Wheelchairs: Children
(asked on 1st July 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Whizz Kidz Youth Board's report entitled Mobility Matters: A Youth Perspective on NHS Wheelchair Services, published on 26 June 2026, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of arrangements for commissioning paediatric wheelchair services.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of local wheelchair services, based on the needs of their local population. This includes wheelchairs for adults and children. NHS England supports ICBs to commission effective, efficient, and personalised wheelchair services and to reduce delays in people receiving timely intervention and wheelchair equipment.
This includes publishing a Wheelchair Quality Framework on 9 April 2025, which sets out quality standards and statutory requirements for ICBs. The framework is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/wheelchair-quality-framework/
NHS England’s wheelchair data collection reports on the proportion of adults and children whose episode of care was closed in the reporting period and prescribed equipment was delivered within 18 weeks or less. In Quarter four, 2025/26, the proportion of patients whose episode of care was closed in the reporting period and whose prescribed wheelchair was delivered within 18 weeks or less was: 79.1% for children, up from 79% since Quarter three; and 81.5% for adults, down from 83.1% since Quarter three.
The Medium-Term Planning Framework sets a requirement for all providers and ICBs to actively manage long waits for community health services, reducing the proportion of all waits over 18 weeks. This will be monitored via the National Health Service’s usual regional and national assurance processes. The Community Health Services Situation Report will be used to monitor ICB performance against waiting time targets in 2026/27. These targets will guide systems to reduce the longest waits.
We expect ICBs to follow guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). In 2022 NICE published the guidance Disabled children and young people up to 25 with severe complex needs: integrated service delivery and organisation across health, social care and education, which is available at the following link: