The finding comes from the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) latest State of Care report.
More than 80,000 children and young people in England have waited over a year from community health appointments, according to the report, which was published on Friday.
The regulator said children were 11 times more likely than adults to face waits exceeding a year, with many waiting for assessments for autism and ADHD.
Children waiting for their first contact with mental health services has also risen by 31% in two years, from an average of 237,590 to 311,070 a month.
The report raised concerns about declining numbers of health visitors and school nurses, despite growing demand for their services. Separate research by the King’s Fund found school nurse numbers fell by 38% between January 2010 and June 2026.
Children’s health outcomes also vary significantly across England. Those living in the most deprived areas experience more than twice the level of tooth decay as children in the leats deprived communities.
Hospital admissions for bronchiolitis among children under two remain over 50% higher than a decade ago, with rates lower in London and the south-east than in northern regions.
The findings, which can be read in full here, highlighted a mixed picture across the NHS. GP appointment rates increased by 9.7% between 2022-23 and 2025-26, while the waiting list for planned hospital treatment fell from 7.5 million to 7.3 million.
However, just 69.4% of patients with urgent cancer referrals started treatment within 62 days, below the 85% target.
Baroness Julia Neuberger, chair of the CQC, said improvements in some services were not keeping pace with demand.
‘What strikes me most is how connected these pressures are,’ Neuberger said. ‘Challenges in social care provision are contributing to delays in hospital discharge. Gaps in community mental health provision are pushing more people towards crisis care.’
Meanwhile, around 223,000 fewer adults were receiving long-term council funded social care at the end of 2024/25 than 20 years earlier.
In 70% of new requests for council funded support, no further action was taken beyond providing information.
Chris Badger, chief inspector of adult social care and integrated care, said: ‘In social care, we’re seeing sharply divergent trends, with more of the available care home beds concentrating in large homes, alongside a recent increase in institutional investors acquiring care homes – while homecare fragments into a growing number of smaller providers.
‘This reshaping is happening largely by accident rather than design; driven by a combination of economic pressure and local authorities’ differing abilities to plan for and shape the care their communities will need.’
Industry reactions
Hugh Alderwick, director of policy research at the Health Foundation
Today’s CQC report illustrates the massive pressures on the NHS and social care in England that risk becoming normalised – with too many people waiting too long for care and inequalities right across the health and care system.
The report points to progress in some areas, like people’s experience of general practice. But the government is a long way from achieving the fundamental changes in the NHS and social care that it promised at the last election.
Sir Ciarán Devane, chief executive of the NHS Alliance
With an ageing population and people presenting with more complex needs, it is imperative that social care is given the attention it deserves.
More broadly, the CQC is right that the challenges seen across the health and care system are interconnected. Its approach to regulation must therefore reflect that, by assessing services in the context of the wider system in which they operate, rather than in isolation as happens too often at present.
Siva Anandaciva, director of policy, events and partnerships at the King’s Fund
The report rightly highlights variation in the rates of provision of publicly-funded long-term care, and shows just how far we have to go to create genuinely national care services.
The government has placed reform of adult social care at the heart of its agenda, and these reforms should seriously consider a national funding and assessment model to ensure people get fairer access the care they need. Without these changes, many people will be completely shut out of the state-funded system and forced to pay all their care costs themselves.
Michaela Chen, policy manager at the Work Rights Centre
The CQC report highlights ongoing concerns about the long-term sustainability of the social care workforce and that pressures on staffing could spike again, amid the reduction in international recruitment.
We welcome the regulator’s recognition of the contribution of migrant care workers and support its finding that more work is needed to strengthen recruitment and retention strategies, including through negotiations around fair pay agreements.
We also are urgently calling on the government to give migrant care workers, the sector and patients clarity beyond the current cliff-edge in 2028, after which it is not clear whether those on the health and care worker visa will be able to apply or renew their visas or extend their stays in the UK.
Camille Oung, fellow at Nuffield Trust
This report lays bare the troubling state of social care in England, with a fractured and patchy system that too often locks people out of publicly funded support.
Our own analysis revealed that England has one of the least generous care systems when compared to 11 others, and we know that it is becoming even more stringent. A particularly harsh feature of the English social care system is that people must pass a financial test to be considered for any state-funded support at all.
The CQC’s report highlights that because the means threshold for that financial test has been frozen at £23,250 for 15 years instead of evolving with inflation, hundreds of thousands fewer people are being found eligible for state support than 20 years ago.
Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of SANE
This report exposes the stark reality that mental health services are not resourced to meet the current escalating demand, leaving too many people without care and treatment for problems before they become lifelong debilitating conditions.
It remains scandalous that the uptake of annual health checks for people with severe mental illness still varies widely across the country, despite this group facing a greater risk of premature death by as much as 15 to 20 years.
Young people, who remain on waiting lists for months and months without intervention to prevent mental ill-health in later life, and their families, are suffering the most from a longstanding failure to provide adequate, prompt healthcare. The government must do more to deliver sufficient resources including additional beds, with trained and experienced staff, so that everyone can receive safe and effective care when they need it.
This article first appeared on our sister title Healthcare Management
Image: Pauli Nie/UnSplash
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