Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve outpatient waiting times for adults suffering from an eating disorder.

The Government is committed to reducing waiting times for people of all age groups who suffer with an eating disorder. Within the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions, the Clinical Review of NHS Access Standards aims to “test four-week waiting times for adult and older adult community mental health teams, with selected local areas”. This will form part of wider testing of the new and integrated models of primary and community mental health care.

The recently-published ‘Guidance for operational and activity plans: assurance statements’, to accompany the NHS Planning Guidance for 2019/20, makes clear that these new models will include services for adults with eating disorders.

In 2019-20, NHS England will begin funding a number of pilot sites for these new models across the country, including services for adults with eating disorders. Selected sites will work towards maximising access and minimising waits to improve patient care. Sites will be selected within regions over the coming months and will be given pump prime funding.

In parallel to this, NHS England is rolling out the New Care Models in Mental Health programme, delegating specialised commissioning budgets for adult eating disorder inpatient services to provider collaboratives. These collaboratives will have the power to transform pathways of care and maximise access to dedicated community-based provision to avoid need for admissions as far as possible, building on the success of pilot sites where this work is already underway.