Health Visitor

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will be responsible for a skill mixed health visiting team of all grades. To provide high quality health visiting services to a defined population employing the principles of health visiting (CETHV 1977).  To maintain and improve health and life chances for children and families through health needs assessment, health promotion and the initiation and participation in public health strategies.  The health visitor is in a unique position to provide services, planned and opportunistic, with the well population in primary prevention, at home, in the child health clinic and other settings.  Whilst managing an individual caseload he/she works as part of the primary health care team and collaboratively with statutory and voluntary agencies to promote the health and wellbeing of the local population.

Key Result Areas & Performance:

To adhere to the NMC code of Professional Conduct and be conversant with the Scope of Professional practice and other NMC advisory papers.

To maintain own level of clinical competence exercising awareness of professional responsibilities by reading relevant literature and taking opportunities for continuing professional development.

To use evidence based practice within a clinical governance framework to develop and maintain best practice in health visiting.

To generate, facilitate and participate in audit/research and to benchmark all clinical practices to improve quality.

To develop and monitor the quality of health visiting to support the provision of best practice.

To be aware of Trust policies and procedures and participate in the development of new policies.

To be aware of and follow the Trusts policy and procedure regarding complaints.

To keep accurate comprehensive updated records. To write factual reports for both child protection case conferences and child care legal proceedings.

To provide and maintain statistical/audit data as required by the Trust.
Health Visitor Band 6 JD Updated March 2017 BL.

To participate in clinical supervision as per Trust’s guidelines. To facilitate professional meetings for the skill mixed health visiting team.

To provide peer support within a primary care setting for vulnerable families and child protection cases and to attend conferences.

To manage the delivery of health visiting services to a defined population in accordance with the local delivery plan and government targets.

To manage and deliver a planned programme of health promotion for children under five in line with relevant research and national guidelines in partnership with GP practices and children Centres .

To work collaboratively with primary care and develop and maintain close communication with GPs, members of the primary health care team, social care and health and other service providers.

To identify local health needs and develop strategies to meet them.

Provide a core health visiting service to all families in a defined population.

 Assess, develop and implement individualised care plans for each child based on a needs assessment, in consultation with parents/carers.

To provide a health visiting service in the home, in child health clinics and other settings.

To be a nurse prescriber and attend regular updates.

Promote and support breastfeeding, identify and support those at risk of postnatal depression, encourage smoking cessation and support families in their parenting, implementing parenting programmes using advanced communication and counselling skills.

Support clients with mental health issues and take part in psychological assessment reviews, using counselling skills, parent advisor and assessment tools including Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) PSQ and GAD

To work within the Trust’s Child Protection Policies and Procedures as related to the 1989 Children’s Act, the current Pan London agreement, the Laming Report and recommendations from part 8 reviews.

To assess, identify and refer children at risk to social care and health. To attend in care reviews, strategy meetings and child protection case conferences, where highly emotive, contentious and complex situations may arise.