Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to remove age specific transition points between adolescent and adult services for young people with eating disorders for continuity of care.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
NHS England is developing whole pathway models of care for children and young people and adults with eating disorders with the aim of ensuring fewer inpatient admissions by 2024/25. Transition between services is being considered as part of this.
NHS England has also commissioned Academic Health Science Networks to take forward a project on transitions between children and young people’s services and adults’ services. The project seeks to map national and international best practice, with an aim to showcase a range of evidence-based approaches via an e-learning webinar that will be available to children and young people’s eating disorder services and adult eating disorder services across England.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) babies and (b) children have been admitted to hospital with malnutrition in each of the last 12 months for which data is available.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
NHS Digital has provided a count of finished hospital admissions [1] for primary [2] and primary or secondary diagnosis [3] of 'malnutrition' for patients aged under one year old and 1-17 years old in England in each month between December 2021 - November 2022, (provisional data April-November 2022). This information is provided in the table below.
Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector | |||||
|
| Primary Diagnosis | Primary or Secondary diagnosis | ||
Year | Month | Under 1 yrs | 1 - 17 yrs | Under 1 yrs | 1 - 17 yrs |
2021 | December | - | 4 | 1 | 36 |
2022 | January | - | 4 | 1 | 18 |
2022 | February | 1 | 3 | 1 | 26 |
2022 | March | - | 2 | - | 18 |
2022 | April | - | 3 | - | 19 |
2022 | May | - | 3 | 2 | 27 |
2022 | June | 1 | 4 | 3 | 17 |
2022 | July | 1 | 5 | 2 | 24 |
2022 | August | 2 | 5 | 2 | 25 |
2022 | September | - | 1 | 1 | 29 |
2022 | October | - | 8 | - | 21 |
2022 | November | - | 3 | - | 18 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital
Some health conditions can lead to malnutrition in some children. This includes eating disorders, although malnutrition itself is not an eating disorder. Through the NHS Long-Term Plan, investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services has risen every year since 2016, with an extra £54 million per year from 2022/23. This extra funding will enhance the capacity of children and young people's community eating disorder teams across the country.
Notes
[1] A finished admission episode (FAE) is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.
[2] The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 20 diagnosis fields in the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data set and provides the main reason why the patient was admitted to hospital.
[3] The number of episodes where this diagnosis was recorded in any of the 20 primary and secondary diagnosis fields in a Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) record. Each episode is only counted once, even if the diagnosis is recorded in more than one diagnosis field of the record.
Asked by: Tom Hunt (Conservative - Ipswich)
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 support people with eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Under the NHS Long Term Plan, we will invest almost £1 billion extra in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness by 2023/24. This will give 370,000 adults with severe mental illnesses, including eating disorders, greater choice and control over their care and support them to live well in their communities. As part of this we are expanding community eating disorder services capacity, including crisis care and intensive home treatment.
NHS England has also established 15 adult eating disorder provider collaboratives which cover the whole of England. These provider collaboratives are working to redesign the pathway for adults with eating disorders to bring care closer to home.
Since 2016, investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services has risen every year, with an extra £54 million per year from 2022/23. This extra funding will enhance the capacity of community eating disorder teams across the country.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps is he taking to provide community support for people with eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing almost £1 billion extra in community mental health care for adults by 2023/24, improving community support for people with serious mental illnesses, including eating disorders. As part of this we are expanding community eating disorder services capacity, including crisis care and intensive home treatment.
Since 2016, investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services has risen every year, with an extra £54 million per year from 2022/23. This extra funding will enhance the capacity of community eating disorder teams across the country.
NHS England has also established 15 adult eating disorder provider collaboratives which cover the whole of England. These provider collaboratives are working to redesign the pathway for adults with eating disorders to bring care closer to home.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of eating disorders; and what steps he is taking to help address the causes of eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There are no plans to make a specific assessment. However, we would expect, as part of new policy design and development, that all policies with implications for eating disorders should consider existing evidence and seek the views of experts and stakeholders.
In recognition of the rising demand for eating disorders services created by the pandemic, we invested £58 million in 2021/22 to support the expansion of adult community mental health services, including those for eating disorders. We also invested £79 million extra to expand children’s mental health services in 2021/22, including enabling at least 2,000 more children and young people to access eating disorder services.
