Kirsty Milton-Moir is a health visitor working in Govanhill, in the south of Glasgow.
Kirsty’s role involves visiting families to check on babies’ development, working with families to provide support, and – at times – working with social workers, feeding specialists, and speech and language therapists.
She lives three miles from the health centre where she’s based and, for the last two years, has cycled both to work and for her appointments: “the bonus is that Govanhill is all flat so it’s so easy to get around on my bike when I’m visiting my families. It’s downhill all the way from home (so going home can be a bit harder!) but on a nice day, it’s great.
I’ve found that cycling is much quicker than driving, so that’s cut a massive proportion of time from my visits: when I’m out and about I don’t need to find a parking space, and I get to my visits a lot quicker than walking and driving.”
There’s another side to the practical benefits of cycling. Parts of Kirsty’s job can be emotionally hard – visiting babies in in neonatal intensive care, or more challenging visits – and she says that the ride on her bike afterwards is “cathartic. It gives you the headspace you need, and allows me time to reflect and think about how best I can support the families on my caseload.”
Govanhill has a developing network of cycle lanes and Kirsty uses these where she can: “seeing all the people cycling on the cycle lane is amazing, and I feel so much safer on the cycle lane where I know that that area is for people on bikes, and there are no cars.”
In contrast she can find some drivers’ behaviour on the roads challenging: “Lots of people double park which makes it harder and less safe for cycling… and, at times, drivers’ lack of awareness of people cycling can be really scary. Some drivers think they can’t be touched.” Several of the parents Kirsty works with are delivery riders “and I see how hard and dangerous that work can be.”
One of the challenges that few people have to deal with on their bikes is carrying a large set of scales that Kirsty uses for baby weigh-ins. “They’re huge!” she laughed, “the bag is so big I could use it as a hang glider! So, the only missing piece is if the NHS could give me some more compact scales that would be perfect”.
Parts of my job can be emotionally hard – visiting babies in in neonatal intensive care, or more challenging visits – and the ride on my bike afterwards is cathartic. It gives you the headspace you need, and allows me time to reflect and think about how best I can support the families on my caseload.