Health Visitors

(asked on 27th October 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many full-time equivalent health visitors were in post in September 2015 prior to transfer of commissioning to local authorities.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 1st November 2016

The Health Visitor Minimum Data set collection, that was established in 2012 to collect statistics on the number of health visitors employed by National Health Service provider organisations as well as those employed by local authorities, or other care providers was approved for the duration of the national programme only and ceased at the end of September 2015.

The vast majority of health visitors are employed in NHS organisations. Health visitors are also employed by other providers including independent sector and local authority in house provision. From statistics published by NHS Digital, as at 30 September 2015, the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) health visitors directly employed in NHS organisations was 10,236 and the number of health visitors (FTE) employed by local authorities and/or other care providers was 518.

In September 2015, NHS Digital began to collect and publish data on staff, including health visitors, in some independent sector healthcare organisations in England. This collection does not represent the entire workforce employed across the whole of the independent sector, nor does this data only show staff providing NHS commissioned services.

The latest available data, published in September 2016, showed, as at 31 March 2016 that there were 924 FTE health visitors in those independent sector organisations which provided data.

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