Health visitors are mainly concerned with helping to ensure that people's domestic behaviour is sanitary, hygienic, and beneficial to the welfare of themselves and their families, particularly to their children.
As their name suggests, they fulfill their role in the community, by visiting family homes, to give advice and support to all age groups.
They have a key role with regard to safeguarding vulnerable people, as they are often the first experts to enter the homes of individuals at risk of abuse and neglect, especially children.
If the health visitor suspects that matters were serious enough to warrant child protection measures, it is their responsibility to initiate the process of intervention.
The dual role of advice and inspection has made some families wary of health visitors, despite being appreciative of their potential for assistance.
At the time the health visiting profession began, living conditions for the urban poor were often cramped and extremely insanitary, leading to many business owners sending women around to workers' homes to educate their wives about sanitation and nutrition.
Issues of hygiene, malnutrition, or disease, would be corrected with suitable advice, and reported to the relevant authorities where appropriate The role of Health visitors was formalised with the establishment of the Ladies Sanitary Reform Association in 1862.
The role of health visitors was given greater weight following the Notification of Births Acts 1907 and 1915 and the Maternity and Child Welfare Act 1918 which empowered local authorities to establish maternal and child welfare services and led to the first training courses for health visitors.
In 1959 Elaine Wilkie was appointed tutor at Manchester University where she launched a community health nursing diploma.