The shameful state of children’s services can be rescued by Labour

The UK is an increasingly bleak place to be a child. For the first time, in 2023, we saw that child mortality rose in England for our poorest children. We also know that the UK fails to achieve most of the World Health Organisation’s immunisation targets, and this is now tragically evident with a big rise in cases of measles last winter and at least five deaths in babies from whooping cough since January this year.

Our children’s mental health is also of deep concern, and surely no one has been untouched by the current unmet needs of children, especially since the pandemic. It is not just the sheer number of children with mental illness but now also the complexity of problems which are outstripping access to mental health support delivered by GPs or specialist mental health services. This means children have to use hospital emergency departments for want of anywhere else to turn.

Parlous state of child health

This data is alarming but the evidence from the clinical frontline is even more worrying. Asthma is one of the most common long-term conditions in childhood, and so it is seen frequently in our GP practices, emergency departments, and wards. To our great shame as a nation, the UK has one of the highest mortality rates for childhood asthma in Europe. Much could be done to address this including addressing air pollution and the awful state of social housing in the UK.

Another shameful but now frequent problem in our hospitals and communities, especially where poverty is greatest, is children with malnutrition. This may be through excess weight (almost one in four children leave primary school obese) or the reappearance of diseases related to significant undernutrition. We are seeing children present to the emergency department with chest pain who turn out to have rickets (Vitamin D deficiency), and paediatric cardiologists are now dealing with the cardiac complications of scurvy (Vitamin C deficiency). Is it not reasonable to imagine that these problems are confined to our history books?

For anyone unconvinced about the parlous state of child health in UK, probably the most damning piece of evidence of the gravity of the situation is seen in the simple fact that the height of our children has been stunted. Back in 1985, the height of UK children ranked 69th out of 200 similar nations. In 2015, our 5-year-olds had dropped to a position of 101st. Children’s growth is influenced by nutrition, infection, poverty and stress and this stark result tells us that something is badly amiss amongst our children. We need to ensure healthy environments in which children will thrive – ones which give them the best chance of long healthy lives.

The Labour Party’s Child Health Action Plan is an important attempt to pull together key childhood priorities over the next parliament and hopefully beyond.

The plan commits a Labour government to:

• Reducing waiting times for children;
• Introducing specialist mental health support for children and young people in every school;
• Rolling out Young Futures hubs in every community to provide children with preventive mental health support;
• Recruiting 8,500 CAMHS and talking therapy staff;
• Delivering 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments per year;
• Legislate for a progressive ban on smoking; and
• Allow health visitors to administer routine immunisations to vulnerable and at-risk children.

Child health cannot be addressed as an afterthought to initiatives for adults. If we want to turn around the deeply concerning state of child health and wellbeing in the UK, we need a coherent strategy that focusses specifically on children’s health and it needs to be properly funded and must build on the commitment of prevention first.

Labour’s promises to focus on children’s waiting times is also welcome. As the NHS has grappled with recovering from the pandemic, a big push has been made to address adult waiting times. But children have been ignored. It is unacceptable that many children are waiting over a year for treatment.

Many child health problems are entirely preventable. The Labour Party Child Health Action Plan provides a key strategic direction for tackling some of our most difficult health problems

Health care professionals need help tackling these problems. We need a “whole society” approach led by a government that doesn’t just say it cares about the young but puts these sentiments into action, adopting a “health in all policies” approach. Many child health problems are entirely preventable. Promoting a healthy environment for children to grow up in and making sure that our schools are well placed to provide the wide support for health and wellbeing are key.

The situation in UK, the 6th richest nation on the planet, is urgent. Our future health starts in the earliest years of life. We know that if children enter adulthood in good physical and mental health, they are far more likely to lead long and productive lives and our economy benefits from that.

The Labour Party Child Health Action Plan provides a key strategic direction for tackling some of our most difficult health problems. If the party adheres to the commitments in this plan, we have a decent chance of turning the fortunes of many children around.