Provided by specialist community public health nurses who lead and coordinate the universal Healthy Child programme, which offers expert health assessments, advice, support and interventions to children and families as required in their first years of life.
Our Health Visitors sit at the heart of children’s services and work in close partnership with parents and carers from the antenatal period until school entry.
The team encourages and supports parents and carers to develop life-long skills to enable them to make informed choices that affect their future health and wellbeing.
Our contact details
To see Health Visiting teams and their contact details in your area, click on the links below:
What we do
Health Visitors are highly skilled in the assessment and coordination of support tailored to individuals and family needs.
Targeted support is also offered for families in special circumstances, e.g. homelessness, domestic violence, travelling families, families who have lost a child through sudden infant death syndrome (cot death), and children with additional needs.
Working closely with a range of partners, the team supports families to seamlessly engage with other health, social and voluntary care services e.g. onward referral to Speech and Language teams.
The team is community based and is accessible across a range of different venues, including the family home, health centres and children’s centres.
A key focus for the team is to build community capacity by working collaboratively with health, social and voluntary care partners to deliver local public health campaigns and events.
Our local offer for children
Read about our local offer for children, including information on how you can access our Health Visiting Service.
Early years services
The team works with all early years services across Bridgewater’s areas to:
- Promote secure attachment and bonding, positive maternal mental health and parenting skills using evidenced based assessments and effective interventions.
- Lead and coordinate the Healthy Child programme requirements and delivering a comprehensive universal preventative health service for children and young people aged 0-5 years e.g:
– Promoting breastfeeding and safe sleep
– Prevention of childhood obesity
– Improving school readiness
– Accident prevention education
– Advice and support on immunisations - Early identification of developmental and complex health needs referring on for investigation, diagnosis, treatment and support.
- Work in partnership with other key stakeholders to safeguard and protect infants and young children at risk of harm.
Referral route
The service accepts referrals by telephone, email or face to face from:
- Midwifery services
- GPs and other professionals
- Self-referral from parents/carers
- Other statutory and voluntary agencies.
Our leaflets
Healthy eating advice for parents and carers of children aged one to four
Health Visiting’s top six tips to prevent injury
Pregnancy and postnatal mental wellbeing leaflet
Additional leaflets
Healthy Start vitamins and why you need them
Safe sleep for Babies: a parent’s guide
Useful websites
Bridgewater Family Nurse Partnership
Breastfeeding and Infant Feeding support
Give us your feedback
Your feedback is important to us and helps us to improve our services here at Bridgewater.
Please tell us about your recent visit or appointment by completing our online Talk to Us form.