Health Visitor

Salary: NHS Agenda for Change Band 6
Contract: Permanent
Hours: 37.5 hours per week
Closing date: To be confirmed

Join us on our mission to give every child the best possible start in life in Somerset.

This is an exciting opportunity to make a real difference to the health, wellbeing and development of children and families across Somerset. Working as a Specialist Community Public Health Nurse (Health Visitor) within our Public Health Nursing Service, you will lead and coordinate the safe, evidence-based delivery of the Healthy Child Programme from the antenatal period to five years, with a particular focus on pregnancy and the first 1,001 days.

Working autonomously within a supportive, skill-mixed team, you will hold professional responsibility for a defined population, assess strengths and needs, identify vulnerability and risk, coordinate proportionate support and provide clinical leadership, supervision and accountable delegation.

About the Role

As a Health Visitor in Public Health Nursing, you will work in partnership with children, families, communities and multi-agency colleagues to promote health, prevent ill health, support early development and reduce health inequalities.

You will act as the named Health Visitor for a defined population and personally undertake the five mandated health and development reviews at the nationally specified stages, normally providing early contacts in the family home and maintaining continuity and a trusted professional relationship wherever possible.

You will undertake holistic, strengths-based assessments of physical health, child growth and development, speech, language and communication, parental emotional wellbeing, parent–infant relationships, family functioning, lived experience and the home environment. Using specialist public health expertise and professional judgement, you will agree outcomes with families, plan and evaluate evidence-based care, and coordinate universal, targeted and specialist responses according to assessed need.

As part of a dedicated and supportive service, you will provide day-to-day clinical leadership to the health visiting skill-mixed team, prioritise workload and resources, delegate safely and maintain professional oversight. You will also play a key role in safeguarding, multi-agency planning, quality improvement, workforce learning and the delivery of commissioned outcomes.

If you are a qualified Health Visitor who is passionate about prevention, early intervention, family partnership and improving outcomes during the earliest years of life, we would love to hear from you.

How You’ll Make a Difference

• Lead and coordinate delivery of the Healthy Child Programme for children and families from the antenatal period to five years, ensuring universal reach with personalised, targeted and specialist responses.
• Hold professional responsibility for a defined population, using individual, family and population-level information to assess need, prioritise activity and reduce health inequalities.
• Personally undertake the five mandated health and development reviews at the nationally specified stages, maintaining continuity wherever possible.
• Undertake holistic, strengths-based assessments; identify developmental concerns, emerging need, vulnerability and risk; agree outcomes with families; and plan, deliver, coordinate and evaluate evidence-based care.
• Maintain professional curiosity, recognise cumulative harm and safeguarding risk, act promptly on concerns and ensure the child’s voice and lived experience inform assessment and decision-making.
• Participate in safeguarding supervision, strategy discussions, Child in Need and Child Protection processes, conferences and court work, preparing timely and analytical reports.
• Provide evidence-based clinical advice and early intervention across infant feeding, healthy weight and nutrition, child development, speech and language, maternal and infant mental health, parent–infant relationships, immunisation, oral health, safer sleep, home safety and accident prevention.
• Promote immunisation, vaccination uptake and relevant screening programmes, apply infection prevention and control requirements, and respond appropriately to communicable disease concerns.
• Build respectful therapeutic relationships and deliver trauma-informed, culturally responsive and accessible care, supporting informed choice and family self-efficacy.
• Work collaboratively with maternity, primary care, early years, Best Start Family Hubs, children’s social care, education, allied health professionals and voluntary, community and faith organisations.
• Provide clinical leadership, supervision, preceptorship and accountable delegation to colleagues and learners, retaining oversight of care and outcomes.
• Maintain accurate, timely and defensible electronic records; share information lawfully and proportionately; and contribute to audit, research, evaluation, incident learning and quality improvement.