Catalogue description Records of the Council for the Training of Health Visitors, and of the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors

Health visiting, as with other nursing services, began on a voluntary and local basis. The Notification of Births Acts 1907 and 1915 and the Maternity and Child Welfare Act 1918 empowered local authorities to establish maternal and child welfare services and led to the first training courses for health visitors. In 1925 responsibility for the training of health visitors passed to the Ministry of Health, with the Royal Sanitary Institute (later the Royal Society of Health) designated as the examining body. The National Health Service Act 1946 s24 re-established the social and preventative aspects of the work and placed stress on the family as a unit.

In 1956 the Working Party on the Recruitment and Training of Health Visitors reported (the Jameson Report) and in 1959 the Working Party on Social Workers in the Local Health Authority and Welfare Services reported (the Younghusband Report).

In 1962, the Health Visiting and Social Work (Training) Act established the Council for the Training of Health Visitors (CTHV) and the Council for Training in Social Work (CTSW) as bodies corporate under a joint chairman appointed by the Privy Council.

Section 2 of the 1962 Act set out the powers of the CTHV:

• a) to promote the training of health visitors by seeking to secure suitable facilities for the training of persons intending to become health visitors, by approving such courses as suitable to be attended by such persons and by seeking to attract such persons to such courses;
• b) if it appeared to them that adequate provision was not being made for the further training of health visitors, to provide or secure the provision of courses for this purpose;
• c) to conduct or make arrangements for the conduct of examinations in connection with the courses mentioned above; and
• d) to carry out or assist other persons in carrying out research into matters relevant to the training of health visitors.

The CTHV consisted of 31 members of whom 14 were appointed by the Minister of Health, 6 by the Minister of Education, and the rest by various local authority organisations including those representing Scotland and Northern Ireland. The council was financed wholly by the Treasury through the Ministry of Health. Various committees and working parties were set up to define the functions and role of the health visitor and to provide a new syllabus and uniformity of training.

In 1970 the title of the CTHV was amended to the Council for the Education and Training of Health Visitors (CETHV). Pressure to separate the CTSW and the CETHV increased and was accomplished in 1975. A review of all the nursing bodies led in 1979 to the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act and to the abolition in 1983 of the CETHV and the setting up of a joint body, the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, and two National Boards for England and Wales in 1984.