Parents can access support and advice on a range of topics including infant feeding, sleep and safety at home, thanks to a series of free webinars run by Health Visitors.
Our Health Visiting Team is running 11 webinars throughout April and June for parents and parents-to-be across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
The team began running the webinars at the start of the pandemic, when face-to-face meetings were not possible. These virtual sessions have proved so successful; the health visitors are continuing to run them alongside face-to-face groups, to enable more people to attend.
Sheila Ogilvie, Locality Lead for Health Visiting in North Bristol started the project, with support from Natasha James. Natasha, Clinical Lead for Health Visiting in South Bristol, has now had a blog about the webinars published by the Institute of Health Visiting.
Speaking about the project, she said: “The pandemic has enabled innovative health visiting practice, creating new opportunities to deliver virtual public health messages.
“Webinars offer flexibility and convenience to families. Our service plans to record the webinars and upload them so they can be accessed anytime.”
The webinars have enabled the health visitors to reach more people who may not have been unable to attend the sessions in person.
They are now planning to record their webinars and upload them to Sirona’s YouTube channel so people can access them whenever it is convenient to them.
Nikki Lawrence, Sirona’s Head of Public Health Nursing, said: “Our health visitors have been working hard to ensure parents and carers can continue to access this vital service throughout the pandemic.
“We are planning to expand the service further by providing webinars on more topics, and recording them to give families more choice on how and when they access the support they need.”
Currently, parents can join webinars on introducing solid foods; sleep; fussy eating; infant feeding; safely using a wrap or baby carrier; and safety at home.
You can sign up to the latest webinars here: https://cchp.nhs.uk/cchp/explore-cchp/health-visiting/webinars-parents-parents-be
You can read Natasha James’ blog, here: https://ihv.org.uk/news-and-views/voices/public-health-webinars-for-parents/