Scotland is almost 200 health visitors short of the number needed in by the NHS, ahead of the roll out of the Government's named person scheme next month, in which they will play a key role.
Campaigners against the scheme, which will see a named guardian allocated to each child in Scotland, called for it to be delayed or scrapped on the back of new NHS workforce figures.
They showed that one in eleven health visitor posts in Scotland is currently vacant with health visitors expected to take on the role of named person for all pre-school children.
Official figures show there are currently 182 vacancies, with 26 having remained unfilled for more than three months.
The Scottish Conservatives said the SNP should pause the scheme as a result of the statistics, to ensure health visitor teams will be ready for its introduction, although shadow education secretary Liz Smith said the party still wanted to see the policy scrapped altogether..
She added: "There are many reasons why the SNP should press pause on this scheme.
“Those who are tasked with implementing it aren’t sure how to, and the families it will affect are unclear on the impact.
“Now we learn there are scores of vacancies across Scotland among the health visitor workforce. That’s going to make it even harder for this unpopular and intrusive policy to work.
“We want to see the law scrapped, and have done from the start. But failing that, the Scottish Government must at least recognise the need for pausing it until people are ready.”
Simon Calvert, spokesman for the campaign group No to Named Persons, said:
“With less than 60 days before this scheme goes live across the country it is mired in utter crisis.
“It's wrong in principle and unworkable in practice. “The Scottish Government boasted 500 additional health visitors would be employed after being told by the Royal College of Nursing they were essential to make this scheme function.
“But they have missed their target by miles."
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said the apparent shortage was as a direct result of attempts to recruit more workers: “The rise in vacancies is partly due to the creation of 500 new health visitor posts between 2014 and 2018, and obviously it takes time to fill these posts," she said.
“We are providing funding to health boards to increase the number of health visitors, building on the record high NHS staff levels in Scotland. Our investment will provide training and support to all newly qualifying health visitors, who will play an important role supporting children and family health.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel