Staff shortages have been blamed for the low number of Kent mothers receiving face-to-face antenatal contact with the local health visiting service.

The health visiting service delivers antenatal appointments which aims to improve the health and well-being of children as part of an integrated approach, working with GPs, midwives and other family support worker.

The purpose of the universal antenatal contact is to introduce the health visiting service to the family, assess and support any needs and provide appropriate health promotion messages to help families to make healthy choices.

A total of 1,349 face-to-face antenatal appointments were carried out by Kent Community Health Foundation staff between March 31 and June 30, but that accounts for just 33% of around 4,000 health checks due.

KCC, the comissioner of the service, says delivery continues to "prove challenging" due to insufficient staffing levels, but first time mothers and vulnerable families have been prioritised for such visits, its health reform and public health cabinet was told.

Ashford councillor George Koowaree (Lib Dem), one of the committee members, said he was "very disappointed" with the performance.

The local county authority had set a 43% target, which KCC failed to achieve in the last financial quarter.

Although, the latest figure does represent an improvement from the previous financial quarter's 26% .

The committee was told the health authority has made close to universal contact with mothers, via an introduction letter and this measure will remain in place until sufficient staffing levels have been achieved.

But, Cllr Koowaree remained unsatisfied and told colleagues: "I'm very disappointed... this has been going on for three to four years and delivery is still not on target."

Despite the concerns, officers pointed towards the positive aspects of the KCC report which revealed that performances of the majority of the remaining public health commissioned services had been rated green - getting a rating of 11 out of 15.

In addition, more than 65,000 mandated universal checks were delivered by the health visiting service between March 2018 to June this year.

Cllr Barry Lewis (Lab) called for all data to be broken down geographically to show how each, individual, Kent district had been affected.

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