A Care Quality Commission report on the state of health and social care in England has identified significant challenges for child healthcare, particularly regarding extended waiting times in community health services. According to the report, 80,000 children and young people have been waiting longer than a year for appointments in community health services alone—nearly 11 times the number of adults facing similar delays. Healthcare experts have described this situation as wholly unacceptable, noting that prolonged waits are allowing children’s health conditions to deteriorate and become more difficult to treat.
While the broader healthcare system has shown some improvements, including increased availability of GP appointments, expanded digital health solutions, and shorter waits for elective procedures, these gains have not extended uniformly to pediatric care. The report highlights that children and young people are being disproportionately affected by rising demand coupled with reduced staffing levels. Numbers of health visitors and school nurses are continuing to decline despite growing healthcare needs, creating a bottleneck in services designed to support vulnerable children outside hospital settings, including those with complex conditions and developmental disorders.
The CQC report also identifies persistent regional variations in child health outcomes, including disparities in hospital admission rates for diabetes and asthma among children, as well as significant differences in dental health across areas. The report notes that across all healthcare and social care services in England, there exists substantial “unwarranted variation” in service access, care quality, and outcomes that heavily depends on geographic location and individual circumstances.
Dr. Ronny Cheung of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health emphasized that more than one in four children continue to wait over a year for treatment, resulting in missed opportunities for health improvement and development. The report notes that extended waits have had cascading effects on families and children’s educational performance. CQC chair Julia Neuberger stressed that addressing the system’s challenges requires coordinated action across all healthcare providers. The Department of Health and Social Care responded by characterizing the report as evidence of challenges inherited when the government was elected in 2024.
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