The statement comes following a significant rise in the number of babies, children and young people needing support for safeguarding issues who fall below the threshold for children’s social care services. To bridge this gap, health visitors and school nurses are increasingly called upon to support children and young people on Child Protection and Child in Need Plans. At the same time, child health is deteriorating, and health inequalities are widening across the nation – with an equally important call for health visitors and school nurses to utilise their specialist public health nursing skills to support the national shift from “sickness to prevention”. Meanwhile, services need to find a way to reconcile these two competing priorities.

The document highlights the impact this work is having on health visitors’ and school nurses’ capacity to carry out their public health function. It also outlines a number of measures that would support the whole sector to ensure children and families are not only kept safe from harm, but also able to access a wide range of services that promote good health and wellbeing, including:

• Where a baby, child or young person has an identified health need, ensuring that discussions take place between health professionals and social care to determine whether a health professional is most appropriate to take on the role of Lead Practitioner and, if so, who it should be.
• Ensuring that any public health professional’s “duty to cooperate” in child safeguarding, does not interfere with the performance of their own public health functions. In particular, when taking on the Lead Practitioner role in line with Working Together (2023) guidance.
• Providing funding to offset the additional workforce and training costs associated with upskilling the 0-19 public health nursing service to ensure compliance with the Care Law.
• Exploring the option of providing additional health capacity in multi-agency safeguarding hubs.