Children are waiting years for autism and cerebral palsy treatments as NHS leaders accuse the government of ignoring warnings of a crisis in community care.
The number of patients waiting for NHS community services hit more than one million in August and a new analysis has revealed one in five of those patients are children. That was up from 940,000 in April as community services struggled to meet demand due to staff shortages.
The waits are so bad in some areas of England that a 12-year-old needing treatment might not get it until they are 16, the NHS Community Services Network warned.
