The state of health and social care in 2026

News - 17 March 2026

What does care truly feel like for those receiving it? Healthwatch England aims to answer this in a new report.

The NHS is saturated with statistics that aim to tell government, managers and clinicians how services are performing. Yet these only tell part of the story.

Healthwatch England's new report aims to show what care feels like for the people using it, and make recommendations to fix what isn’t working. With Healthwatch due to close, it’s essential that those who take over our work continue to value the public's voice and act on the issues they raise.

The report draws on the 390,000 experiences Healthwatch England heard between October 2023 and September 2025. It combines these with external data to explore ten areas of care that people talk to us about the most. And while each one faces individual issues, key themes emerge over and over.

Read more from Healthwatch England here.

Download the report below. 

File download
The public’s perspective: the state of health and social care
Download (PDF 12.17 MB)
The public's perspective - The state of health and social care (Large print)
Download (PDF 1.25 MB)

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