As a health visiting service, we provide support to families with children from birth until five. As part of the Healthy Child programme, our first contact to all families is around 28- 30 weeks to offer an online antenatal contact, followed by a home new birth visit between seven and 14 days following the birth of their baby.
There are four subsequent universal contacts with all families, which may be provided by our skill mix health visiting team; a clinic contact at 6-8 weeks, an online health promotion contact at 4-6 months, a universal child health development review at 7–11 months and another at 2–2 ½ years. If families require extra support, they can be supported with a more intensive targeted service or be offered our Maternal early childhood sustained home visiting service (MECSH).
Our service runs Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. We run community child health clinics in children’s centres, health and leisure centres and GP practices across the borough. At these clinics, we weigh under-fives and provide advice and support for families on all aspects of healthy living and parenting. Additional groups include breast feeding hubs and domestic violence ‘Freedom’ programme groups.
Safeguarding children is one of the most important aspects of our role. At times, some families may require additional support and services and our aim is to ensure families receive the right support at the right time to protect children from any harm.
The Lewisham Health Visiting service is pending Stage 3 UNICEF Baby Friendly accreditation for breastfeeding. The UNICEF Baby Friendly Standards aim to improve the information, support and encouragement provided to promote, protect and support breastfeeding and appropriate introduction to solid foods. This means that midwives, health visitors and other health professionals receive high quality baby friendly training to support breastfeeding mothers effectively. For more information on the UNICEF Baby Friendly initiative please see: www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly.
