Buckinghamshire Healthcare making “excellent progress” says Dame Fradd

29 May 2014

Dame Elizabeth Fradd, Chair of the Health Visitor Taskforce, an independent group that champions the vision for the health visitor programme, recently paid a visit to Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust in order to review their health visiting service.

As part of plans to increase investment in the health visitor profession, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is one of 49 Early Implementer Site’s (EIS) across the UK. The taskforce acts as a support and guide to these sites, providing advice and feedback to shape them as part of its implementation plan for 2011-15, ‘Call to Action’.  This plan aims to see an expansion of the health visitor service, to improve health and well being outcomes for under-fives, reduce health inequalities, improve access to services and improve the experience of children and families. As an EIS, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust has been leading the way in demonstrating how service transformation can be achieved to reach these goals.

Jenny Chapman, Operational Lead for Children and Young People’s Community Services, said: “We were thrilled to have Dame Fradd with us, it provided us with a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate the hard work and effort our staff put in, not just in positively promoting the roles of health visitors but in actively making changes to improve and expand the service.”

The day included presentations from staff and an opportunity for Dame Fradd to meet and engage with the Trust’s health visiting team, including student health visitor’s, on site. In the UK, 2012/13 saw four times as many students sign up to training as in 2010/11 and the service is driven to continually grow and develop the health visitors of the future.

“It was good to hear first-hand about the excellent progress being made in implementing a “Call to Action” in Buckinghamshire,” said Dame Fradd about the day, “I was impressed by the obvious commitment of all I met, and to have HEI (higher education institution) colleagues who are clearly committed to ensuring students gain from their programmes of education.”

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