Mothers: Home Help

Mr. Francois
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress her Department has made with providing nursing support to mothers of children under the age of two years as referred to in the report of the Spending Review 2004.

Mr. Ivan Lewis
Support from midwives, health visitors and other health professionals is provided to families through the Child Health Promotion Programme, the universal child health service aimed at preventing ill health and promoting health and well- being. The core service is set out in standard 1 of the national service framework for children, young people and maternity services. However, all families are different and some need more support than others. Health visitors and their teams who deliver the child health promotion programme will make sure that the most at risk children have more support.

We are also testing an intensive nurse-led home visiting programme for the most at risk families. The Nurse Family Partnership Programme has been developed over 30 years in the United States where it has achieved impressive reductions in accidental and non-accidental injuries. We are testing this approach in 10 sites across England where specially trained health visitors and midwives are delivering the programme to first-time young parents.