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Around half (47%) of parents say they are not confident they can access timely medical care for their children, according to a new survey by Mumsnet.
The survey also revealed that one third of parents have been unable to get a GP appointment for their child, with just under one fifth (16%) resorting to taking their child to A&E to get the treatment they need.
Half of parents who attended A&E said they waited longer that four hours to be admitted, discharged or transferred, while seven in 10 (70%) said they had experienced long waits while accessing the NHS 111 service.
Professor Kamila Hawthorne, Chair of the Royal College of GPs, said the results of a survey “are yet another sad indictment of the current crisis in our NHS.”
Respondents largely blamed UK government for long waiting times
Those who took part in the survey largely agreed that the government was to blame for the NHS crisis, with 86% saying Rishi Sunak and his team were responsible for the long waiting times.
Justine Roberts, Mumsnet Founder and CEO, said while the findings were “deeply worrying”, they were “hardly surprising” given the level of complaints heard from Mumsnet users.
“We hear every day from Mumsnet users unable to get GP appointments for their children, or forced to sit for hours with sick kids in overcrowded A&E departments.
“It’s clear that parents lay the blame for this squarely at the door of Rishi Sunak and his government. If he does not take action immediately to show that he grasps the scale of the NHS crisis and is willing to take the necessary action to fix it, he’s likely to pay the price at the next election,” she said.
Number of fully qualified GPs has fallen by more than 700 in past three years
Prof Hawthorne said the RCGP shares its patients’ frustration, but warns that the fault does not lie with hard-working GPs and instead with the chronic government underfunding and poor workforce planning.
“In general practice, we’re making more consultations every month than we were before the pandemic, and over the last few weeks we’ve seen much higher than normal rates of strep and other infectious illnesses, such as flu and RSV, with high numbers of parents understandably concerned and seeking our services.
“But whilst workload is escalating, the number of fully-qualified, full time equivalent GPs has fallen by 737 since 2019 – despite the Government’s pledge in its manifesto to increase GP numbers by 6,000,” she said.
Updated workforce plan urgently needed
The RCGP is now urging the government to address the crisis, invest in general practice and create and stick to a new workforce plan.
“General practice is the foundation of the NHS, with GPs and our teams making the vast majority of patient contacts, and in doing so we alleviate pressures across the service, including in A&E, but we are struggling.
“We need a robust workforce plan to recruit and retain GPs that goes beyond the 6,000 promised, we need investment in general practice, including into our IT and infrastructure, we need urgent action to cut bureaucracy that takes GPs away from patients,” Prof Hawthorne said.