Children are “second-rate citizens” in the NHS, the nation’s top paediatrician has said, adding that the health service is “missing opportunities” to treat them in Britain.
Professor Steve Turner, the president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said outcomes for children were worse “across the board” compared with when he started in the field.
The number of children waiting more than 52 weeks for elective care has increased by 60 per cent in two years, and paediatricians are struggling to care for children with more complex health conditions, the college has said in a report seen by The Times.
Professor Steve Turner
RCPCH
Turner said: “The outcomes of children in the years I’ve been a paediatrician are pretty much, across the board, worse than they were when I started. Whichever way I look at it, children are pretty much second-rate citizens in this country.”
He stressed that the NHS must “get it right first time” for children, warning that long waiting lists for treatment meant that crucial windows of opportunity to address health problems were being missed.
He added that some children were screened for hearing loss as infants, but that because there were no follow-ups, many missed the opportunity for a cochlear implant.
“Children who’d failed that [hearing test], nothing was done, and so they were missed,” he said. “They missed that critical window. [These children] should have had a cochlear implant put in by about nine months of age… but because that opportunity was missed, putting a cochlear implant in when they’re three or four is too late.”
• Children wait years for mental health care
He said: “These individuals are going to go on and have a lifetime of preventable harm and most of that harm is going to be educational and economic.”
The college’s report, which makes recommendations for the government’s ten-year NHS workforce plan, found that the number of children waiting more than a year for care within the community had increased by 94 per cent in two years.
Turner added that children were now presenting at hospitals with more complex cases — and many were visiting paediatricians and struggling with obesity, developmental disorders such as ADHD and mental health problems all at once.
“If you look after particular children with learning difficulties and neurodisability and anxiety, if you intervene with them in childhood you can allow them to be the best version of themselves… and that then carries forward [to adulthood],” Turner said.
The report found that dwindling numbers of paediatricians were fighting against the ever-growing waiting list, calculating that while waiting lists had increased by 67 per cent since 2020, the paediatric workforce had only increased by 15 per cent.
And, while children made up 25 per cent of the population, they only received 11 per cent of the NHS’s spending, the college said.
The college is calling for the government’s ten-year plan to address the training, recruitment and retention of paediatricians, improve care within the community and allow more paediatricians to work part-time, so more of them can continue to work as they get older.
Turner said: “Doing nothing is not an option. More children will come to hospital for urgent care and we will continue putting sticking plasters on sticking plasters.”
“If we don’t invest in the health of children… we’re going to be seeing a carrying on of adults who are economically inactive.”
The Department of Health said: “For too long, children have been left behind. This government is committed to giving every child the best start in life, with £500 million invested to roll out Family Hubs across England.
“We’re expanding school mental health teams to reach 900,000 more pupils by April 2026, and tackling childhood obesity through junk food advertising restrictions.
“The ten-year workforce plan will ensure the NHS has the right staff, in the right places, with the right skills to provide high-quality care for children when they need it.”