Our blueprint for transforming child health services, published in September 2024, makes the case for change. It calls on the UK government to commit to restoring health services for children in England.
Across seven themes, we set out a series of detailed and intersectional recommendations. These are intended to act as a guide to the transformational change that is needed across child health services in England.
Four national foundations aim to recover children’s health services and improve child health outcomes
- Fair funding for children
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- Introduce a Children’s Health Investment Standard to address the investment gap between child and adult health services
- Ensure all national health funding commitments include a specific proportion that is allocated to children’s health services
- Children prioritised by Integrated Care Systems
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- Establish national oversight of ICS performance for children and young people by: updating the CQC methodology for assessing ICSs; ensuring the annual NHS Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance includes clear objectives and metrics on CYP; introducing specific waiting times standards for ICSs
- Ensure national prioritisation categories and risk frameworks take into account the differential risks experienced by children
- Develop a National Outcomes Framework for children’s health
- A sustainable child health workforceÂ
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- Review the modelling on children’s health which underpins the NHSE Long Term Workforce Plan (LTWP)
- Develop a child health workforce strategy
- Commit to expanding paediatric training and consultant posts
- Data and digital innovation
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- Implement the NHS number as a Consistent Child Identifier
- Prioritise the development of a digital child health record
Three targeted areas of focus address parts of the health system under exceptional pressure
- Reduce pressure on urgent and emergency care
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- Improve the quality and accessibility of online health information available to families
- Embed paediatric advice and assessment within every NHS111 service (PCAS)
- Ensure national guidance on urgent and emergency care (UEC) and winter planning addresses the distinct pressures in paediatric emergency care
- Reinvest in community health services
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- Prioritise community child health services in action to tackle elective waiting lists and waiting times
- Invest in the community child health workforce
- Ensure support for children in all settings (education, local authorities and short break providers) is needs-led and does not require a diagnosis to access
- Improve the interface between primary and secondary care
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- Implement postgraduate training on children’s health as a core part of GP and wider practice staff training
- Develop models of joint working between primary care and paediatric teams
- Re-invest in health visiting and school nurses
We recognise meaningful change must go beyond this. As such we call for ambitious action on to prevent illness and address the wider determinants of health with a child health in all policies approach.
We also believe this should all be set in the context of two fundamental principles: listening to children’s voices, and respecting children’s rights.
Read our Quick read report here, or download our full blueprint below
The lack of focus on children in policy, and especially in health policy, has resulted in poor health outcomes in children and young people. Inevitably, children in the UK now have some of the worst health outcomes in Europe.
These solutions provide the structure to help the UK Government forge ahead with their goal to create the healthiest generation of children ever, and will ensure that child health services are transformed from being left behind to leading the way.
We have the right to the best health and healthcare, to be protected from harm… there are two core principles to help in your mission to improve children and young people’s health: be active in how children and young people’s views are asked for, listened to and acted on (Article 12) and do all you can to implement these rights, protecting children and young people from the harm of being overlooked and forgotten in health planning (Article 4, Article 24).
We need you, as duty bearers for our rights, to think about, understand, and act on Children’s Rights as written in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).