"Health visitor never got back to me"

When my son was 6 months old, I rang my health visitor and asked for her help as I was struggling to cope. She came out and had a chat with me and told me to visit my GP and that she would be back in a few months to make sure we were ok. I went to my GP and was diagnosed with post natal depression. I am lucky that I have a great GP who didn't worry about the appointment length but sat and talked to me until we had figured out the best way to deal with it. I waited for my health visitor to get back in touch but this never came. When my son was around 18 months old, I had still not heard from her and tried to call but the number I had in my red book was a dead line and it took ages of searching online to find the right number.

My son is now 27 months old and I still haven't heard from the health visitor other than to have my son's 2 year check with a nursery nurse. I would like to stress that I do not blame the individual health visitor as I'm sure she did the best with the resources she had but on this occasion (and 2 other mums that I am aware of) the service as a whole failed.

It's just lucky that my GP was so great as this could have ended very differently.