Care Quality Commission report warns the future quality of the health system is at risk as it struggles to cope with demand

We respond to the CQC State of Care report, published in October 2017.

Responding to the CQC ‘State of Care’ report, Professor Neena Modi, President of Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said:

"This an extraordinarily difficult time for health and social care. Though children continue to receive high quality care because of the dedication of the healthcare professionals, as this report shows, and as the public knows, the situation is at breaking point. The fragmentation of many services is adding to the seriousness of the situation. In children and young people’s mental health for example, care is planned, funded, commissioned and provided by different organisations so that it is all too often only when crisis point is reached that help is forthcoming.

“The situation will not improve without political commitment to a properly resourced, managed, and accountable health and social care service, and a greater readiness than we have hitherto seen, to implement measures that would help alleviate a desperate situation. For example workforce shortages would be helped if EU nationals working in the NHS were provided with sufficient reassurance about their employment and migrant status and made to feel welcome and paediatrics should be on the shortage occupation list with exemption from the resident labour market test.

"Societies are rightly judged by the way in which those in need are treated. This report suggests that in England, this test has been failed”.