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How trusts are improving services for children and young people

27 May 2025

In this blog, senior policy officer at NHS Providers, Hannah Hayes details the vital work happening in NHS trusts across the country to deliver the best possible care for children and young people.

  • Prevention

An picture of Hannah Hayes

Hannah Hayes

Senior Policy Officer,
NHS Providers

Over the past decade, demand for children and young people's services across the NHS has increased dramatically. The Covid-19 pandemic in particular had a profound and lasting impact on the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people. 

A 2024 survey by NHS Providers highlighted the scale of the issue across the health and care system. More than four out of five trust leaders said they could not meet the rising demand for children’s services. Likewise, recent NHS performance statistics reflect the extraordinary number of children and young people who are waiting, particularly for mental health and community services.  

Trust leaders recognise the importance of improving access to timely, high quality services for children and young people, and childhood being such a key period for development makes this an urgent priority. Reflecting this, our new Providers Deliver report showcases the innovative work trusts are doing to improve services for children and young people, ensuring they are delivering personalised care that best suits the people who depend on their services.   

Through a series of case studies, the report highlights key lessons trust leaders have learned about improving services, and makes the case that, with further national prioritisation, the NHS can go further, faster.  

The power of involving young people 

Engaging children and young people in the design of services at an early stage is critical to delivering care that meets the needs of local populations and improves timely access. Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust has established the Humber Youth Action Group (HYAG) which is made up of people with lived experience, many of whom have previously used the trust’s mental health services. The group is consistently consulted on service innovations and quality improvement programmes to ensure any changes to services will better meet the needs of local people. 

Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust has co-produced its sexual health service with young people. Engagement and outreach activity took place from the outset: the trust spoke to a diverse group of young people about what they wanted from a new sexual health service and acted on their feedback.  

The benefits of integration  

Trusts are acutely aware that the NHS on its own cannot improve the health and wellbeing of the next generation. To meet the full range of children and their families’ needs, they are working with local system partners to improve services by delivering more holistic, wrap-around care. For example, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust is working closely with Harrow place-based partnership to deliver the Optivita Project, which seeks to develop an integrated neighbourhood team in Harrow. To do this, the project brings together existing child health hubs in the area with wider system partners to provide high-quality, joined-up support.  

This integrated way of working has helped address demand for the trust’s urgent and emergency services, preventing unnecessary infant attendances by linking parents or carers of children and young people with a range of health and care professionals. This has given many families the tools and confidence to understand their child’s health needs and seek support from community-based teams. 

The impact of digital innovation  

With one of the government’s three key shifts being to move from an analogue to a digital NHS, trusts across the country are working in new and innovative ways to develop digital health initiatives, improving access to care in the community. In line with their strategic vision for 2030, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is harnessing digital, data and AI-driven interventions to empower children, young people and their families to manage their health. One of the trust’s flagship digital innovations is ‘AlderHey@nywhere’, an interactive platform designed to provide a hybrid access point for care. It supports children with a variety of needs, from heart conditions to mental health.  

The programme was created in response to increasing demand on hospital and community services and growing outpatient waiting times. The platform therefore focuses on providing preventative care and early intervention services to support children and young people and their families or carers to manage their needs from home, while maintaining strong connections with hospital services.  

What else is needed?  

Vital work is happening in NHS trusts across the country to deliver the best possible care for children and young people in their local area. However, trust leaders remain concerned by the ever-growing demand for children and young people’s services and the complexity of need they are seeing. They want to see greater prioritisation of children and young people within national policy, to ensure they are able to scale up these initiatives and provide care to all those who need it.  

Achieving this will require a wholesale shift at a national level which puts children and young people at the heart of policy making. We are therefore calling on the government to prioritise children and young people’s services in the upcoming 10 Year Health Plan and Comprehensive Spending Review, because children and young people matter.  

This article was originally published in CYP Now.