Child Health Practitioner Reports Staffing Crisis and Developmental Concerns

I have a long history in nursing. Currently I work as a children’s practitioner and I am seeing a lot of worrying signs that both the health of our mothers and children, and the services that exist to care for them, are not in good shape.

Midwifery services are so understaffed that the levels are dangerous. When the mandates rolled out in 2021 a remote area I cover lost every single midwife. Other areas are suffering similarly now with as few as 10% of required staff, placing our mothers and babies at risk.

At the same time premature births, intrauterine growth retardation and congenital abnormalities seem to be occurring much more often now. Placental abnormalities are also happening a lot.

Babies, children and families seem to be vulnerable to constant respiratory infections now. Sometimes entire families get sick at the same time. This is highly unusual, as most influenza like illnesses only affect those whose immune systems are vulnerable at a given time, meaning one or two people in a household might get sick in close proximity to each other, and almost never at exactly the same time. I know of one family whose small children have been sick for some months, starting with an eye infection, graduating to upper respiratory infections, then diarrhoea and vomiting, with no space between the illnesses which seems to suggest a chronic immune suppression. This is also a highly unusual picture which I’ve never seen before.

Speech delays in children are becoming so common that it is being referred to as an epidemic. Speech and language therapists are in high demand with long waitlists. This seems to be in keeping with a “dumbing down” of age-expected developmental milestones – a story covered by The Highwire in March 2022 at https://thehighwire.com/ark-videos/cdc-lowers-childhood-milestones/.

In March 2021 a two year old was expected to have sentences with 2-4 words, and to repeat words overheard in conversation. This was subsequently changed to “says at least two words together like ‘more milk’” and pointing to body parts rather than repeating words. They also added a 30-month milestone category stating that children should have around 50 words by this age. Previously a child at 24 months who was speaking less than 50 words was considered to have a speech and language disorder.

I really fear for the future of our children based on the accumulation of evidence that their antenatal health is compromised, leading into a picture of health and developmental concerns at levels not seen before.