These are:
- Ending hospital backlogs
- Giving children the best start in life
- Securing home-grown energy
- Raising living standards
- Putting police back on the street
- Building more homes
As part of its health mission, the government has pledged that the NHS will meet the 18-week referral to treatment target. For their opportunity mission, the government has pledged that a record proportion of five-year-olds will start school ready to learn.
Commenting on the pledge to end hospital backlogs, RCPCH Officer for Health Services, Dr Ronny Cheung, said:
The number of children waiting for elective treatment remains stubbornly high. We welcome the government’s newly announced NHS performance targets but given the current 18-week target for children’s elective care is missed 41% of time, we remain concerned that children risk being left behind without specific plans and support for their health services.
Below these headline targets, it is now critical that the government sets out the steps they will take to support child health services and to bring down the unacceptably long waits children face for both elective and community services. Child health professionals continue to work tirelessly to find innovative ways to deliver care for the growing number of children on the waiting list, but there is a limit to what can be achieved without specific steps to bolster the workforce and rebalance the focus onto children’s health services.
This is a call for equity. Action on children’s waiting times is vital if the government is ever to achieve its ambition of creating the healthiest generation of children ever.