Victoria Pawsey’s beautiful baby girl Addison had a rough start to life spending her first days in The Townsville Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

Taking Addison home came with a degree of anxiety and uncertainty for Victoria that was eased by home visits from a child health nurse from Child, Youth and Family Health Services.

“You end up waiting for that day of your home visit because you just know how valuable and helpful it is,” she said.

“I just found I had a million questions that I had written down since the last visit and you just have a much better sense of where you are going and what you are doing after the visit.”

Child health nurse Zoe Joyce said home visits were offered to every new family from both the public and private system in Townsville.

“It is actually a pretty straightforward service and appointment but you can just see how grateful parents are for that support, advice and reassurance,” she said.

“We just pop out our little red health record and do the zero to four-week check and just provide some advice and answer any questions mum and dad might have.

“We also make a point of linking them in with the services that are available to make sure they know where to go if they have any concerns.”

Victoria said having the nurses come to the home was so convenient. “All I had to do was be there to open the door,” she said.

“There were a few things that I was struggling with and within 10 minutes of having the nurse there we’d have a solution, you’d spend most of the time thinking ‘what is this wizardry’.

“I just can’t see any reason why you wouldn’t access this service. For me it was just so helpful.”

Referrals for home visits are collected through maternity services and child health nurses contact new families to see if they want a visit.