A lack of timely access to care and inequalities in access persist across health and care services in England and are risking lifelong consequences for children and young adults, the Care Quality Commission has warned.
In its annual assessment of the state of health and social care in England,1 the CQC warned that children and young adults were not always able to access services quickly in planned care, emergency care, or mental healthcare. It called for a greater focus on young people’s services, noting that some treatments and interventions were less effective if not administered at a specific age or developmental stage and that the opportunity to intervene can be missed entirely if the wait for a diagnosis was too long.
Children with inadequate care were likely to experience greater disruption to their education and were at increased risk of having long term mental or …
