Health Visitors
(asked on 19th December 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of health visitors (a) in England, (b) regionally and (c) in each local authority area in each year since September 2009.
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include only staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers. Some other organisations also provide health visiting services, so the data held by the Department only reflects part of the picture on overall health visitor numbers.
The following table shows the full time equivalent (FTE) figures for health visitors for England and for each Health Education England region as at 30 September in the specified years:
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 |
England | 8,100 | 7,849 | 7,802 | 7,687 | 8,304 | 9,162 | 10,236 | 9,521 | 8,497 | 7,884 |
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East Midlands | 619 | 615 | 631 | 630 | 685 | 741 | 826 | 791 | 742 | 619 |
East of England | 784 | 778 | 698 | 522 | 594 | 668 | 777 | 744 | 663 | 628 |
Kent, Surrey and Sussex | 553 | 518 | 507 | 420 | 469 | 550 | 671 | 635 | 562 | 519 |
North Central and East London | 384 | 403 | 389 | 406 | 433 | 553 | 670 | 630 | 443 | 427 |
North East | 488 | 501 | 571 | 596 | 659 | 673 | 672 | 422 | 346 | 166 |
North West | 1,386 | 1,329 | 1,317 | 1,414 | 1,463 | 1,602 | 1,793 | 1,733 | 1,674 | 1,586 |
North West London | 298 | 237 | 237 | 351 | 425 | 470 | 511 | 506 | 498 | 510 |
South London | 444 | 434 | 430 | 361 | 334 | 388 | 458 | 420 | 366 | 328 |
South West | 663 | 663 | 599 | 452 | 599 | 565 | 619 | 412 | 370 | 312 |
Thames Valley | 337 | 324 | 307 | 348 | 336 | 347 | 389 | 364 | 324 | 275 |
Wessex | 326 | 308 | 323 | 360 | 394 | 457 | 554 | 514 | 489 | 446 |
West Midlands | 889 | 872 | 895 | 918 | 1,039 | 1,197 | 1,287 | 1,237 | 1,091 | 1,027 |
Yorkshire and the Humber | 929 | 867 | 898 | 908 | 875 | 953 | 1,009 | 1,113 | 929 | 1,041 |
Source: NHS HCHS monthly workforce statistics, NHS Digital
NHS Digital began to collect and publish data on staff, including health visitors, in some English independent sector healthcare organisations, from September 2015. These statistics are collected biannually and published as experimental statistics. The following table shows the FTE figures of health visitors employed by Independent Healthcare Providers in England who provide valid data, as at 30 September each year since 2015 and the latest data available:
| 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 31 March 2018 |
England | 957 | 1,132 | 1,240 | 1,187 |
Source: Independent Healthcare Provider Workforce Statistics, England, March 2018, NHS Digital
Information is not held centrally on number of health visitors in each local authority area.