There’s no place like home: The case for intensive community and day treatments for eating disorders

This report highlights the urgent need to expand access to intensive community and day treatments for eating disorders, so that they are available to people of all ages across the whole of the UK. It is being launched today at an event at the House of Lords, hosted by Baroness Parminter.

Intensive community and day treatments offer more frequent patient contact than traditional outpatient care, which typically involves weekly sessions. Unlike inpatient care they allow patients to continue living at home - This means that patients can still utilise their support networks and presents more opportunities to apply the skills they learn through therapy in ‘real-life’ situations, such as going out for a meal.

The report features a comprehensive review of the academic literature which found that intensive community and day treatments:

Can achieve equivalent outcomes to inpatient care, while being preferable to patients and more empowering to families/carers
Significantly reduce the number of patients that need inpatient treatment, while minimising the length of time spent in hospital for those that do.
Can be provided at much lower cost than inpatient care, producing savings for the NHS that can be reinvested to help more people access treatment. NHS England data indicates that the average cost of a CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) inpatient admission is more than three times higher per day than CAMHS day patient treatment.

The report also includes insights from people with lived experience, one of whom spoke about the life-changing impact that day treatment had for them:

"My time in day treatment was life changing. After years of outpatient therapy, day treatment supported me in making changes in my eating that felt too scary and overwhelming [...]I don’t think I would be where I am today without day treatment support."

— Person with lived experience

Only 1 in 7 NHS areas in the UK (15%) are providing the recommended level of intensive community and day treatment for both children and young people and adults, with 6% offering it for children and young people only, and 10% offering it for adults only.

In ‘There’s No Place Like Home’, Beat recommends that intensive community and day treatments are made available to all who need them. It specifies that these treatments should be delivered by multidisciplinary teams while involving patients, their families and carers closely in their design and delivery. It also makes recommendations about personalising care, funding, and further research.

Beat will be campaigning for intensive community and day treatments to be available for everyone that needs them.

You can download the report from our website and register your interest in being kept updated on the progress of this campaign.

Umairah Malik answers your questions about the report.

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