In response Dr Camilla Kingdon, President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said:
Children are set to lose the most from the pandemic without major government intervention. There is a small window of opportunity to take meaningful action, and now is that time. Disappointingly, children have only been mentioned twice in the government’s plan for tackling the elective care backlogs. Paediatricians have not been mentioned at all, although many were redeployed during the pandemic waves to support adult services which compounds the backlog of treatment for children and young people in the NHS.
More than 300,000 children and young people are currently waiting for NHS treatment. As paediatricians, we know that long delays to care have a particularly significant impact on children as many treatments are age or developmental stage critical. In taking forward this plan, children and young people should have been explicitly mentioned with clear actions tailored to their needs. Without this, it will be difficult to ensure an inclusive restoration of services, distributing resources fairly for children, young people and adults.
The plan outlines a central aim for the NHS to deliver 30% more elective activity by 2024-25 than before the pandemic. While it’s good to see more students in medical school, at the same time, there are still no mentions of a much-needed workforce plan that translate how those additional potential doctors can be used in the growth of training numbers. Paediatricians and the wider NHS are tired after the busiest winter on record. A fully funded, and measured plan must be put in place with the right numbers of appropriately trained practitioners, working across primary, secondary, community, mental health and social care, mapped out for the long-term. Without this, how can we possibly deliver 30% more work equally across the NHS?
As a society we cannot afford to close this window of opportunity to take the right steps for our NHS and for our children. The way forward needs to go well beyond elective care, and should include bringing together a cross-departmental child health strategy, which includes plans to improve child health, mental health and wellbeing, improvement of inequalities and poverty as well as data collection and measurement structures to ensure these are improved.
Ahead of this, as a College we are keen to work with NHS England, and countries across the UK to consider innovative ways of working to support our children and young people for the future.