Government Refuses To Set Targets For Health Visitor Recruitment
The Government has ruled out developing a new national vaccinations strategy, despite the Committee urging Ministers to brand the current one a failure as vaccination rates have fallen over a number of years.
Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC’s) verdict was given this week in its response to the Committee’s report, The First 1,000 Days, which also recommended boosting the workforce of health visitors, opening Family Hubs in every community and improving support for perinatal mental health.
The Committee said DHSC must produce a specific plan to rebuild the health visitor workforce by recruiting at 1,000 new personnel, and set future recruitment levels against benchmarks that ensure manageable caseloads.
Ministers say only that the workforce will be strengthened and that further updates will come in the forthcoming 10 Year Workforce Plan, which DHSC has previously said is due this spring. They also say that safe staffing tools will be developed “over the next few years”.
The response does not directly respond to the recommendation for families to receive a minimum of six health visitor appointments rather than the current five. The Department will “consider how we can continue to improve the service as we deliver the 10 Year Health Plan’s shifts to community and prevention”.
The Committee said the Government set out plans to make Family Hubs available in every community in England. The response says that, as of April 2026, over 200 new Best Start Family Hubs will open in previously unfunded local authorities. It adds that by the end of 2028 “it will create up to 1,000” Family Hubs and “2,000 network sites” to extend the reach of Hubs in local communities.
The Committee said the forthcoming 10 year workforce plan should contain specific targets for recruitment to all disciplines that deliver care in the first 1,000 days of life. Those targets should ensure safe staffing ratios are delivered in all settings.
The Department restates that updates will come in the forthcoming plan. It says growth of the workforce “must slow to ensure the NHS workforce is on a sustainable footing”. It has previously said that by 2035, there will be fewer staff than was projected in the 2023 Long-Term Workforce Plan.
MPs said DHSC should set out actions to improve access to perinatal mental health care within Family Hubs, supported by specific targets to improve access for women from ethnic minority backgrounds. One in four women experience mental health problems such as depression or anxiety during pregnancy or in the two years after childbirth.
The Government says it is investing £109 million in preventative work, “with a particular focus on parent-infant relationships, support for mild-to-moderate perinatal mental health difficulties, perinatal mental health support for fathers and co-parents.”
Health and Social Care Committee spokesperson Paulette Hamilton MP said: “We support the Government’s ambitious plans to open Family Hubs in hundreds of communities. We believe this will make a real, tangible difference to families, especially in the country’s most deprived areas, by improving access to advice and support with infant care and parent’s own wellbeing.
“But Family Hubs are only one piece of the jigsaw. We remain unconvinced that the Government’s rhetoric about vaccinations being a priority is matched by its actions. A new strategy is needed as the current approach is simply failing to deliver improved vaccination rates and is costing young children their lives.
“Flicking through the response, a sound that rings from the pages is that of a can being kicked down the road. We are not given confidence that Ministers are acting quickly enough to support health visitors, or that there is any intention to scale up the workforce to a level that will even touch the sides of what’s needed. However, we are glad to see that pilots for health visitors to deliver vaccinations are making progress”
