Leonora Merry and RCPCH Officer for Health Services, Dr Ronny Cheung co-authored a blog on the Nuffield Trust website, which detailed how this panel session unfolded, called Too old for paediatrics, too young for adult services: the problem that must be solved.
Here's a snippet of the blog:
Before we get too carried away with the apparent simplicity of the solution, however, one audience question highlighted a harder problem: what happens when young people reach adulthood and there is no adult equivalent of the care they have been receiving? Young people with complex neurodisability supported by community paediatric services, for example, may find there is no comparable specialist service for adults. Changing the threshold would not solve that problem; it would only move it down the line. But there was consensus that more should be done to engage professional groups working with adults – from GPs to other primary care staff – to address this.
Policy change is hard to effect in a complex system like the NHS. But when patients, professionals and policymakers come together as they did at the RCPCH last Wednesday, it’s hard to feel anything but optimistic that the nettle will finally be grasped.
You can read the full blog on the Nuffield Trust website.
Last month (April 2026), NHS England published guidance setting out how health systems should improve the transition of young people from children’s services into adolescent and adult services.
This month (May 2026) we responded to the UK Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee non-inquiry session on ‘The transition from child to adult health and social care services’, which is conducting an evaluation – independently of the Committee – of the services provided to individuals moving from child to adult health and social care. Read our consultation response.