Fears for new mothers as Suffolk slashes health visitor numbers
Here is the first of two stories about service cuts notwithstanding the generally received wisdom that money is less tight in the NJS than some other public services.
Health visitors will be made redundant by a local council, sparking fears that new mothers will get less help with mental health problems, breastfeeding and babies’ sleep.
Suffolk County Council – the area in which health secretary Matt Hancock is an MP – plans to cut as many as 31 full-time posts from its 120-strong health visitor workforce, through a combination of redundancies and not filling vacancies, despite the team’s key role in family health.
Internal council documents seen by the Observer show that the Conservative-controlled authority intends to push through the controversial plan by September in order to save £1m from its health visiting, school nursing and family nurse partnership services.
The council is being forced to change the way it provides health services for children and young people because the public health grant it receives from central government has been slashed by £5.47m (16.7%) since 2015/16.
The council wants to drastically reduce the role of health visitors so they no longer undertake three of the five checks of mother-and-baby health that all should receive by the time the infant is two-and-a-half years old. In future they will focus on the most vulnerable families – with nurses, who health visitors say have not had the same training, taking on the other three checks.