Hello and welcome to my website.

 

You might find it is more about a dog called Rags than it is about me.

I must say this website is as much a surprise to me as it might be to you.

The reason for that, well… I was not actually planning, when I stopped health visiting, to spend time writing about a dog called Rags, particularly one who just happens to be my dog called Rags!

 

I trained as a nurse and then a midwife and then focused on public health by training as a health visitor. That means that I worked in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom for many years. Working as a health visitor, I became very interested in health research. That meant that I left frontline health visiting practice to concentrate fully on research into community and family health as well as health visiting practice. In turn that led on to a PhD at King’s College London.

 

Following my PhD, and work in research, I had to really think about what I wanted to do next. So, there I was Dr. Houston deciding that what I really wanted to do was to return to front-line community service once more. I wanted to return to health visiting practice. I wanted to use all of the skills, that I had developed while working in community research. Thankfully, I was able to do just that and I found it incredibly rewarding.

 

Over time I developed a special interest in child development and child protection issues. I enjoyed developing practice, in a great community team. I liked supporting the many enthusiastic students that we worked with. Most of all I loved the early intervention, preventive service that involved helping families with their pre-school children. Along the way the team spent a lot of time supporting the parents’ and carers of those pre-school children, with a whole host of diverse life issues.

 

Throughout all of my time in early years practice I passionately believed in the importance of reading to pre-school children as a valuable initial and solid starting point for a child as they progress into formal education. Of course, I never imagined that I would one day be personally and hopefully adding to any little child’s list of favourite books and…‘That’s Life!’