Wiltshire Children and Families Wellbeing
HCRG Care Group delivers Wiltshire’s Public Health Nursing service – health visiting, school nursing, baby clinics and the Family Nurse Partnership – alongside a full range of specialist children’s services. Community health is changing for good through a new digital front door that offers families a direct messaging service to health visitors, the introduction of equality and engagement leads, and improved immunisation uptake through digital consent.
Wiltshire Children and Families Wellbeing
Originally commissioned in 2017, HCRG is continuing to deliver Wiltshire’s Public Health Nursing service for ages 0-19 following a renewal in April 2024. The contract includes a number of specialist children’s services – including therapies (speech and language, physiotherapy, occupational therapy), community paediatricians and learning disability nursing.
Visit Service WebsiteServices include:
- The Healthy Child Programme
- School Nursing
- Health Visiting
- Family Nurse Partnership
- Digital front door: Growing Well Wiltshire
This service is led by
Val Scrase
Regional Director
A former health visitor with many years of overseeing strategy, operations and community health in the South West, Val is now leading some of the most ambitious transformations of health services in the UK.
CQC Performance
The renewal speaks to the high standard of care we’re achieving
Along with our latest CQC inspection, which had examples of ‘Outstanding’ practice in ‘Effectiveness’ and was given an overall rating of ‘Good’. Our work in innovating needs-led neurodiversity pathways has been well documented, but we’re not resting on our past achievements, and we’re still investing upfront in transformation that will achieve efficiencies in later years.
The latest innovation has been to support services with a digital front door
The Growing Well Wiltshire app, which provides young people, parents and carers with advice on common topics of interest, with education to improve prevention, helping to take the load off secondary care services.
The app also offers a direct line to school nurses and health visitors, who can either address their questions there and then, or quickly connect them to the services they need. This enables face-to-face time with health visitors and school nurses to be reduced where it’s not needed.
We’re investing in equality and engagement leads
A dedicated resource to examine where inequalities lie in Wiltshire, and they’re supporting groups such as military families, Afghan evacuees, and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Young Engagement Facilitators are also now playing a role in our service design, and they ensure young people get a direct say in what we’re doing.
The health of children and young people is becoming easier to measure
Through digital health development questionnaires at key transition points (school entry, Year 7, Year 9, Year 11 and soon Year 13), covering all pupils including those who are home educated. This is a low-cost but high-impact tool that gives us a detailed picture of children’s health and wellbeing needs, helping us offer target support that’s driven by need.
This shift from analogue to digital is also being supported by a new scheduling tool
This is enabling public health nurses to more easily manage their time, cut the manual planning, and work in a streamlined way.
We’re dramatically improving immunisation consent return rates and uptake
Through a new digital consent platform, Cinammon, even in areas with historically lower uptake, such as Swindon.
This is backed by engagement and creative communications: for instance, children told us their biggest question about vaccines was about the size of the needle, not the science behind vaccines. So in response, our immunisation equality leads produced an animation to address exactly this concern.
Looking ahead
We’ll be working to ensure continuous quality improvement in Wiltshire, with peer reviews, audits and the sharing of best practice with our other 0-19 services such as Essex, Surrey, B&AINS, Slough and Lancashire.
Visit Service WebsiteWhat’s happening at a glance
A digital front door, making it easier for people to navigate and access services.
Equality and Engagement Lead roles - ensuring inclusivity for underserved communities (e.g., Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Boater, Military).
Connecting the community through co-delivery and group interventions within family hubs.
Increasing reach through integrated delivery with third sector partners.
Delivering additional early contacts (3-4 month reviews) to target support where it makes the biggest difference.