Variation in health visiting contacts for children in England: cross-sectional analysis of the 2-2½ year review using administrative data (Community Services Dataset, CSDS).

A substantial minority of children aged 2 with known vulnerabilities did not see the health visiting team at all in the year. Some higher need children (eg, deprived and Looked After) appeared to be seeing the health visiting team but not receiving their mandated health review. Further work is needed to establish the reasons for this, and potential solutions. There is an urgent need to improve the quality of national health visiting data.