Future Health Visiting Model: Listening to Families, Designing with Communities
The Context
A researcher exploring the future of health visiting wanted to move beyond traditional consultation methods and create a space where parents could genuinely shape future thinking. Building on research into people’s experiences of telehealth and health visiting during the pandemic, there was an opportunity to understand how families want health visiting services to look and feel in the future.
At the same time, wider conversations across health and care systems were exploring how digital approaches could support services without losing the human relationships that families depend on. The challenge was not simply to ask people for feedback, but to create an environment where parents felt able to share honest experiences, hopes, concerns and ideas.
The Challenge
Health visiting sits at the heart of family support, yet many service decisions are often shaped by organisational pressures, capacity and system needs rather than the realities of family life.
Research and engagement highlighted several recurring themes:
- Parents valued relationships more than processes.
- Continuity of support was often missing.
- Home visits were seen as irreplaceable.
- Digital interactions could be useful but were frequently described as impersonal.
- Fathers, grandparents and wider carers often felt overlooked.
- Families wanted services that adapted to their circumstances rather than expecting families to adapt to the service.
The challenge was to create a different kind of engagement experience, one that moved beyond surveys and consultation forms and enabled families to explore these issues creatively and collaboratively.
How did Collaborate Out Loud help?
We designed and facilitated a creative community insight workshop that placed parents and families at the centre of the conversation.
Rather than asking people to sit through a traditional focus group, we curated an interactive, family-friendly space alongside an existing playgroup. The environment was carefully designed to encourage participation, movement, conversation and reflection.
The session included:
- Creative activities that parents and children could take part in together.
- Thought-provoking prompts based on existing research findings.
- Opportunities for parents to share experiences in multiple ways.
- Informal conversations that allowed people to learn from one another as well as contribute to the research.
- Visual tools and activities that made complex questions accessible and engaging.
Our role was not to collect opinions, but to create the conditions for meaningful dialogue, allowing lived experience to shape future research and service design.
What was the impact?
The workshop generated rich insight into what families truly value from health visiting services. A clear picture emerged:
- Relationships are the service.
- Trust, warmth and being listened to matter as much as clinical expertise.
- Continuity builds confidence and safety for families.
- Home visits offer unique opportunities to understand family circumstances.
- Technology has a place but should enhance rather than replace human connection.
- Services need to recognise the whole family, not just the parent bringing a child to an appointment.
Most importantly, families were given a genuine opportunity to influence future thinking rather than simply respond to pre-determined questions.
The insights generated created a stronger foundation for future research and helped ensure that the voices of parents remained at the centre of conversations about service transformation.
What We Learned
When organisations talk about redesigning services, it’s easy to start with systems, processes and technology. Families start somewhere different. They start with relationships.
This work reminded us that people rarely talk about wanting more efficient interactions. They talk about wanting to be known, understood and supported. While digital tools can make services more accessible, the things that matter most can’t be automated: trust, continuity, empathy and human connection.
The future of health visiting is not a choice between digital or face-to-face. It’s about designing services that use the best of both while never losing sight of the relationships that help families thrive.
At Collaborate Out Loud, we believe the people who experience services every day hold some of the most valuable insights for improving them. Our job is to create the spaces where those voices can be heard, shared and acted upon.