The state of health care and adult social care in England 2025/26

Key points

• Our focus on health and care services for children and young people shows that where they are born and where they live has a dramatic influence on their health outcomes, with large variations depending on the area and levels of deprivation. The Core20PLUS5 approach for children and young people includes asthma, diabetes and oral health as 3 of its clinical areas of focus.
• Although hospital admission rates for diabetes in children and young people have been reducing, there is regional variation. The North East and Yorkshire region has higher rates of admissions whereas rates in London have been consistently lower than the England average since 2013/14.
• Bronchiolitis is a common cause of hospitalisation in children under 2 years. Although bronchiolitis admission rates have reduced slightly in the last 2 years, they remain over 50% higher than a decade ago. London and the South East show lower rates than regions in the North.
• Oral health outcomes for young children continue to show substantial geographic and socioeconomic variation across England. On average, children living in the most deprived communities experienced more than twice the level of tooth decay compared with those in the least deprived communities.
• Health visiting and school nursing services are central to safeguarding, identifying needs, and enabling access to wider health support for children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. But despite a growing demand for these services, staffing levels continue to decline.
• We continue to be concerned about long waiting times for children and young people’s mental health services. The length of time children and young people have been waiting for their first contact with services has doubled from 5.8 months in April 2023 to 12 months in March 2026.
• Improving access to mental health services for children and young people aged 0 to 17 is one of the 5 clinical areas of focus in NHS England’s Core20PLUS5 approach. Our work with the Nuffield Trust to find out more about the actions integrated care boards (ICB) are taking to improve health and care services found that mental health was most consistently rated as a clinical priority for children and young people, with 11 out of 13 ICB respondents saying it was a high priority.