Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 23
23
Accepted in Part
Produce plans for disaggregated children's outcome data and introduce separate waiting time reports for under-twos.
Recommendation
We recommend that the Government work with all NHS and early-years settings to produce plans for greater disaggregated data concerning service delivery and outcomes for children. This should include data broken down by age group, as well as ethnicity, disability, socioeconomic status, access to services, and other categories that will allow for more targeted interventions and specified outcome planning. As a minimum, we call for the Government to introduce separate reports on waiting times for children under the age of two, as a first step to minimising delay in accessing services at this critical stage in a child’s development. (Recommendation, Paragraph 117)
Government response summary AI-generated
The government stated work is underway to collect record-level demographic data for community services. However, they rejected publishing separate national reports on waiting times for children under two, though the data will be extractable, and noted no current plans for further national disaggregation of WLMDS data.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government · verbatim extract
Accepted in Part
The government has already delivered on a commitment to publish demographic data, as part of the waiting list minimum data set (WLMDS). This means for the first time we publish the number of waits where the patient is under 18, and how many of these are waiting below 18 weeks and over a year for consultant-led treatment. There are currently no plans to disaggregate this data further at a national level. Publishing that level of granularity is restricted by statistical disclosure rules if numbers are very low. This is particularly true at provider level. However, providers already collect and have access to this data at a local level, and have a responsibility to ensure they are using it to target the waiting list accordingly, and to enable appropriate care and positive outcomes for patients of all ages. In the longer term, it may be possible to include more granular WLMDS data publication nationally through the NHS Referral-to-treatment (RTT) dashboard, with the appropriate disclosure control applied through that data processing. However, its prioritisation will need to be balanced with ongoing resource constraints.
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