The iHV collaborate with a range of partner's to deliver projects that support our mission to improve child and family health and reduce health inequalities through a strengthened health visiting service. Our work aims to generate new evidence and translate this into practice – using it to develop bespoke training and resources specifically for health visitors and their teams, to support their work with families across a range of important public health priority areas.
All projects follow the PRINCE2 Project Management Principles. Co-production is at the heart of our work as we aim to work in partnership with health visitors and families to shape the projects, resources and training.
If you would like more information on any project, have ideas for new projects, or have any questions, please contact the iHV Projects Team at projects@ihv.org.uk.
Below you will find different projects that we lead on.
Funded by The Health Foundation, in partnership with Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust (SHFT).
The project sought to explore the use of data and current analytical capability in health visiting practice in Hampshire. It aimed to inform a test and learn development project to support health visiting services within SHFT to ‘move beyond bean counting’ and make better use of data. The project specifically focused on the use of routinely collected data from a range of sources to improve the identification of children with risk and vulnerability factors who are currently ‘hidden’ (i.e., they are known to services but are not receiving the support they need, as information is not utilised effectively, or is lost in current electronic records).
Through co-design with SHFT health visiting staff, a new health visitor Digital Lead post was developed along with a prototype data visualisation tool to collate key data and support clinical decision making in health visitor practice.
To understand more about how this was achieved please read the “how to guide” which was developed to disseminate the learning to other health visiting services with key considerations to improve data use and analytical capability in health visiting.
📖 A Practical Guide to Engaging Health Visiting Services in Improving Analytical Capability
The project was delivered over in 2 stages, the original project funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing and the factographic project was funded by NHS England in 2022.
The Burdett Trust for Nursing project sort to understand the needs of autism in the early years. It gathered insights from experts, health visitors, families and those with lived experience to understand what autism in babies and children looks like pre, during and post diagnosis and what support families need.
Following this an Ambassador Changing Conversations training programme was developed, along with a variety of resources to support practice.
📖 Burdett Autism End of Project Report (May 2021)
📖 Insights report - Changing Conversations (Dec 2020)
If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.
The factographic built on this project, to create a simple resource about autism in the early years, aimed at professionals and parents. Through co-design with professionals, parents, families, and those with lived experience, we produced an interactive resource which supports the understanding of autism in very young children and babies, and what support families may need before diagnosis.
There are 4 sections to the factographic:
- Working with families – insights from those with lived experience, about what life is like with autism, and before diagnosis.
- Key facts – background facts and signs of autism and dispels some common myths.
- Communication –information about the different ways autistic people may communicate, tools that can support communication development.
- Support for you – highlighting various organisations that support families and professionals with different aspects of autism.
See the factographic here.
This project built on the work of the Changing Conversations Autism project and was also funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.
It aimed to raise awareness of behaviour as a form of communication as well as awareness of the practical and ethical issues of restrictive and restraining practices in the early years. It developed resources and health visitor training to promote the importance of respectful, positive behavioural support strategies that safeguard the rights of young children with disabilities.
As part of the resources an impactful and emotive animation was created using parent stories to illustrate what restrictive practices look like in the early years and how it can affect babies, children and families. Other resources include GPPs, PTs and an A-Z of useful organisations.
🎥 Restrictive Practice Animation
📖 End of project report - Understanding Behaviour and Changing Conversations: Understanding Behaviour (June 2021)
📖 Burdett Autism End of Project Report (May 2021)
📖 Insights report - Changing Conversations (Dec 2020)
The training has now been incorporated with the Changing Conversations Autism training to create a full-days training for health visitors and their teams. If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.
Funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing, delivered in partnership with The Centre for Parent & Child Support drawing on the Family Partnership Model (FPM).
The project developed hybrid training to strengthen the skills of health visitors as leaders within the early years, to enhance their work with families to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This involved supporting health visitors to use the FPM to have sensitive goal based conversations around smoking, unhealthy diets (nutrition), alcohol and physical inactivity, called ‘SNAP’ factors. The training blended bespoke health visitor e-learning about FPM and the SNAP factors, with virtual training and online action learning sets, over 2 months to support learning and confidence in having what can be seen as difficult to raise topics with families.
Additional resources for the ‘SNAP’ factors were developed to support health visitors in practice including, conversations topic cards and A-Z of useful organisations, along with resources to support joint action planning with families.
Fid out more about the e-learning here.
This project stated in 2016 with funding from the Burdett Trust for Nursing, since then we have received funding year on year from The AIM Foundation, now the Nutritional Wellbeing Foundation. As part of this project we work closely with a number of experts in this field including First Steps Nutrition Trust, British Society Paediatric Dentistry, Dr Katherin Heskieth (Physical Activity expert at University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine) and local health visitors and their teams.
Over the years we have developed and expanded our HWHN offer which now includes:
- 1-day HWHN Champion Training, this is a train the trainer model and allow health visitors to cascade the training programme to their colleagues. This can either be delivered as a 1-day session or as four individual 2-hour sessions, depending on the need of the service. The four modules are:
- Communication and why HWHN is important
- Infant feeding and introducing solid foods
- Family eating and toddler diets
- Oral health and physical activity
- 1-day HWHN Ambassador Training, this is an awareness raising programme aim at the skill mix members of the health visiting team, increasing their understating of HWHN from the preconception period, throughout pregnancy and the first five years of a child’s leaf. They receive a 1-hour awareness raining cascade to share with anyone they are working with who they feel would benefit from more awareness.
- Toolkit of resources on iHV LEARN which includes, e-learning, webinars, factsheets, animations, factographics, and A-Zs of useful organisations.
