Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that all families benefit from targeted support under the Healthy Child Programme.

The Healthy Child Programme is a progressive universal service which offers every child a schedule of health and development reviews, screening tests, immunisations, health promotion guidance and support for parents tailored to their needs. For children and families with greater needs and risks, a range of additional preventive and early intervention services are offered, including services promoting child development and emotional and psychological support.

To ensure the programme remains up to date with the latest evidence, a review of the evidence base for the Healthy Child Programme was undertaken by Public Health England and published in March 2015. The findings of the review will ensure that the Healthy Child Programme is underpinned by robust, up-to-date evidence of what works.

The review report is available on the gov.uk website at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/healthy-child-programme-rapid-review-to-update-evidence

To support the continued provision of the Healthy Child Programme following transfer of responsibility for planning and commissioning of public health services for children up to age five from NHS England to local authorities on 1 October 2015, we are mandating five universal health visitor reviews:

- the antenatal health promoting visit;

- the new baby review;

- the 6-8 week assessment (the health visitor or Family Nurse led check);

- the one year assessment; and

- the 2-2½ year review.

Evidence shows that these are the key times to ensure that parents are supported to give their baby the best start in life, and to identify early those families who need extra help. This will help ensure all children under five and their parents get the support they need, whilst also providing an opportunity to identify those families where extra support may be needed.