Media release 3 September 2013 Local NHS Health Visiting Services are Expanding Liverpool Community Health (LCH) NHS Trust is making improvements to the way its Health Visiting Services are delivered across Liverpool, Sefton and the surrounding areas. From September 2013, the Trust’s health visitors will be restructured into nine new area teams, with a new team leader overseeing the day to day operations of each team. In addition, two new Health Visiting Professional Development Mentors have also been appointed to help support continuous learning and development for all health visiting staff. Sheila Dalby, Head of Childrens Services at Liverpool Community Health explains: “We have reviewed our current health visiting workforce and working practices, and have identified an approach which we believe will provide better value for money, and will better meet the needs of our communities in the future. “These new team structures will enable us to provide a greater equity of service for families across all areas of Sefton and Liverpool, and also importantly, will support us in achieving improved health outcomes for our children and young people.” She adds, “As a management team, we are committed to delivering high quality health services to all children and families, and are really looking forwards to working with the new Team Leaders and Professional Development Mentors to help us take the service forwards.” In addition to introducing improvements to how health visiting is managed and delivered, LCH’s Health Visiting Service is expanding with the addition of new health visitors and student health visitors. Liverpool Community Health has been working in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) to train and develop additional health visitors, as part of the government’s national commitment to increase the number of health visitors working across England by a further 4,200 by 2015. As a result of this training programme, a total of 16 additional, newly qualified health visitors will take up new, full-time health visiting posts within LCH this September, plus a new cohort of 17 more health visiting students will also join the Trust to complete the health visiting qualification this year. Jan McColgan, Liverpool Community Health’s Early Implementer Site Lead for the Health Visitor Programme has been overseeing this project. She adds: “The fact that we are expanding our health visiting staffing with so many additional health visitors this Autumn is fantastic news, both for the staff within our health visiting service, and for local families. “With this additional staffing resource on the ground, we will be able to provide a significantly enhanced service to the communities that we serve, helping to ensure that all children in our local communities are getting the very best start in life.” An NHS Health Visitor is a registered nurse or midwife who has undergone further training in community health, child health and health promotion, and works in local communities to support children and families during pregnancy, birth and through the pre-school years. Health Visitors work in close partnership with GPs, maternity wards, children’s centres and other health services to help promote and improve health and reduce health inequalities for all pre-school children. For more information about LCH and the community health services it provides, please visit: liverpoolcommunityhealth.nhs.uk
Posted on: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 08:09:32 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015