Eating disorder services review: summary recommendations

Experience of People with Eating Disorders and Their Loved Ones, and Clinicians

We were extremely grateful to people with lived experience and clinicians for meeting with us and completing our surveys. They provided valuable insight into the provision of good care, as well as highlighting issues in accessing and delivering care, treatment and support. They provided a wealth of suggestions about how eating disorder support could be improved. The themes that came up in the meetings and surveys are provided in detail in Appendix 3, 4 and 5. In brief,

People with lived experience of having an eating disorder, or caring for someone noted that

• Many services provide excellent care, however,
• It can take a long time to access care and
• People can experience barriers to accessing the right treatment
• They experience a postcode lottery with variability in services across the country
• They often experience the transition between child and adolescent services and adult services as very difficult
• There appears to be a focus on services for anorexia nervosa and people with other eating disorders may find it difficult to access appropriate treatment
• Carers do not always feel well informed or included in treatment, especially in adult services, even though they provide significant support

The public and clinicians were concerned about the variability responsibility for medical monitoring and management in different services.

Everyone believed that more training is needed to all healthcare professionals to enable earlier detection, prompt referral and appropriate treatment.