Research Article

Using the Delphi Approach to Identify Priority Areas for Health Visiting Practice in an Area of Deprivation

Table 3

Examples of focus group statements related to the priority health needs.

TopicExample statements from Round 1

Lack of iron and vitamins I facilitate weaning groups, even those who are fluent they do not know about the issue of vitamin D deficiency. People are not aware that there is not enough light in the UK, and they do not know that they need to give vitamin drops until age of 5. And the mothers are not aware they themselves are also vitamin deficient, and sometimes the prescription they get from the GP contains gelatin and they cannot use that and the GPs often are not aware of that. And when they are pregnant, there is a risk to the child as well. So that is it; in Tower Hamlets there is a big issue about vitamin deficiency. (Health visitor)

Mental healthOne of the main issues is lower mood and depression amongst men and women. I am seeing it more and more in men. I do not understand why, could be financial, but I am seeing a lot of that and we are doing a lot of work around that. We are doing work with mothers to start off with, who are not clinically depressed for people who feel like sleeping all the time, and refuse to have an assessment done because of the stigma of being diagnosed with something. (Outreach children centre manager)

Speech and languageI have worked in TH for 7 years, I’m a child psychotherapist from CAMHSs. One of the needs that really sticks out in my mind is to support parents need at the very beginning of a child’s life. This is concept that you do not need to talk to babies. In CAMPHs, we come across mothers who say, “I did not know you talk with a baby”. Now the baby is 2 years old with no ability to speak or interact and being mistaken as autistic features.
Encourage Mothers to interact, even best meaning mothers say, “I did not know you talk with a child, play with a child, look into the child’s eyes”. So not surprisingly, they do not know how to interact mothers interacting even in a basic way to play. Unfortunately, it is inability for parents to interact. I think that collaboration between CAMHS and health visitors is crucial. (CAMHS: clinical psychologist)