“It feels really hard and it’s very depressing working with staff that are so demoralised. Most staff come into the NHS because they passionately believe in a public service. That is still there. All the staff in the NHS want to do their best for their clients.”
“We’ve seen health visitor posts not filled and we’ve seen some of the posts filled by community nursery nurses. Now as good as those community nursery nurses are, it means a dilution of the services and [of the] skills and the expertise going out to parents. There are concerns among health visitors about obvious things [being missed] – developmental delay in children, global delay, speech and language delay, health issues around children’s diet, issues as well about the strength of the bonding and attachment between mothers and babies and that is so important for future health and wellbeing.”
“In community children’s services and health visiting we take a very health promotion and preventative approach and to see that being undermined by the current cuts in public health is very depressing for workers. And then seeing really skilled people, all those years of experience, feeling they have no option but to leave is very sad, very sad.”