Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to reduce the average waiting time for treatment for an eating disorder in the West Midlands.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone with an eating disorder has access to timely treatment and have established a waiting time standard to improve access to eating disorders services for children and young people so that by 2020/21 95% of children with an eating disorder will receive treatment within one week for urgent cases and within four weeks for routine cases.

Latest available waiting times figures for children and young people with an eating disorder, for quarters 1 to 3 of 2017/18, indicate that NHS England is on track to meet that standard with 76.9% of all patients starting urgent treatment within one week and 83.1% of patients starting routine treatment within four weeks. This information can be found at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cyped-waiting-times/

West Midlands are meeting the waiting time standards for eating disorders. One eating disorder service (Newbridge) has been rated “Outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission and is considered to be one of the best in the country.

For adults, to further improve the eating disorder care, a pathway together with detailed implementation guidance for providers, is under development by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health in partnership with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.