We know that eating disorders are complicated mental health conditions caused by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and environmental factors. It is unclear exactly why someone develops an eating disorder.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will develop a specific strategy for supporting young people with eating disorders in the health and care system.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Department announced on 24 January 2023 that, in consultation with NHS England and colleagues across Government, it will develop and publish a Major Conditions Strategy. The strategy will include prevention to treatment for mental ill health and will be focusing on areas that contribute most to morbidity and mortality. The Strategy will set out a strong and coherent policy agenda that sets out a shift to integrated, whole-person care, building on measures that we have already taken forward through the NHS Long Term Plan.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the best practice course of treatment people with eating disorders.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There are no plans to make an assessment. All decisions about treatment should be taken jointly between the clinician and the patient. Decisions should be based on the best evidence available and national guidance where appropriate, so everyone gets the right treatments at the right time. We expect clinicians, commissioners, and providers to adhere to this guidance.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) provides national clinical guidelines concerning the recognition and treatment of eating disorders. NHS England has also published separate guidance to support the provision and commissioning of eating disorder services for children and young people and adults. NHS England is currently refreshing this guidance, including to increase the focus on early identification and intervention.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has he made of the adequacy of availability of eating disorder services for children.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
For children and young people, we have set up the first standard to improve access to eating disorder services for children and young people. This states that 95% of children with an eating disorder will receive treatment within one week for urgent cases, and four weeks for routine cases. Prior to the pandemic, significant progress had been made towards achieving the 95% access target.
Since the pandemic, there has been a significant increase in demand and more children and young people with an eating disorder are accessing support than ever before. Almost 10,000 started treatment between April and December 2021, an increase of a quarter compared to the same period the previous year and up by almost two thirds since before the pandemic.
This increase in demand has affected performance against the waiting timing standard, and the latest figures show that this is not currently being met. Information about delivery against these waiting time standards is available through the quarterly updated NHS Mental Health Dashboard, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/nhs-mental-health-dashboard.
We remain committed to delivering this waiting time standard. NHS England continues to work with system leaders and regions and to ask that areas prioritise service delivery and investment to meet the needs of these vulnerable young people.
Asked by: Christopher Pincher (Independent - Tamworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of teacher training for identifying pupil eating disorders; and if she will introduce an eating disorder toolkit for teachers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is committed to ensuring teachers have the appropriate knowledge, skills, and resources they need to promote and support mental health and wellbeing, including being able to identify the potential early signs of an eating disorder.
The Department has published guidance and signposting to external sources of mental health and wellbeing support for teachers and others in contact with children and young people, which includes sources of help and advice for children and young people suffering with an eating disorder. This information can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mental-health-and-wellbeing-support-in-schools-and-colleges.
To support the effective use of training and guidance on supporting and promoting mental health in schools, including identifying need, the Department is funding all schools and colleges in England to train senior mental health leads who can put in place whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing. This approach should encompass robust processes for identifying students, or specific groups, who need additional mental health support. Two thirds of schools and colleges will have been able to access funding by April 2023, backed by £10 million in the 2022/23 financial year.
There are also currently 287 mental health support teams in place in around 4,700 schools and colleges across the country, offering support to children experiencing common mental health issues and with the potential to spot eating disorders early on. These teams now cover 26% of pupils, a year earlier than originally planned. This will increase to 399 teams, covering around 35% of pupils, by April 2023 with over 500 planned to be up and running by 2024.
It is important to recognise teachers are not mental health professionals and should not be expected to diagnose mental health issues. If a child or young person is suffering with an eating disorder or problem, evidence-based treatment should be accessed via their general practitioner or local Psychological Therapies services.
Asked by: Feryal Clark (Labour - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 92 of the Women’s Health Strategy, following the analysis of the call for written evidence submissions, what steps his Department has taken to encourage research on the impacts of social media use on eating disorders, involving (a) experts in the field and (b) people with lived experience to identify (i) appropriate solutions and (ii) safeguards.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department funds research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). While the NIHR is not currently funding any specific research, it welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including eating disorders. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made based on the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality. It is not usual practice for the NIHR to ring-fence a proportion of its budget for research into particular topics or conditions.