Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance and support is available to integrated care boards about planning and delivering eating disorder services.

The Department has worked with NHS England to produce various guidance for integrated care systems (ICSs) to plan and deliver eating disorder services, and to provide treatment for patients with longstanding eating disorders.

NHS England published guidance in 2019 for adult eating disorder services, to support delivery of community eating disorder services, reduce admissions, length-of-stay and improve outcomes for users, families and carers. A revised service specification for Adult Eating Disorder inpatient provision has just been through public consultation, and following a review of the comments received will progress to publication in 2025.

NHS England is currently producing new national guidance for eating disorders in children and young people, to update and replace the previous commissioning guidance for the Access and Waiting Time Standard for Children and Young People with an Eating Disorder.

NHS England also worked with the Royal College of Psychiatrists to produce guidance on managing medical emergencies in eating disorders amongst young people and adults.

ICSs also have access to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines which sets out best practice for commissioners and providers for identifying and treating eating disorders.

In addition to this guidance, all ICSs have received support via fair shares funding since April 2021 to transform their adult community mental health services. This includes the transformation and expansion of eating disorder services. For children and young people, additional long term plan funding was made available for systems, rising to £54 million from 2023/24 and with further funding in 2024/25 to support increasing capacity in community eating disorder services.