- Children and young people risk becoming a forgotten generation, and need to be prioritised by frontline health services and the government. Without collective action to improve outcomes, we are storing up problems for the future. Instead, focusing on prevention in childhood and adolescence leads to a healthier adult population, both relieving pressures on burdened services and ensuring a healthy and thriving society and population in the long-term.
- Rising demand and long waits for services are the biggest challenges for NHS trusts and foundation trusts providing children and young people’s services.
- 82% of respondents to our survey said their trust is not able to meet the current demand for children and young people’s services.
- 97% said the current level of demand their trust is experiencing for children and young people’s services has increased compared to pre-pandemic.
- 86% said overall waiting times for children and young people to access an initial assessment provided by their trust has increased compared to pre-pandemic.
- The top three reasons trusts are struggling to meet demand are: increased complexity and acuity of patients (58%), insufficient services commissioned (39%) and the long-term impact on demand caused by the Covid-19 pandemic (30%). Insufficient investment and staff shortages were also highlighted as a barrier to providing safe and timely services for children and young people.
- Trust leaders are deeply concerned by the challenges providing children and young people’s services, and the impacts long waits for care have on patients, families and frontline staff.
- 86% of respondents said they were concerned about the impact that challenges providing care for children and young people is having on staff morale.
- 71% agreed that long waits at their trust were contributing to health inequalities.
- Despite the challenges, trusts report they have been able to make progress in meeting demand and reducing long waits for care by prioritising children and young people and working collaboratively with key partners (for instance schools, local authorities and the voluntary sector).
- Nearly all respondents (90%) said that the health and wellbeing of children is not considered enough in national policy, while only 33% said they were satisfied that their local integrated care system (ICS) plans adequately prioritise these services.
- The key policy changes respondents would like to see national government make to help their organisation to improve services for children and young people are:
- Increasing investment in prevention and early intervention in the NHS (44%).
- Adopting a cross-government approach to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people (40%).
- Increasing investment in targeted early years support across a range of health and wider services (39%).
- NHS Providers has set out a series of recommendations for government, NHS England (NHSE) and systems to tackle the challenges outlined in the report, and to improve the health and wellbeing of the next generation of children and young people.