Effective Practice???

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

I received a really sad email today form a wonderful, experienced

practitioner that made me quite angry and frustrated. I want to share this

with you and wonder how it reflects the situation in other PCTs or the new

organisations that are being formed out there in the community.

The HV who would like to remain anonymous writes the following:

'I left Health Visiting in October after 19 years, feeling absolutely

exhausted following yet another restructure. In the end I was relocated to

a totally new area... new base/ PFI building, even further to

travel........I did not have enough chairs or desks for full time staff, we

had no room for several hundred family files from the other base( which had

been condemned). Instead we were expected to fetch the files from this

locked base as we required them, about 5 miles away.

This area is considered very deprived with a very transient population.

Several staff left for other areas, once they knew of the restructure and

never set foot in my area again. Our admin support was regularly pulled from

us to cover other areas. We shared a large open office space with about 70

other staff from social care, Learning Disabilities and District Nursing

service. I might add that the upstairs floor was totally unsuited for

purpose. Downstairs was a state of the art ..all singing all dancing office.

It was not unusual to find the phones playing up and all ringing at random

or together. The photo copier, printer and fax for everybody's use was

always out of order. These were very regular occurrence.

In my team of skill mix, I had some real gems........ hard working and

focused. Others without boundaries. New birth clinics were the norm contrary

to the core service requirements undertaken by ill equiped community staff

nurses and nursery staff and without an antenatal contact. Often these

babies were several weeks old and others failed to turn up. That was the

context of my introduction to practice when I arrived to take up the role of

team co-ordinator/ Practice Teacher.

There were serious professional practice issues which managers over the

years failed to deal with and a reluctance to support me with activating

our Capabilities policy.

The last straw for me was when managers decided to locate two student HVs

with me, to provide support for and provide support for another staff member

7 miles away. The environment was unsafe and no way could I take the

students knowing what it was like, I needed time to make improvements.

The Practice Teachers met with managers and the university, but only lip

service was given to the concerns, in my view. I wrote to the powers that be

and got nowhere.

We lost several Practice Teachers as a direct result of the restructuring. A

sandwich programme consisting of 2 days was drawn up at Uni to update

experienced HV's on facilitating the student HV's.

This is an early implementer site for the roll out of the new HV plan and a

social enterprise!!'

How can we keep our most experienced and valued HVs when they are up against

this sort of environment?

Best wishes,