By David Williams
29 October 2010
A pledge by ministers to double the size of a support programme for disadvantaged families has been questioned by nurses.
The Unite union has pressed the government to explain how the Family Nurse Partnerships scheme would meet a new target of having worked with 12,000 households by 2015. So far the initiative has helped 6,000 since 2007.
FNPs are designed to complement the work of health visitors. Family nurses work with teenage parents and other disadvantaged families helping them learn how to look after themselves and their children well during the first two years of a child’s life. There are FNP teams in 55 local authority/primary care trust areas in England.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley yesterday said the government was committed to doubling the number of families who are helped by family nurses by 2015.
Although Department of Health figures show that the scheme costs £3,000 per family per year, it has not released details of how much extra cash will be invested in it.
Dave Munday, professional officer with Unite, said he wanted to know whether the money to fund this pledge would be additional to cash set aside to pay for 4,200 new health visitors, announced by public health minister Anne Milton last week.
Munday said FNPs are already under threat, with some pilots being cancelled abruptly before they finish.
‘It is good news to hear of this extra investment,’ he said. ‘However, we already know of areas that are decommissioning the FNP programme part way through the pilot scheme.’
Munday added that the FNP announcement and health visitors pledge would still only amount to a ‘drop in the ocean’ compared to the social problems that he said the Comprehensive Spending Review’s £81bn cuts programme would bring.
Announcing the expansion of FNPs yesterday, Lansley said: ‘The evidence-base for expanding this programme is clear… we know that early intervention – as provided by the FNP programme – can help young parents to look after their children better, and can help break inter-generational patterns of disadvantage.’
He promised that next month’s white paper on public health would contain more measures to help disadvantaged people improve their quality of life.
