Toolkit for health visitors
Introduction
This toolkit has been drawn up by Alcohol Concern following discussion with health visitors. It is one of five interlinked sets of materials for a range of professionals working with children in generic settings. The starting point for the project overall is the fact that, at present, many professionals working with children whose parents misuse alcohol often feel insufficiently trained and unconfident in dealing with this issue. However, much can be done by professionals routinely in contact with such children to promote resilience to long-term harm. A key problem for many professionals is that they can often see parental alcohol misuse differently to the way they view a range of other problems facing children, feeling a disproportionate sense of inadequacy in dealing with the issue. Professionals can sometimes unnecessarily react within the context of child protection concerns, more so than they would in respect of other problems commonly faced by children living in difficult family situations.
- Health visitors play a unique role in terms of their relationship with, and access to, families with very young children. They have ready access to the home environment and, unlike, say, social workers, do not just see people at times of crisis; unlike teachers they often see the whole family group, rather than just one member of it in isolation. Moreover, their role in promoting the welfare of the family as a whole offers a clear route into considering the impact that parents’ drinking may be having on their children and places them in a unique position to promote resilience to long term harm.
However, despite these advantages, it is important to recognise that delivering on-going interventions for parents with alcohol problems does not fall within the brief of health visitors, who come under pressure from a variety of other professionals keen to tap into their relationships with families. However it is, nonetheless, important that health visitors should be in a position to be able to:
- Identify families where parental alcohol misuse may be a problem
- Make a reasonable judgement of the extent to which parental drinking is, and is not, affecting good enough parenting
- Offer appropriate advice to parents misusing alcohol, which may include brief interventions as well as referral elsewhere.
 |
