Health Visiting Service
All families with a child under five in Gateshead have access to a Health Visiting 0-5 Team, consisting of Health Visitors, Early Years Practitioners and Family Nurse Partnership. They provide expert health assessments, advice, support and interventions for babies, children and families.
The Team encourages and supports parents and carers to develop life-long skills to enable them to make informed choices that affect their family's future health and wellbeing.
The Team works in community settings to deliver universal and targeted interventions designed to meet public health outcomes. We ensure the emotional and physical health and wellbeing of families, children and young people across Gateshead.
The team aims to help build parents' confidence in their ability to give their child the best start in life and listen carefully when parents have concerns. It identifies and builds on what is going well, and provides information to help parents find their own solutions to problems where possible.
Some common areas of information and support:
- pregnancy and transition into parenthood
- infant feeding/ specialist breast feeding support
- growth and nutrition
- healthy eating
- dental health
- development
- behaviour
- accident prevention
- safe sleeping
- speech and language development
- immunisations
- common childhood illness/infection
- safeguarding
- postnatal depression and emotional wellbeing
- parenting
Family Nurse Partnership
Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) is an intensive home visiting programme for first-time young mums and families, working with them to:
- improve their child's health, development and readiness to learn at school
- reach their goals and aspirations.
Your visits will start during pregnancy right through until your child is aged between one and two. Throughout this time, you and your family nurse will work on lots of different aspects of your pregnancy and becoming a parent together, including: parent-child attachment, breastfeeding, immunising your baby, child development and school readiness.
Your family nurse will fit the programme around you and your baby's needs, helping to improve your self-confidence as well as supporting you on other issues such as mental health, anxiety, housing and stopping smoking.
Visit the Growing Healthy Gateshead website (opens new window) for more details.