Eating Disorders: Health Services

(asked on 27th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans the Government has to ensure that people with eating disorders are able to access treatment and support.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 7th March 2019

The Government is committed to ensuring everyone with an eating disorder has access to timely treatment based on clinical need. Early intervention is crucial when helping people with an eating disorder, this is why we set up the first waiting times 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 and latest figures indicate that the National Health Service is on track to meet that standard.

For children and young people aged between eight and 18 years, the Government is investing £150 million to expand eating disorder services and staff for 70 extended or newly established community eating disorder services. This has led to swift access to effective eating disorder treatment in the community, with the number of children and young people accessing treatment increasing from 5,243 in 2016/17 to 6,867 in 2017/18.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to “test four-week waiting times for adult and older adult community mental health teams, with selected local areas”. The exact scope and timelines of these pilots are yet to be finalised but we envisage that this will include testing waiting times for adult eating disorder services in those areas in receipt of new funding to expand these services.

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