The King's Fund: Ten actions the government can take to improve children’s health (10 April 2025)

Summary

Children’s health and wellbeing has seen a concerning decline in recent years, with children in the UK experiencing some of the worst health outcomes in Europe. Many lifelong health issues are established in childhood, and unless strong and meaningful action is taken to change course, the current generation of children is set to become an unhealthy generation of adults. This will have serious long-term implications for the economy, the health service and society as a whole – as well as consequences for the children themselves. Investing in the health of children and young people is an investment in the future and will provide long-term returns.

Improving children’s health will take comprehensive effort across all of society. The government has committed to raising ‘the healthiest generation of children in our history’, and this briefing from the King's Fund focuses on a list of actions that the government should prioritise.

Content

The Department of Health and Social Care should: 

1. Allocate a greater and more equitable share of health service funding to children in the multi-year Comprehensive Spending Review, ensuring that ICSs increase their spending on specific children’s services by a greater proportion than their overall spending. 

2. Work with NHS Online and Healthier Together to improve the quality and accessibility of online health and nutrition information available to families, parents and carers. Launch a national campaign aimed at parents, caregivers and children about the importance of nutrition, how to make healthier choices, and the dangers of excess sugar, salt and ultra-processed foods. This should focus on improving children’s nutrition through clear national dietary guidelines that include examples, recipes and tips, and be relevant to all families regardless of budget, time constraints, dietary and cultural requirements. 

3. Place a stronger focus on addressing the shortages in the child health workforce (including in school nurses, health visitors, midwives and consultant paediatricians), and improve staff retention across the medical, nursing and allied health professional specialist children’s workforce when reviewing the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan.

4. Set clear expectations that providers improve performance for children’s community and mental health services to ensure that no child has to wait longer than the 18-week target to receive care and treatment. 

5. Implement a strategy to drive progress in reaching World Health Organization targets for childhood vaccination uptake rates, reversing the decision to remove this as a key target for 2025/26. 

6. Set an expectation that every ICS strategy includes specific focus on children and young people’s health, wellbeing, and health and care services, including clear pathways to ensure that local systems are sufficiently prioritising children. 

The Department for Education should: 

7. Accept the recommendation of the Education Committee to use the Children’s Health and Wellbeing Bill to auto-enrol all eligible children for free school meals.  

8. Improve monitoring of compliance to the School Food Standards, ensuring that all school breakfast clubs and school lunches meet the standards.

Cross-government departments should:  

9. Develop a whole-government approach across all departments to involve and listen to children and young people in policy-making to support national prioritisation and focus on prevention. 

10. Place explicit metrics for improving child health into the health mission, including improvements to health outcomes such as obesity, vaccination rates and breastfeeding rates, with explicit and adequate representation for children and a focus on listening to their voices on the Health Mission Delivery Board.