Scotland Performs Update

National Outcome: Our children have the best start in life and are ready to succeed

Family Nurse Partnership

Background

• The Family Nurse Partnership is an evidence based, licensed programme delivered to young (under 19) first-time mothers from early pregnancy until their child reaches the age of two.
• It is an intensive programme delivered by highly trained nurses, through a series of one-to-one home visits.
• The three main aims of the programme are Improving:
  • Pregnancy and birth outcomes
  • Child health and wellbeing outcomes
  • Economic self-sufficiency of the family.
• Its main theoretical underpinnings are human ecology, attachment and self-efficacy.
• The nurses support the young women to develop responsive care-giving and to understand the impact of their behaviours on the outcomes for their children.

Budget

• £10.2m in 2017-18.

Achievements

• 18 nursing teams, plus centralised support within NHS Boards.
• Working to deliver the programme to over 2,600 families at one time.
• This has been further enhanced by a revised governance structure and approach to quality assurance.
• A redesign of the data system to support the programme as well as core outputs from commissioned evaluations have also been produced in this year.
• Extension to the eligibility criteria to reach vulnerable 20-24 year olds;
• Expansion of the current reach of the programme by 25% across the year.

Key partners

• NHSScotland (10 out of 14 health boards, plus one special health board— NHS Education for Scotland).

Delivery

• The programme requires ongoing commitment from the nursing teams, at all levels, to maintain the intensity and quality of the programme, as well as from their host organisations.
• A co-productive approach to learning from practice insights and building that back into the core programme and using this knowledge to develop a more sustainable policy and strategic position comes from strong engagement with the nurse supervisors and their teams with policy/ analytical leads in government.

Contribution to National Outcomes

• The programme aims to break the intergenerational cycle of poor outcomes by working intensively with mothers whose children are more likely to have poor outcomes, through exploring their goals and supporting them to achieve by engaging with education, work and training opportunities.
• This data led programme allows for quality improvement to be identified quickly to ensure that the core fidelity measures (uptake and ongoing engagement on the programme) continue to be met or exceeded. There is constant monitoring of the quality of the programme delivery and qualitative feedback is sought from clients (patients) who receive the programme.

The project contributes towards other National Outcomes, such as:

• We live longer, healthier lives.
• We have tackled the significant inequalities in Scottish society.