New NHS home visiting service available to households in Bradford
The service will support families of different generations all living together and will offer them one-to-one support from a GP, nurse practitioner or social prescriber.
Healthcare professionals from a local GP practice will organise home visits to the families, at high risk of ill health and finding it hard to access the mainstream services, to carry out health checks and provide health and wellbeing advice.
They will also offer any immunisations that have been missed to babies and young children to protect them from childhood diseases, such as measles, mumps, and rubella, as well as making sure the families have had cancer screening and reviews for those who are eligible.
People living in Little Horton, Manningham and parts of Keighley are more likely to experience health inequalities, resulting in poor mental wellbeing and ill health. The project seeks to address these inequalities by bringing health services and support directly to the homes of families in need, who may have missed their important health screening appointments, such as cervical or breast screening.
Removing barriers to services
Dr Zoyah Hussain, a GP at Modality AWC running the Keighley Pilot home visits, said: “One of the main aims of this pilot is to help address health inequalities by removing the barriers to accessing services for some of our most vulnerable families and communities. Some of these barriers could be language, so we have multi-lingual healthcare professionals who can communicate with the families.
“We also have visual aides to help people to understand what’s involved during screenings such as cervical, bowel and breast screenings, which we hope will encourage them to take up their health screening offer. Alongside the childhood immunisations we are offering shingles and pneumonia vaccinations for the eligible elderly populations who are at risk of hospital admissions. We are offering long term condition and medication reviews with blood tests and in house practice follow up.”
Dr Sohail Abbas, Director for Population Health and Inequalities at Bradford District and Craven Health and Care Partnership, said: “We want to make sure everyone is able to access healthcare services, and our approach is to take the service to them by visiting the homes of families at convenient times, such as evenings or late afternoons.
"I’m really proud to be part of a team that is exploring how we make sure some of our most vulnerable communities have resources and opportunities to access the health and care services they need. We’re hoping this project will ultimately help improve the take-up of key test, checks and immunisations and ensure people are able to stay happy and healthy at home.”
The pilot has been rolled out by Bradford District and Craven Health and Care partnership and general practice teams in Bradford District. The service will run until October 2024.
