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 both adults' and under 18s' eating disorders services have adequate resources to respond to the level of urgent referrals that those services are receiving.

For children and young people, we are enhancing capacity in community eating disorder services to ensure appropriate support including crisis care and intensive home treatment. The community team can provide support during an admission to a paediatric ward for medical stabilisation or inpatient mental health bed if required.

For adults, we are increasing our investment in community mental health care year-on-year, up to almost £1 billion extra by 2023/24. Twelve areas in England have transformation funding since 2019/20 to test new integrated models of primary and community mental health care. Eight of these sites have also received specific additional funding to transform the eating disorders pathway, including early intervention for young adults with eating disorders.