Health: Visitor Service Debate
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Baroness Jolly
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Health: Visitor Service
Baroness Jolly Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Earl Howe
The right reverend Prelate draws attention to a very important area. Family Nurse Partnership is essentially a preventive programme for vulnerable young first-time mothers. It complements and supports the work of health visitors, providing intensive care. We are committed to expanding the Family Nurse Partnership Programme for those families and doubling the number of places on the programme by 2015.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, this is a really large programme. Will the noble Earl clarify whether, if these posts are filled from within the NHS, those posts will in turn be backfilled?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we hope to recruit nurses and midwives for upskilling from a variety of sources. Some will come out of retirement, we hope, while others will, we trust, come from the acute sector. As my noble friend knows, the trend for a long time has been to try to get care increasingly out of acute settings and into the community. I think that we will see that transfer of skills taking place from a variety of sources.