Everyone experiences struggles and challenges at some point in life. In the UK, if you have children under five years of age, you have the opportunity of support from a highly trained health professional called a health visitor. This often-misunderstood postgraduate role involves helping families to improve their health while navigating the hurdles of life.The emotional mountain of daily struggles can seem overwhelming for young families. The health visiting service offers a metaphorical hand to hold alongside practical help and advice enabling parents to climb life’s occasionally difficult and often emotional mountains.To regard health as something that can be created, maintained, and improved is the mission of the health visiting service. Prevention of ill-health has always been seen as imperative. The health visitor encourages families towards this goal by offering support for their family health needs. Through case study this book offers insight into how the health visitor manages to create health and prevent ill-health with some surprising results.Managing the steppingstones to good health and avoiding the pitfalls of poor mental health can often seem impossible for new or even experienced parents. Accepting the helping hand of the health visiting service has the power to deliver a positive and quite profound effect. This book lifts the veil on the largely hidden work of this unsung, health professional. In this book you will find that the role of the health visitor is so much more complex than their famed job of ‘just weighing babies.’
A. M. Houston trained as a nurse and midwife and then focused on public health by training as a health visitor. She worked in the National Health Service in the UK for many years. A.M. Houston became interested in health research and left frontline practice to concentrate on community and family health and completed her PhD at King’s College London.
Dr. A.M. Houston returned to frontline community service and developed a special interest in child development, early learning, developing practice and most of all helping families with their pre-school children. Throughout her early years’ work, A. M. Houston passionately believed in the importance of reading to pre-school children as a valuable initial part of a child’s progress into education.
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3 reviews
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I think this would make an incredible audiobook told in the voice of the writer.
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What a brilliant read!! Much more than a read actually… so generously told. I will read again and again. It could be a pod cast. I can hear the stories as if being told in person which makes the book even better! It is a book of such experience and golden nuggets of wisdom to all readers. Absolutely fantastic. It would be brilliant if it could be added to student reading lists. Genius. It is packed again with my hand luggage to read another time on the plane.
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This book is a compendium of case studies that demonstrate the depth and breadth of Health Visiting practice. It demonstrates the complexity of the Health visitor's role. It is written with professionalism but also interjected with humorous anecdotes making it a compelling read.
The history of the service is outlined by reference to the author's journey towards her career. The studies demonstrate compassion, commitment, and a belief in the Health Visitors' role in coming alongside the clients but also working professionally within the multidisciplinary team.
It is a frank account of community practice, the lives of individuals and families, and the challenges and difficulties they face.
This is not an academic text, however, the Case Studies identified could be easily utilized as exemplars for Students of Nursing, Midwifery, and Health Visiting in Enquiry-Based Learning. Footnotes and annotations identify reference sources. Health workers in the community setting could also draw on the material to support their decision-making in practice.
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