Local area variation in health visiting contacts across England for children under age 5: a cross-sectional analysis of administrative data in England 2018-2020.

Background: The health visiting service in England leads the government's Healthy Child Programme (HCP) for children under five years. Local authorities and their provider partners deliver this service differently across England.

Objective: To describe local authority variation in the delivery of health visiting to children under five years in England (2018-2020).

How should policymakers, funders, and research teams mobilize to build the evidence base on universal early years services?

Health visiting in England is a universal service that aims to promote the healthy development of children aged under five years and safeguard their welfare. We consulted stakeholders about their priorities for research into health visiting and also used these consultations and a literature review to generate a logic model. Parents wanted research to explore how health visiting teams can provide a caring, responsive, accessible service (the mechanisms of change).

Can administrative data be used to research health visiting in England? A completeness assessment of the Community Services Dataset.

Introduction: Health visiting is a community service provided to families with children under five in England and is a key focus of early years policy. Individual-level data on health visiting is captured in the Community Services Data Set (CSDS), an administrative dataset of publicly funded community services across England. Analyses of CSDS are considered experimental as the dataset matures.