A young parenting programme has been set up in North Yorkshire, led by specialist health visitors. It helps provide comprehensive one-to-one support for young parents and is filling an important gap following the decommissioning of the Family Nurse Partnership service. his case study is an example of the work that councils are doing to support young parents.
The challenge
In 2016 the Family Nurse Partnership service in North Yorkshire was decommissioned. But with around 400 teenage pregnancies every year, North Yorkshire County Council recognised the need to continue providing enhanced support to young parents.
It prompted the council to look at how else young parents could be helped to overcome the disadvantages that they and their children face.
The solution
The council decided to commission Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust to deliver a young parenting programme in partnership with the council’s early help service. This was introduced in April 2017.
A team of three specialist young parent health visitors run the service across three localities. They provide one-to-one support to the most vulnerable teenage parents and help the team of generic health visitors to deliver the service within their own areas.
It means teenage parents get an increased number of visits compared to the mandated minimum of five. The service is offered from 16 to 20 weeks of pregnancy up to the child’s first birthday. The programme may be extended to the child’s second birthday following the one-year review if needed.
There is a particular focus on preventing unplanned second pregnancies, stopping smoking, building self-esteem and confidence and reducing the numbers of young parents not in education and training.
Much of the support is provided directly by the health visitors themselves, although they can refer into other services such as mental health, domestic abuse services, housing and training and education support.
The programme also includes the offer of visits by the early help team to support parents with play, speech and language development and with attendance at community play activities.
The impact
The service is working with around 130 young parents. Positive outcomes have already been achieved with younger parent’s breastfeeding, accessing contraceptive services, returning to work and education and couple relationships all improving.
Health Visiting Professional Lead Jane Webster said: “We are passionate about improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people. National data suggests that the outcomes for teenage parents are significantly poorer than the general population.
“For this reason we are extremely proud of our Young Parenting Programme and the difference we believe it makes to the lives of children in North Yorkshire.”
She said there is an academic evaluation currently being undertaken of the programme, which she was “optimistic” would show evidence that the programme was increasing “confidence, mental wellbeing and attachment” of those involved.
Lessons learned
A package of materials and structured programme has also been developed by the specialist health visitors to help engage young mothers and fathers.
This includes picture cards, board games, models and quizzes covering everything from labour, healthy eating and preparation for parenthood to child safety, interacting with your baby and child development.
The materials have proved very popular and young parents like to share them with their partners and grandparents. There has been some move to do some of this digitally, but there has sometimes been a surprising reluctance to engage with these online, which is not typical of the generation. As a result, this area is being progressed gradually and practitioners are taking care to provide parents with careful support as they introduce them to digital materials.
How is the approach being sustained?
Over the past year the individual caseloads of the specialist health visitors have been reduced from around 20 to 10 so that they can spend more time supervising, supporting and training generic health visitors to support young parents.
The cases the specialist health visitors do hold tend to be the most complex cases that require intensive intervention.
Jane said: “Our three specialist young parenting health visitors are inspirational and have a vast amount of expertise, which they are now sharing with the wider workforce in order to develop a highly skilled and knowledgeable workforce for young parents.”
Contact
Jane Webster
Health Visiting Professional Lead, Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
[email protected]