Stop MCH from cutting Healthy Child Clinics in Medway

The primary reason a parent attends a Healthy Child Clinic is that they can weigh their child. This is a service which has already been reduced in Medway; having recently seen Parkwood Health Child Clinic reduced to just two Thursdays a month. This service allows parents to monitor their childs physical development alongside a health professional to be confident they are developing as they should. This is extremely important for parents to access, for example;

1. In times where twins have been born and close monitoring of their growth once discharged from hospital is important
2. When a mother changes the way she feeds her child, from combination feeding to solely breastfed, it is important to know that the baby maintains a healthy weight during this transitional period

I accept that there are some self weigh facilities in Medway, however by the nature of them, they are not accompanied by a health professional and therefore parents are not able to address any concerns. Appointments with health professionals may be some wait.

Following your proposal to remove this service, what provisions additional to self weigh will you be putting in place to replace weigh in clinics?

At a Healthy Child Clinic, parents can access health professionals to address their concerns. It is an informal way they can pop in to see somebody without the need to book an appointment with their GP or health visitor. Usually, these questions are asked at the point when they weigh their child as this is a convenient way in which to do so. Parents feel comfortable asking the ‘little’ questions they feel they cannot trouble their GP with, or do not warrant a health visitor visit. A parent may feel that these are the little and perhaps less urgent questions they have, but that does not automatically mean they are any less valid, important or necessary and one persons perception of ‘the little things’ may actually turn out to be an indicator of something more serious.

Following your proposal to remove a parents ability to ask these questions to a health professional, what provision will be in place for parents to discuss their concerns?

The current telephone number for snapdragons is already ineffective as it is rarely answered. Have you considered the impact on a parent with a concern calling the team and not being able to gain information where before they could rely on a walk in , drop in service?

When visiting a Healthy Child Clinic, parents who have decided to breastfeed their children are able to access breastfeeding support. It is recognised that support and particularly lack of support can affect a mothers success in breastfeeding. At a time where an Infant Feeding Team has quadrupled in size within Medway and where accreditation for the baby friendly initiative has recently been awarded (partly on the support of the breastfeeding support available within Healthy Child Clinics – I myself was interviewed by the assessors on 14th June 2018 giving information around the support we provide at the clinics) it is a large resource to parents to gain their breastfeeding support. On Thursday 13th September, I spent over an hour supporting a family who are desperate to continue breastfeeding. On Tuesday 4th September , I spent over 30 minutes speaking with a lady who had not been supported effectively by the on site Health Visiting Team to continue her journey .

Following your proposal to remove a parents ability to access peer supporters at Healthy Child Clinics, what provision will be in place for parents to discuss their concerns in a local and easy access format?

Who will be responsible for breastfeeding support? If the resource gained from the removal of these clinics is to be used for home visits by CNNs and HVs, will these staff be retrained in breastfeeding support to ensure that they are full and effectively equipped to support mothers on their breastfeeding journeys? I can assure you, based on the volume of mothers directed to Peer Supporters at clinics by these professionals their current level of knowledge is not sufficient to now support in the home.

To touch on the recent accreditation with UNICEFs Baby Friendly Initiative, where the Healthy Child Clinics played a large part in securing the reaccreditation, why is it that the very clinics that supported the award now being removed? Will MCH be updating UNICEF with their now lack of provision for baby support and is it the case that MCH were happy to accept the accreditation, the benefits and image this portrays and is now cutting the services regardless of the consequences to families in Medway?

To summarise, I would like to provide you with some simple statistics from yesterday Health Child Clinic at Parkwood Health Centre.

We saw 50 families , within the space of 90 minutes. There were 4 health professionals available to see these parents and it was still not enough to meet demand as we had to turn parents away. Each family received on average 7 minutes and 12 seconds of consultation during which they weighed their child, asked their questions and gained much needed support from their professional. This is one small area or Medway, however many of our visitors had travelled from Gillingham, Chatham, Wayfield to see someone due to the already drastic cuts to their support network.

So lets imagine Medway without a provision of Healthy Child Clinics:

• 50 children would not have been weighed
• 50 families would not have had support from health professionals, where the concerns discussed would not have resulted in effective referrals