PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Maternity Services: Health Visitors (21 February 2017)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many families of newborn babies did not receive a mandated health visitor antenatal visit in the last year; and how many families did not receive a (a) new baby review, (b) 6 to 8 week assessment, (c) one-year assessment and (e) two to two-and-a-half year review.

Asked by:
Jonathan Reynolds (Labour)

We are not able to report the number of families of newborn babies nationally that did not receive a mandated health visitor antenatal visit in the last year. Although Public Health England (PHE) holds data on the number of mothers who received an antenatal visit at or after 28 weeks this cannot be linked to the quarterly birth data available. As a result the number of families who did not receive an antenatal visit cannot be calculated.

Data are as follows:

	Number of families nationally
Which did not receive a baby review in the last year (2015/16)	15,609
Which did not receive a six to eight week assessment in the last year	119,412
Which did not receive a one-year assessment in the last year	119,107
Which did not receive a two to two-and-a-half year review in the last year	160,656

The most recent data (above) covers the period 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016 inclusive. The source of this data is the Health Visitor Service Delivery Metrics, which have been collected from local authorities on a voluntary basis and validated by PHE.

Answered by:
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Conservative)
1 March 2017