NHS surgeons, anaesthetists, theatre teams and operational teams working with children and young people (CYP) are being urged to join a new monthly series of GIRFT Further Faster meetings sharing best practice in reducing waiting times for CYP elective surgery.
Average waiting times for CYP planned surgery in England have improved from 26 weeks to 23 weeks over the past couple of years but still fall short of the average adult waiting time.
NHS England recently published its Medium Term Planning Framework, which requires systems and providers to put in place targeted actions to increase activity and improve performance for their CYP population.
The new series of GIRFT Further Faster meetings will focus specifically on children’s surgical recovery, helping to meet the requirements of the planning framework and close the gap between CYP and adult care.
Meetings will follow the successful Further Faster format of reviewing data, presentations on good practice and discussion among clinical and operational colleagues to share their insights. They will look at how ringfenced CYP capacity can be developed within the ICB footprint by running regular dedicated paediatric surgery days in either a day surgery or hub setting.
"While we are pleased to see that median waits have dropped in the past two years, children and young people continue to face longer waiting times for planned care, despite the disproportionate impact of long waits on their development and longer-term outcomes. It’s time now to look forward to how we can achieve 18 weeks; how we can support one another to develop CYP services that match adult care. In our GIRFT work with units across England, we have identified the challenges and seen fantastic examples of what’s working well - this is your opportunity to hear from and meet the people who have found solutions and to see for yourself how it can be achieved.”
The first session takes place on Wednesday 26 November 2025 at 5pm. All NHS colleagues working across the CYP surgical pathway are invited to attend – surgeons, anaesthetists, theatre teams and operational teams.
Email: england.furtherfaster.girft@nhs.net to receive the joining link.
The GIRFT Further Faster programme was set up in 2023 to deliver rapid clinical transformation with the aim of reducing 52-week waits. The work brings together hospital trust clinicians and operational teams with the challenge of collectively going ‘further and faster’ to transform patient pathways and working to reduce unnecessary follow-up outpatient appointments and to improve access and waiting times for patients.
Clinical transformation groups have been established across 25 specialties – one of which is for children and young people’s surgery. These groups seek to foster cross-organisational learning and provide a network and collaborative for trust clinical, operational and programme leads to gain peer support, share experiences and lessons learned, as well as the more practical aspects such as sharing of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and project documentation.
