Overview of Health Visitor role
The focus of health visiting, an advanced and specialist public health nursing service, is the whole population of children in the foundation years (pregnancy to age five) that precede and include access to early education and childcare. In particular, health visitors engage on a universal basis with the families of all children in the first ‘1001 critical days’ from conception to age two. This is described as the ‘age of opportunity’ when the impact of social and other adversity can become biologically embedded in brain development, as manifested in social, emotional, cognitive and physical developmental outcomes.
