NHS 10 Year Workforce Strategy: Children’s Complex Care Must Be A Priority
WellChild has submitted evidence to the NHS 10-Year Workforce Strategy consultation, calling for urgent investment in the children’s complex care workforce and skills development.
Earlier this month, WellChild submitted evidence to the NHS 10-Year Workforce Strategy consultation, calling for urgent investment in the children’s complex care workforce and skills development.
The NHS 10-Year Plan, published in August, outlines three core shifts:
- Hospital to community.
- Analogue to digital.
- Sickness to prevention.
Drawing on data from our WellChild Children’s Nurse network and insights from our 3,600 members of the WellChild Family Tree, our submission demonstrates that the ‘hospital to community’ vision will fail for children and young people with complex medical needs unless there is sustained investment in a skilled workforce of children’s nurses, carers, and the development of clinical competencies within the wider community.
The number of children and young people living longer with complex medical needs is growing, as is the complexity of their conditions. Many require 24/7 care and specialist clinical training to enable them to live safely at home, attend school, and participate in their communities.
Our evidence shows that with the right support—including properly trained parents, carers, and a network of skilled professionals—the ‘hospital to community’ vision can be achieved. Since 2006, WellChild has funded 53 specialist Children’s Nurse posts and established 18 Better At Home training resources across 38 NHS Trusts. These simulation-based training units provide safe, home-like environments where parents, carers, and professionals can learn essential clinical skills such as tracheostomy care, enteral feeding, and basic life support.
In the past year alone, this work has resulted in:
- 573 children and young people discharged home from hospital.
- 15,865 hospital readmissions prevented.
- 8,723 parents, carers, and professionals trained.
- An average of 9 clinical skills taught per project.
As we approach the 20th year of the WellChild Nurse programme, we are deeply concerned that the hospital-to-community vision—and the quality of life for thousands of families—is being severely undermined by an erosion of specialist children’s complex care workforce and skills:
- A critical shortage of specialist children’s nurses and trained carers.
- The closure of children’s nursing higher education and training programmes.
- The loss of a generation of experienced children’s nurses to retirement.
- Increasing generalisation in nurse training and education.
- Cuts to NHS frontline staff.
To address these challenges, our submission calls for a national strategy to build a sustainable, skilled complex care workforce for children. This includes the development of a best practice framework for training unpaid carers, based on 11 principles co-produced at a UK-wide summit of healthcare educators, parents, and professionals.
Without urgent action to close the complex care workforce and skills gap, the NHS’s hospital-to-community vision will falter, leaving families without the support they need. The consequences will be severe: more frequent and prolonged hospital admissions, children missing out on education, increased safeguarding risks, parents unable to work, increased burnout, and rising pressure on mental health, social care, and welfare systems.
As the NHS looks to build a workforce for the future, it must prioritise the needs of children and young people with complex medical conditions and the families who care for them. The time to act is now.
