Minister for Women's Health Strategy champions GET-A-HEAD campaign

The Minister for Women's Health Strategy is supporting our calls for improved baby health care, to stop children with life threatening conditions like hydrocephalus from slipping under the radar of health professionals.

This week we've launched the GET-A-HEAD campaign alongside Harry's Hydrocephalus Awareness Trust, which is calling for a more uniform approach to the care received by babies across England in the first 12 months of life.

The guidelines include calls for more face to face contact between families and health professionals, as well as better communication with parents about why certain medical checks are performed.

Through their interactions with families, the charity's raised concerns that the current health care model is a post code lottery of support, where care is much better in some areas than in others; leading to earlier diagnosis and therefore better outcomes for the children who happen to live in a certain location.

The GET-A-HEAD campaign was initially launched by Harry's HAT to raise awareness amongst parents of why head circumference measurements should be taken during a baby's first year. A rapidly growing head, or a head that is disproportionately large compared with the rest of the baby's body could be an indicator of a health issue which requires further investigation.

This next phase of the campaign escalates the charity's ambitions to better the health outcomes for all babies across England.

Maria Caulfield, Minister for Women's Health Strategy, has described GET-A-HEAD as an 'absolutely crucial' awareness raising campaign.

"I fully support the work that's being done to raise awareness of this because I think a lot of parents don't know about hydrocephalus until it's happened to their child. It's absolutely crucial to raise awareness, but also improve that contact with health professionals. That's why we've announced the roll out of family hubs to better build that contact between health visitor and parent."

Earlier this month, the Government announced the roll out of their family hubs program in 75 of the 333 local authority areas in England. Their aim is to "join up and enhance services" delivered in local authority areas, "ensuring all families can access the support they need".

Maria continued: "You do need that specialist childhood health contact and the family hubs are being rolled out in 75 areas across the country at the moment and we'll be evaluating the benefit they have.

"Do they make a difference? Do they pick up on hydrocephalus and other serious conditions? Do parents feel better supported? If the answer to those questions is 'yes' then we will be rolling them out more widely."

Caroline Coates, Chief executive of Harry's HAT said the care your baby receives shouldn't come down to where you live: "We are seeing inconsistencies across the UK; We're seeing really good practise and then we're seeing areas where babies aren't being diagnosed as early. As a charity, we see the impact for that baby and also their parents.

"It's about parity. It shouldn't matter where you are, the outcome should be the same if the child is symptomatic and at the moment it's not, and that's really difficult. The disparity is highlighted when families connect through charities like ours and realise that care has been much better for another family than it was for them."

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