We have vacancies for experienced and newly qualified Health Visitors (Band 6) to join our innovative and dynamic teams across NHS Lothian.
Benefits
- A minimum of five weeks annual leave increasing with length of service
- Access to the NHS pension scheme and staff benefits
- Assistance with relocating to Edinburgh
- We provide an extensive induction programme and excellent professional training and development opportunities.
Edinburgh and the Lothian’s offers all the benefits of a major city region but at a more relaxed pace, which allows for a much better work-life balance.
Our Vision and Values
Within Health Visiting, we strive to achieve NHS Lothian’s vision which is that every child should have the best possible start in life and grow up being confident and resilient.
NHS Lothian has a Children and Young People’s Strategy that sets out a clear vision, principles and approach for how NHS Lothian will work to improve outcomes for children, young people and their families. In addition, each of the community planning partnership areas in Lothian (East Lothian, Midlothian, Edinburgh City and West Lothian) have a statutory Children’s Services Plan and these plans all have a high emphasis on integrated working, improving outcomes for children, prevention and early intervention with health visiting at the heart of this – Children’s Services Plan.
Health Visiting in Scotland is undergoing significant change and expansion and there has never been a better time to come to Scotland to practice as a Health Visitor. The Children’s Act (Children’s Commissioner Summary of Act) has brought in many changes to improve outcomes for Scotland. Within this, the role of the Health Visitor is seen as paramount as the professional supporting all families with children 0 – 5 years. Scottish Government’s vision is that the Health Visitor (in most circumstances) will carry out the role of the named person, using the Getting It Right For Every Child (GIGREC) model of care.
The Scottish Government has an ambition to make Scotland the best place to grow up and has invested greatly in the area of Early Years. There is a culture of improvement embedded in both NHS Scotland and in Children’s Services and the Scottish Children and Young People’s Improvement Collaborative which helps drive improvements. NHS and Education are devolved fully to Scottish Parliament within the UK structure and there are many unique differences in care and services for children and families. One of these is the new Pre-Birth to Preschool Universal Pathway which has increased the contacts that families have with their named health visitor, more home visits, more developmental and wellbeing assessment. The principles are prevention, early intervention and continuity of relationship between health visitor and family.
The Scottish Government has invested in health visiting by increasing training numbers and allocating money to health boards to increase the number of health visitors in Scotland by 500 whole time equivalent. This is supported by a caseload weighting tool to ensure that health visitors working in areas with the highest needs have smaller caseload sizes. For our health visiting services in Lothian please see: NHS Lothian Health Visiting Service
Our Values and Ways of Working
As part of ongoing efforts to improve the way we work, more than 3,000 colleagues across the organisation helped develop a set of common values and ways of working. Turning these values and ways of working into everyday reality benefits everyone who work for NHS Lothian and all our patients.
Lothian NHS Board and NHS Scotland have endorsed the following five values:
- Quality
- Dignity and Respect
- Care and Compassion
- Openness, Honesty and Responsibility
- Teamwork
