Almost a quarter of children needing community care services in England are waiting over a year for treatment, with 1 in 15 waiting two years, an analysis by two healthcare think tanks has found.1
The Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation said the “unacceptable” figures were placing children’s health and life chances at risk and should serve as a “wake-up call” for the government. The think tanks said their findings, published on 16 October, showed that many young people with disabilities and developmental problems faced potentially damaging delays to treatment.
Failing to tackle the problem could derail ambitions laid out in the NHS’s 10 year plan to move more care out of hospitals into the community, they warned.2
Community health services see and treat more than two million patients each month in England, with more than eight million care contacts, accounting for …
