Minister quizzed over faltering health visitor recruitment figures

19 October 2011

Public health minister Anne Milton was quizzed about the faltering health visitor recruitment programme by delegates at the Unite/Community Practitioners' and Health Visitors' Association annual conference today (Wednesday, 19 October).

Unite has welcomed the coalition's pledge that 4,200 more health visitors will be recruited by 2015, but has called for health visiting budgets to be ring-fenced, as seven out of the ten strategic health authorities (SHAs) in England have reported a decline in the number of health visitors in the last 12 months.

Anne Milton told the conference in Brighton that she was 'really disappointed' by the latest health visitor figures, but hoped that numbers would rise this year. She said that every single day health visitors made more than 40,000 contacts.

Unite's lead professional officer Obi Amadi said: 'The biggest issue blocking the renaissance in health visiting are the bottlenecks in the funding streams needed to make the Health Visitor Implementation Plan succeed in the way that the government has outlined.'

'Ideally, we would like the extra cash for health visitor recruitment to be ring-fenced, but, if that's not possible, the SHAs need to give this funding the highest priority.'

'The tide has turned, but we need to see the improvement physically, by increased numbers on the ground, but that's not happening yet.'
'We will campaign and also work with the Department of Health to ensure that the 4,200 target figure comes to fruition.'

Official figures from the NHS Information Centre have revealed that the recruitment drive is faltering and the number of health visitors is actually falling in many parts of England, with London and the East of England being particularly hard hit.

The Health Visitor Implementation Plan, published in February, promised to recruit an extra 4,200 health visitors to add to the 8,092 full time equivalents that were practicing in England as of May 2010.
But more than eight months since the government revealed its plan, the overall number of health visitors in the country had dropped by 213 to 7,879.

The implementation plan set out a provisional target to have trained an extra 1,135 health visitors by the end of March 2012. This was broken down into regional targets for each strategic health authority (SHA) to achieve.

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