Disabled children facing ‘national crisis’ as thousands wait months for wheelchairs

Thousands of children They face a long wait for vitality Moving chairs like NHS Rising rejection, and UKThe only charity was forced to stop taking new patients due to increased demand.

Whiz Kids, the leading charitable qualified in the United Kingdom for specialized wheelchair services, warned that patients are facing a “national crisis” after he forced her unprecedented pressure on her services to approach new referrals for the first time in more than three decades.

The leaders of the charitable establishment said that the demand has increased by 12.5 percent on an annual basis because more children are rejected by NHS for specialized wheelchairs, which cost it on average of 4,800 pounds, due to cost concerns.

One of these children, Charlie Darbar, who suffers from a lack of growth hormone and growth hormone, has been rejected a chair specialized by NHS over the past five years.

Although she is eight years old, she is the size of a two -year -old child, and therefore she needs a specialized chair, which may cost 4,500 pounds. However, due to budget restrictions, NHS does not provide chairs for 5 -year -old, according to Whiz Kids. NHS will only provide her with animal carts, although she is 8 years old.

Now, after it came out of the first chair presented by the charity, and after it was rejected again by NHS, Charlie’s childhood is hanging while waiting for a new one.

She said Independent: “I am enthusiastic about the new chair because it will be pink. But it makes me sad when it takes a long time.”

“I had no idea about charities like Whiz Kidz until Charlie was born. Without it, Charlie’s independence and the quality of life will disappear overnight. They are not” nice ” – it is a life line.”

Numbers from January 2025 to March 2026, sees it Independent, 1,676 children have offered more than three months after referring to NHS services. Among them, 875 was evaluated as “high” or “specialized needs”. Another 1700 patients were rejected by NHS after being evaluated as “not requirement.”

Tell children the humiliation Independent The increase in patients from NHS has put more pressure on their waiting lists, forcing them to remove new referrals for the first time in 35 years, with more than 1,000 children currently needing mobile chairs.

Sarah Bug, CEO of Whiz Children, said they must take a “tragic decision” after the demand has increased in the past few years.

She said: “Mostly, NHS criteria for wheelchairs are small because the budget is small. So, we escalate and fill this gap effectively, but now we have reached a point where we cannot. The increased demand for us must be related to the pleasure of NHS budgets.

“We hear about many children trapped at home because they cannot go out … It has never been forced to close the requests before. It is a crisis because children do not get mobile chairs, and they cannot continue their childhood, and they lose very critical days of their childhood … this is a national crisis.”

She said that NHS standards are “very strict” and that most children under the age of 5 will not get a wheelchair and they will be given instead carts that have drained vehicles, which means that children lack independence and the ability to explore the world.

According to a modern survey of its patient, 60 percent of children living in discomfort or pain is due to the lack of a wheelchair or a right wheelchair.

Whiz Kids has now launched a funding call to help her reopen her list and reduce the number of children waiting.

Other charities, such as Variety, which supported disabled children and youth throughout the United Kingdom, said that reducing age within the NHS services was leaving children in “desperate situations”.

The CEO, Lawrence Guinness, said that the news related to children was “deeply related” but “unfortunately not surprising”, and she was seeing an increase in requests.

She said: “Chronic delay and systematic delay in NHS services leave children in families already poor in desperate situations.”

“When our legal services fail to provide them, the burden is transferred to charities, and most importantly, for the same families, which often transmit a difficult system to obtain the support they need. This is a systematic failure, and our children are the ones who pay the price.”

“We know how important time access is to a wheelchair for patients, which is why NHS provides personal wheelchair budgets for people who have a long -term condition to choose a wheelchair that meets their individual needs. We are also working with local health care providers to provide better services to improve access to experiences on higher chairs,” said a NHS England spokesman.