State of Child Health - about

Our landmark report provides a snapshot of infant, children and young people's physical and mental health, bringing together available data across the UK.

On 4 March 2020, we launched State of Child Health 2020. This provides the latest data from the indicators first published in 2017, alongside evidence for new indicators, including: looked after children, mental health, youth violence, young carers and the child health workforce. Alongside this, we spoke to 2,000 children and young people to find out what makes them feel "healthy, happy and well".

We outlined our key asks for each of the UK Governments, which we hope will ensure delivery of key policy decisions to improve child health outcomes.

Go to State of Child Health

One year on

We usually do a yearly review, rating the progress that governments have made against our policy recommendations. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the data sets we would have expected to be updated in 2020/21 have not been, because health resources and workforce had to be diverted elsewhere. It also felt unfair to analyse progress on our public policy calls in that past year.

In spring 2021, we did, however, update our graphs and charts on health indicators where there are new data, and you can see these throughout the State of Child Health website. We also published reflections from members and children and young people on our blog, RCPCH Insight.