Patients are set to receive an enhanced NHS 111 offer including increased access to specialist paediatric advice for children and direct access to urgent mental health support, as part of a blueprint set out today to help recover urgent and emergency care services. Parents and carers seeking health advice for children and young people using […]

Leading NHS children’s doctors are encouraging parents to be alert to the dangers of small toys this Christmas after surgeons have had to perform life-saving operations to remove button batteries, magnetic balls and Christmas cracker toys, in previous years. The number of children being admitted to hospital after ingesting small objects has doubled over the […]

Dozens of amputees will be able to access life-changing bionic arms which can mimic real hand movements, the NHS announced today. The newly available bionic arms – controlled by electrical brain signals – have multi-grip capabilities, enabling a greater range of movements to make day-to-day tasks easier. The NHS will make the technology available to […]

The NHS will be able to diagnose and potentially save the lives of thousands of severely ill children and babies — within days rather than weeks — with a world-first national genetic testing service launching today. Announcing the groundbreaking new service at the first-ever NHS genomics conference in England, NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard hailed […]

England’s top mental health nurse is urging students starting or returning to university to seek mental health support as soon as they need it, as new data show record numbers of young people are accessing support. Access to NHS mental health services for 18 to 25-year-olds was almost a fifth higher in 2021/22 than pre-pandemic, […]

Parents and carers of children are being reminded of the importance of routine vaccinations, with hundreds of thousands of texts, emails and letters being sent from this week encouraging families to book their child in for an MMR vaccine. The NHS is contacting parents and carers of around 740,000 children aged between one and six […]

Thousands more NHS staff are now working in children’s mental health services, as demand for support continues to rise. Around 4,500 more people have joined the NHS children’s mental health services in England – 40% more than before the pandemic. The new recruits include dozens of psychological practitioners to specifically help young people aged 13 […]

More than 2.4 million children and young people now have access to mental health support in schools and colleges, thanks to the NHS fast tracking services to help address record demand. The NHS rollout is already one year ahead of schedule – more than 500 teams will be confirmed ahead of the April 2023 ambition […]

A life-saving test that allows doctors to spot a rare form of eye cancer in babies in the womb is being rolled out by the NHS in England this week. Now, thanks to a new NHS test developed at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, babies identified as being at risk of developing retinoblastoma […]

Invitations will be arriving at the homes of more than one million families with five and six-year-olds this week, as the NHS continues to deliver the biggest and most successful vaccination programme in its history. Recent JCVI guidance recommended all children between 5 – 11 would benefit from a non-urgent offer of the COVID vaccine, […]