Nurse Family Partnerships

Mr. Hoban
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans there are to extend the services offered by nurse-family partnerships.

Beverley Hughes
I have been asked to reply.

Over the 2007 spending review period we will be investing £30 million to:

Conduct the final year of the small scale testing phase of the family nurse partnership (called nurse-family partnership in the US), begun in March 2007 on 10 sites in England and running until March 2009;

increase the number of sites testing and delivering the family nurse partnership intervention in England by 20 sites in 2008-09, with the decision about possible further expansion in subsequent years being informed by evaluation outcomes from operating the first 30 sites;

conduct a research trial into the impact of the family nurse partnership in England; and

support integration of the family nurse partnership into the universal child health promotion programme.