Rosy Whitwell on Supporting Parents with Sleep Questions I am a Health Visitor

Jen and Amy chat to the lovely Rosy Whitwell who is a health visitor and nurse, who now specialises in infant and child sleep and has a private practice to support families with this important area.

We talk about her journey to specialism as well as the controversies in the field of infant sleep and how health visitors are stuck in the middle often in a difficult position to support parental expectations and face a damaging amount of societal pressures on families.

Sleep is one of the most common challenges for new parents, the cause of lots of HV contacts with families and is interwoven into almost everything we cover - from reducing risk of accidents or injuries, safeguarding to mental health and feeding issues. Despite all this there is so little high quality training for health visitors on what is normal in infant sleep.

We hope this podcast will give you a starting point to update your knowledge on infant sleep and act as an inspiration for more learning on this important topic.

Thank-you to Rosy for sharing her thoughts with us on this and please do get in touch if you have specific questions or would like us to look into more detail on a specific sleep issue. Email us at iamahealthvisitor@gmail.com


Resources and Further Reading:

Lullaby Trust Resources for Safe Sleep:
https://www.lullabytrust.org.uk

BASIS Babies and Sleep Information Source:
https://www.basisonline.org.uk

Australian Centre for Perinatal Psychology:
https://www.centreforperinatalpsychology.com.au

The Children's Sleep Charity:
https://thesleepcharity.org.uk

Normal Infant Sleep: A View from Anthropology, a webinar by Helen Ball of BASIS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5fOogsUpIk
https://festivalofsocialscience.com/events/what-is-normal-infant-sleep-the-view-from-anthropology/