The project has supported us to bring the voice of the important role of health visiting in this space to a number of national forums including the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA), and Infant Feeding Law Group and comment on documents and policies such as the NICE Guidance.
If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.
The iHV was funded by the NSPCC in partnership with Newcastle University to evaluate their Look, Say, Sing, Play (LSSP) Campaign.
The evaluation systematically reviewed the variety of ways that the LSSP campaign has been embedded in practice, by understanding the enablers and barriers to its successful implementation, and how these have affected the reach and effectiveness of the programme.
Using a range of quantitative and qualitive approaches to explore the perception and engagement with LSSP with families and practitioners in a variety of location across the UK.
🔗 To read the full findings from the evaluation and to learn more about Look, Say, Sing, Play, please visit the NSPCC website.
Funded by The Tiny Lives Trust.
The aim of the project was to create specific knowledge and training for health visitors and their teams to equip them to support families of preterm and sick babies who had been on neonatal units. It did this by providing the evidence and knowledge of the needs of families to enable health visitors to work effectively with families and provide tailored family-centred support.
A Neonatal Families Ambassador training programme was developed with resources to support practice, including:
- A range of resources detailing the different experience of families who have had a baby on the neonatal unit
- E-learning
- Cascade training materials
- A-Z of useful organisations
📖 Neonatal Families Ambassadors - End of Project Report
If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.
This award-winning project was funded by NIHR and delivered in partnership with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and formally evaluated with partners at Leeds Beckett University.
The project aimed to equip health visitors and school health nurses to be research champions in their areas. It achieved this by examining the 6 core objectives:
- To create 0-19 Research Champion (Y&H) roles that develop the Champions as Community of Research Practice (CoRP) Leads, whilst concurrently establishing their respective local CoRP. A CoRP development programme will be devised to support this process.
- To facilitate events that create networking opportunities between professionals to enable collaborations to be established, to co-produce research and to discuss priorities with a focus on 0-19 public health research.
- To engage regionally with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with a focus on two goals:
- To engage with students to help raise the profile of 0-19 public health research with a view to developing early career researchers.
- To establish links with potential academic supervisors/ researchers for research-interested practitioners to engage/collaborate with (e.g., postgraduate study, co-applicants on a bid etc).
- To develop a sustainable prototype model for the CRN in Yorkshire and Humber (and other regions) to develop other successful networks, based on an evaluation of whether the model has been effective in its processes and in achieving its outcomes.
- To develop a web presence to increase our visibility, to disseminate information, to ensure the sharing of timely research opportunities, to signpost and facilitate connections, increasing reach.
- To develop further the project planning group of core members to operationalise the project deliverables regionally.
In 2023 and 2024 the project was finalists for two Nursing Times “Awards Clinical Research Nursing” and “Public Health Nursing”. Which in 2024 it won the “Public Health Nursing” award.
Funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing.
It developed training and resources to support heath visitors, and their teams of families how have children with asthma, cystic fibrosis and preterm chronic lung disease. It also raised awareness of air pollution; it’s impact on health and what families can do to mitigate against its impact.
To support the half-day Ambassador Respiratory Health training programme a variety of resources developed, including:
- Animation about air pollution, cystic fibrosis and preterm choric lung disease
- Infographics on each topic
- A-Zs of useful organisations
- Video of parent’s lived experience of air pollution and their child chronic respiratory disease
- Podcast with Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, campaigner of clean air following the death of her 9 year old daughter Ella, who was the first person in the UK to have air pollution as cause of death.
If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.
Initially funded by the NHS Health and Wellbeing Fund in 2021 and continue to receive their funding thought to 2023 and delivered in partnership with Healthier Together. The project current iHV and Healthier Together resources, adapting them into accessible formats to meet the wider needs of families where English was an additional language or where parents have learning difficulties, and a variety of fa professional facing resources.
An array of winter surge respiratory illnesses resources were created in in collaboration with Bliss, Asthma + Lung UK, Contact, Barnado’s, and Pathway Associates. Topics covered included bronchiolitis, scarlet fever, strep A, flu and croup. The parent resources were translated into the 5 most spoken languages in the UK after English according to ONS.
🔗 See our Respiratory Illness resources (🔒Member-only)
This project took place over in 2 stages, the original project funded by PHE Sexual and Reproductive Health and HIV Innovation Fund in 2022/21 and the postnatal contraception project was funded by Department for Health Sexual and Reproductive in 2022/23.
The initial project developed resources for health visitors to increased knowledge, awareness and understanding of sexual and reproductive health. It did this by working with sexual and reproductive health experts including the College of Sexual and Reproductive Health to create e-learning which not only covers a wide variety of sexual and reproductive topics but also relates these topics directly to health visiting. There is a module on how to have the conversation using the PLISSIT Framework and applying MECC (making every contact count) and the 3As of Very Brief Advice tools and a module on applying these to the health visitor core contacts. Other resources include GPPs, A-Z of useful organisations, and a digital parent leaflet.
📖 End of project report - Sexual and Reproductive Health (Apr 2022)
The postnatal contraception project built on the work of the sexual and reproductive health project by co-developing bespoke health visitor postnatal contraception training. Working with Teesside University, local health visitors and families, the half-day training maximise and extend the health visitor’s universal role in postnatal contraception to include advice on contraceptive options and how to discuss postnatal contraception with families, including those heart sink statements which may appear in practice.
This work supports the national priority to reduce the burden of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies and support better pregnancy planning.
The training programme, e-learning and postnatal contraception GPP have all been endorsed by the Faculty of Reproductive and Sexual Health (FRSH).
If you are interested in this training programme, you can find out more here.