might have with a Health Visitor and receive early intervention to address development needs.

We continue to ask parents for feedback to evaluate our service and are encouraging dads who attend the review with their child to tell us how we can best support their continued involvement with their child’s wellbeing and development.

This initiative was introduced in September 2014 and funded by the Early Years Collaborative. As a “Pioneer Site” we have shared our learning with the Early Years Collaborative and will be presenting at the NHS Scotland 2016 national event to share the benefits of this initiative with other NHS teams and Health Boards.

If you have an experience of the NHS Lanarkshire Health Visitor Service you’d like to share, please speak to a member of staff, respond on Patient Opinion, or visit the “Your Feedback” Section of the NHS Lanarkshire website to see the other ways to get in touch www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk

Photographs published courtesy of NHS Scotland Photo Library.