Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children aged between 28 days and 17 years old were admitted to NHS care for more than seven days in the latest period for which data is available.

NHS England collects the data on patient discharge episodes, including for children, through the Hospital Episode Statistics. Discharge data does not represent the number of individual children with a hospital stay, as a child may have more than one discharge from hospital within the reporting period.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, there were 35,282 discharge episodes recorded where the patient was in hospital for more than seven days and was aged over 28 days old and under 18 years old when admitted into National Health Service care.