Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to help reduce geographic variation in waiting times for children and young people to start community eating disorder treatment.

The Government recognises that there is unacceptable geographic variation in waiting times for children and young people accessing community eating disorder treatment.

We are reforming eating disorder services to ensure that children and young people can access timely, effective support when they need it, rather than after their condition has escalated. This shift towards prevention and stronger community-based support underpins the new National Health Service guidance for children and young people’s eating disorder services, published last month. The guidance makes clear that children and young people should receive timely, joined-up care delivered as close to home as possible.

In addition to the updated guidance, NHS England has commissioned the Royal College of Psychiatrists to deliver a National All-Age Audit of Eating Disorders. The audit seeks to drive improvement of the identification and appropriate management of eating disorders and the quality and consistency of services for children and young people, adults of working age, and older adults. The audit covers both community and inpatient settings. A key part of this work is to produce a report that will map out eating disorder services in England and the care offered by them. In understanding what variation exists, we can begin to address the variation in care provision.

To support this, the Government is recruiting 8,500 additional mental health workers across the NHS to increase capacity and ensure that help is available when and where it is needed. NHS England continues to work with integrated care boards to improve performance, reduce unwarranted variation, and ensure services meet national access standards so that all children and young people can access high-quality eating disorder care regardless of where they live.