Eating disorders and young people
The Children’s Eating Disorders programme promotes early access to effective, evidence-based and outcome-focused treatment working in partnership with children, young people and families.
Our aims
- We want to ensure that children and young people in Greater Manchester have timely and appropriate access to high quality and evidenced based eating disorder support.
- We continue to strive to meet the access and waiting time standard alongside the increased demands
- We continue to look at new ways of working together to share learning and improve care for young people admitted to paediatric wards with eating disorders.
- Working with commissioners and all Greater Manchester stakeholders to ensure the high-quality, effective, and consistent delivery of the Greater Manchester Community Eating Disorder Services (CEDS) across all three providers.
- Increase support for children and young people living with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) in Greater Manchester.
- Decrease in unplanned hospital admissions for children and young people with eating disorders
- Reduction in admissions for children and young people with disordered eating.
- Support other mental health needs alongside the Eating Disorder and adapt treatments to meet the needs of children and young people with neurodiversity.
Why this matters
Eating disorders (Anorexia nervosa, Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorders) are very complex psychiatric disorders.
Eating disorders are a range of complex conditions which typically present in mid-teens and have adverse effects physically, psychologically and socially on a young person. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all psychiatric conditions.
It’s vital that children and young people with eating disorders and their families and carers can access effective help quickly. Offering evidence-based, high-quality care and support as soon as possible can improve recovery rates, lead to fewer relapses and reduce the need for inpatient admissions. Dedicated community eating disorder services improve outcomes and cost effectiveness.
Children and young people make up a third of the Greater Manchester population and it is forecasted that the 0 -15-year-old cohort will be one of the fastest growing groups over the next 5 years. The Office for National Statistics population estimates projects by 2025 there will be over 732,000 0-19 years’ olds in Greater Manchester.
Eating disorders are characterised by a preoccupation with food, weight, body shape and harmful eating patterns. They have a high cost to individuals and their families/carers in terms of emotional impact, disruption to education and employment and in their access to physical and emotional wellbeing and mental health services through their life span.
The availability of dedicated, community eating disorder services has been shown to improve outcomes and cost effectiveness. If a child or young person starts their treatment in a general child and adolescent mental health services, they’re more likely to be admitted to an inpatient service than those treated in community eating disorder settings within the following year.
Download our Children and young people with suspected eating disorders February 2025
Download our Children and Young People with Suspected Eating Disorders Guidelines for Primary Care Professionals June 2023
What’s next
- Review the NHS England guidance on eating disorders to explore ways to improve community services and care pathway, this is awaiting publication.
- Development of Integrated Eating Disorder pathways in line with national guidance and best practice models
- All teams achieving national targets for the access and waiting time target of 95% for urgent cases being seen within a week and routine cases being seen within four weeks
- Working together to meet expected increased demand which will involve new ways of working
- Continue to work with the Acute Trusts to implement Medical Emergencies in Eating Disorders (MEED) guidelines across GM to improve pathways of care
- Expanded engagement with all stakeholders particularly the voluntary sector and young people with lived experience as well as a focus on reaching young people from communities that experience racial inequalities
- Review and enhance transition pathways for CYP and Adult Eating Disorder services, ensuring seamless and sustained support
- Access to paediatric support and develop a service to meet the needs of children and young people with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
- The development of new intensive support pathways and day care treatment models for CYP with eating disorders.