The Healthy Child Programme includes the Health Visiting and School Nursing Service. The service is for children, young people and families aged up to 19 and up to 25 years for those with special educational needs and disabilities.

Health Visiting service

All children are automatically entitled to health visiting services when they are born and parents will be contacted to arrange a visit.

The health visiting team includes health visitors, staff nurses, student health visitors, community nursery nurses, student nurses, administrators and other healthcare professionals.

Health visitors are qualified nurses that have completed a specialist community public health degree. Health visitors lead on the Healthy Child Programme. For more information, see the Department of Health Healthy Child Programme brochure (External Links).

Health visitors also work in partnership with other professionals, such as GPs, midwives, social workers, children's centre staff, therapists, paediatricians and dieticians.

Some of the responsibilities of a health visitor are to:

• provide confidential advice and support to parents, carers and families with children under the age of five 
• monitor a child's physical and emotional health and development by undertaking health reviews; health reviews are undertaken during the antenatal period, 10 to 14 days after birth, when the baby is six to eight weeks old, one year old and two to two and a half years old 
• provide health promotion advice to parents and carers to ensure that children reach their full health and developmental wellbeing; this includes oral health promotion
• provide advice and support for parental emotional health and wellbeing.

The Health Visiting service offers:

• all families (including antenatal women requiring additional support) a range of contacts which may include video consultations or home visits depending on the level of need
• face-to-face new birth contact
• a six to eight week contact, including a health review and maternal mood assessment.

Barnet Early Help Service

There are 3 levels of early help:

• Universal: freely accessible to all delivered within the community, no referral required.
• Universal Plus: additional help to support children young people and families - referral required via Barnet Early Help website.
• Targeted Early Help: where a coordinated multi-agency (requiring two or more agencies) approach is needed. Referral required.

Breastfeeding support and advice is available as part of the health visiting offer. The team can be contacted via hcp4b.bfsupportteam@nhs.net 

School Nursing services

School nursing services in Barnet are provided by Solutions 4 Health, who deliver the Healthy Child Programme.   

School nurses have three main roles:

• to provide confidential advice, care and treatment to children and young people and their parents/carers
• to look after and protect a child/young person's physical and emotional health
• to deliver the Healthy Child Programme. 

The service is for children and young people aged between four and 19 years of age who attend schools in Barnet.

Children and young people can be referred by their teachers, parents and healthcare professionals. Children and young people can also self-refer to the service. 

COVID-19 update

Solutions 4 Health will follow national guidance from NHS England. There will be a gradual increase from non-face-to-face to face-to-face contact as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the service lessens. However, this will be closely monitored and changes will be made accordingly.

How to Refer

Healthcare professionals can refer to the service via phone or email. It is open access.

Locations

Winston House,