Study looks at health visiting

A new £265,000 study led by Stirling University is seeking to understand how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected health visiting services across the UK, with a view to improving them in the future.

The 18-month project – funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) – will explore the changes that health visiting has experienced over the past two years and provide recommendations to enhance organisation and delivery as part of a strong post-pandemic recovery.

Dr Erica Gadsby, senior lecturer in Public Health from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport, is principal investigator on the new project, which also involves researchers in Oxford and Kent.

She said: “Health visiting is a key component in ensuring the health and wellbeing of children across the UK.

“Following the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, services had to change and adapt to the situation. Many staff changed their roles, some services were scaled back, and others moved to virtual delivery, different professionals worked together in different ways, and everyone had to get used to working with personal protective equipment in all face-to-face contacts.

“These are just a few ways in which health visiting was affected and our study is now seeking to understand how we can learn from these experiences to improve service provision as we emerge from the pandemic.

“This research is about learning lessons – both good and bad – from the pandemic, within the health visiting context. We will use findings to recommend improvements to the organisation, delivery and ongoing post-pandemic recovery of health visiting services in different settings, for different groups.

“These improvements will help to make services more efficient and fairer, supporting health visitors and others to deliver the best possible support.”