The Healthy Child Programme provided by the Whittington Health NHS Trust provides information, support and guidance for children, young people and families. Delivered by health visitors, school nurses and other staff, including healthy weight practitioners and infant feeding support workers. The programme is available to everyone from birth to 19 years and up to 25 years for those with special educational needs and disabilities.

Health visiting service

The Health Visiting team includes health visitors, community staff nurses, community nursery nurses, and a range of other skill mix staff, including infant feeding support workers and specialist health visitors for peri natal infant mental health, special educational needs and disabilities.

Health visitors are qualified nurses that have completed a specialist community public health degree and lead on the Healthy Child Programme. They work in partnership with other professionals, such as GPs, midwives, social workers, children's centre staff, therapists, paediatricians and dieticians to deliver the national Healthy Child Programme.

Some of the responsibilities of a health visitor are to:

• Provide advice and support to parents, carers and families with children under the age of five in a range of different settings including homes, clinics and children centres.
• Assess and support a child's physical and emotional health and development by undertaking health reviews. These contacts are undertaken during the antenatal period, 10 to 30 days after birth, 12-15 months and 24-30 months of age.
• Provide health promotion advice to parents and carers to ensure that children reach their full health and developmental wellbeing; this includes topics such as oral health promotion, diet and nutrition, immunisations, sleep routines, toileting, play and safety.
• Provide assessment, advice and support for parental emotional health and wellbeing, including referral to specialist services.
• Provide infant feeding advice and support.

School Nursing services

The School Nursing service is made up of qualified school nurses, community staff nurses, community nursery nurses and school nurse assistants. The service hosts the healthy weight team, health screening team and a specialist school nurse for the Youth Justice Service.

The School Nursing team works with children and young people who are enrolled in a mainstream school in Barnet. They accepting referrals from GPs, schools and parents. Children and young people can also self-refer.

The primary role is to:

• Provide advice, care and support to children and young people and their parents/carers.
• Enable children with long term conditions to access education through the joint development of care plans with the family, child, school and specialists.
• Delivery of training to schools including the management of emergency medication.
• Delivery of the National Childhood Measurement Programme (NCMP) providing bespoke support and interventions for those children agreed under 11 years of age (year 6) identified as requiring additional support to manage healthy lifestyle choices.
• Delivery of the hearing and vision screening programme for all children in Reception year of primary school.

How to Refer

Healthcare professionals can refer to the service via phone or email.

Locations

Winston House,