Engagement process description
Background
England has some of the world’s highest quality and innovative health services for children. However, children and their families are navigating a system that is disjointed, with care siloed into mental and physical health, and centralised rather than designed around where children spend most of their time – in neighbourhoods and schools.
The overall disease burden is changing and growing with 1 in 5 children aged 8-16 now experiencing probable mental health disorder which is compounded by wider societal challenges including screen time and social media; and about a quarter of 10–11-year-olds are living with obesity with trends suggesting that 41% of children could be overweight or obese by 2035.
Children are not defined by single conditions: there is substantial overlap between mental and physical health conditions, but our health services have been configured to treat them separately. Alongside this, school absence has risen significantly since the pandemic, with nearly one in five children persistently absent, with much of this linked to ill health.
Children’s health is shaped by a complex range of factors that influence their lifelong health and life chances, and we need to respond to the key challenges around child health which include the following areas:
• Rising demand
• Healthcare services are under strain and parents lack confidence in managing minor childhood illnesses. There is also an over-reliance on hospital care due to the lack of availability of care in the community.
• A decrease in early and preventative interventions means support is often given too late and are not always joined up with public health services. Vaccination, oral health and healthy living are three areas where early intervention can deliver lifelong benefits and reduce health inequalities.
• More than 1 in 5 CYP have a probable mental health disorder. And there is a real increase in distress, particularly among young people, with increasing effects on education, work and everyday functioning.
• There are over 1.8 million pupils in England with SEND. The most common type of need among children with SEN support is speech, language and communication needs, followed by social, emotional and mental health needs.
• Health system structures can be very fragmented when they are designed around the clinical pathway rather than the child. Children now present with more diagnoses, more co-morbidities and more chronic and life-limiting conditions than a decade ago. These children often have to have multiple appointments and cannot get all their needs met at once, increasing the burden on families and days missed from school.
A Modern Service Framework for children and young people
NHS England is developing a Modern Service Framework (MSF) for babies, children and young people that will support the NHS and system partners to improve health services for babies, children, and young people and their parents and carers. The scope of this framework is to support children aged zero to 25, with maternity and neonates being out of scope.
The MSF will support the government’s ambition to raise the healthiest generation ever and sets out priority actions in achieving a step change in care delivery across children’s health services.
Our ambition is that by 2035, babies, children, young people and their families will experience more proactive, personalised, integrated care, with a stronger focus on prevention, early intervention, reducing inequalities and delivering joined-up support closer to home.
Care will be tailored to individual needs, better coordinated across services, and designed to improve outcomes and experiences throughout childhood and into adulthood. This will be underpinned by digital innovation, with technology enabling safer, more personalised and coordinated care.
Market Engagement Opportunity
To support the delivery of the MSF, NHS England is interested in collaborating with private, public and/ or VCSE organisations and are hosting a virtual engagement forum to hear your views and discuss how we can work together to achieve our ambitions.
To be eligible to attend this forum, you must be a public or private sector organisation or VCSE involved, or interested in, improving health outcomes for babies, children and young people.
The virtual engagement forum will be held on Tuesday 6th October, 15:30 – 17:00.
To register your interest please follow this link to register: Babies, children and young people Modern Service Framework partnership opportunity – https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=MIwnYaiRMUyMH-9N6Jc6HCRBnigXHmBNjiyrXXnP2_xUOTgyTjFNSUlRVENNRjZKNU1SVjFGOE1DMi4u
Joining instructions will be sent to eligible organisations who have requested to attend. The deadline for responses is 12pm on 29th September 2026.
In the event that there are a significant number of organisations that meet the eligibility criteria, NHS England reserve the right to close the registration link early and attendance will be allocated on a first come first served basis.
If you have any issues accessing the link or have specific questions around the market engagement, please contact: england.cyp.msfpartnerships@nhs.net