The Derbyshire Health Visiting Service currently communicates with parents and families through a range of face to face and paper-based methods e.g. during home or community appointments and by leaflets. As a result, the service receives a lot of telephone calls asking for general advice and for information on local clinics and groups. Derbyshire Community Health Services (and the HVS) would like to explore the use of IT as a solution to better engage with families as part of a best practice social marketing programme that allows parents to access information at the right time for them and empower them to make the right decision for their family.
The overall aim of the research project is to establish which IT technology will best support health visitors to carry out their work effectively during home and community visits, including promoting their services, local resources and current health advice to parents across Derbyshire. The project will begin with extensive research with families in Derbyshire followed by co-creation and eventually, the development of an IT solution for Derbyshire.
