Great Health Visitors do the Great North Run

18 December, 2013

The Health Visiting team at City Health Care Partnership CIC are not content with looking after the health and wellbeing of children in Hull; they are now planning to do the Great North Run to raise money for the NSPCC and the Institute of Health Visiting and are recruiting health visitors from across the country to join them.

Health visitor Melita Walker did the Great North Run for the NSPCC in 2013, although she had never done anything of the kind before, and loved the whole experience. A training course on perinatal mental health run by the Institute for Health Visiting (iHV) inspired her to promote the value of emotional health for parents and babies and the two strands have come together in a project to get health visitors running for charity.

‘I want to get as many health visitors as possible from across the country to do the Great North Run on behalf of the iHV and our partners the NSPCC in September 2014,’ she said. ‘It will be a great opportunity to raise the profile of health visitors and of our work in perinatal mental health for women before and after they give birth. This can really improve the quality of families’ lives and I know that by working together with other agencies we can make a huge difference.

‘We’ve already recruited people from other areas and I’m proud that as health visitors from Hull we are leading this challenge. We’re planning our training carefully; in January we’ve got a dedicated evening for health visitors at Humber Runner with Olympic athlete Anthony Whitelam and in March we’ll be doing a Boot Camp on the beach at Bridlington. I hope we’ll be able to get some children to join in with this as it should be really good fun.

‘We’re also thinking about doing a Great North Easter Egg hunt in Hull City Centre and the NSPCC are keen to support us with that; we are also hoping to join the NSPCC on Go Green Day in June.’

The Great Health Visitors already have a Twitter feed and a Facebook page and want as many health visitors as possible to join them. ‘I’m thrilled with the response so far,’ says Melita. ‘I think this is going to be a great adventure for us as a profession and another way to put Hull on the map.’

Andrew Burnell, chief executive of City Health Care Partnership CIC and himself a qualified health visitor, is right behind the project. ‘This is a brilliant way to raise awareness of the importance of emotional health needs and the impact of poor mental health. It also means that we will have a super-fit team of health visitors, which can only be a good thing for children and families in Hull.’