Health Visitor Direct has been supporting parents with our free online service for almost three years. With over 50,000 visitors each month we now need to raise further funds to enable us to continue to offer one to one support to those parents that request it.



The Charity Healthvisitordirect offers 24-hour access to a health visitor. Parents can email questions about their children anonymously and receive an answer/support from a qualified health visitor without feeling judged. Health visitor direct aims to reach all parents.

Over recent years, there have been far fewer Health Visitors. They struggle with increased caseloads. As resources are focused in the most deprived areas, many parents have little contact with their family health visitor.

We spent a lot of time researching the web support available. There are numerous parenting and child care advice websites - but few that have trained health visitors involved.

This free service is available to all parents, and helps children irrespective of financial situation or socio economic group. The aim is to answer all questions within 24 hours - because clinical experience and research showed that parents want a speedy response. The service meets the needs of client groups known not to access traditional health care services.

Social networking is a new and innovative way of engaging parents. Dads and younger mums are using social networking groups to link to and find information from Health Visitor Direct.

The aims of the service are:

• To provide 24-hour Internet access to a qualified health visitor to all parents.
• To make the service accessible to client groups who don't access traditional health visitor services - particularly dads, parents of disabled children, parents from lower socio-economic groups and young parents.
• To work towards the Every Child Matters outcomes - in particular ‘Be Healthy and Stay Safe'.
• To work alongside other government initiatives like ‘Change4Life' and the ‘Five a Day' campaign.
• To support parents in all aspects of parenting.
• To support and advise mothers and fathers on the prevention and management of post-natal depression.

So far, feedback has been 100% positive - with comments like: "It's such a relief to be able to talk to someone at a weekend" and "I've already noticed some positive changes". As new government initiatives are introduced, the service will develop and grow - ensuring all practice is current and evidence-based.

One of our biggest problems is finding money to sustain this free service. Through donations and sponsorship we hope to continue to be able to provide  this invaluable service.