Eating Disorders: Children and Young People

(asked on 27th February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that all community eating disorders services for children and young people are sufficiently staffed so that they are able to offer treatment in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines to all young people with a clinical need.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 7th March 2018

For children and young people with a suspected eating disorder (up to 19 years), the Government is investing £150 million to expand eating disorder services and staff for 70 extended or new established community eating disorder services. This means at least 3,350 children and young people a year will receive swift, effective eating disorder treatment in the community.

The Government has commissioned Health Education England to repeat the 2015 baseline audit of the children and young people’s mental health workforce, across all statutory and voluntary sector providers. This will include staff delivering care in the new or extended community eating disorder services. This data will allow NHS England to monitor progress with increasing the staffing of eating disorders services to improve access and deliver care in line with the published pathway guidance and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence clinical guidance.

The planned spend by clinical commissioning groups on children and young people’s eating disorders in 2017/18 is £46,717,000 which includes the £30 million per year in clinical commissioning group baselines. This additional funding contributes to increasing staff to create the community eating disorder multidisciplinary teams. Further information is available at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/mental-health-five-year-forward-view-dashboard/

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