As you may have heard there is a general election coming up on the 8th June (don’t forget to vote)! Beat are calling for the access and waiting times standards for children and young people with eating disorders to be upheld in the next Parliament. Beat are also calling for equivalent standards for adults with sufficient funding to ensure that they are met. We’ll shortly be launching our election campaign including ways you can get involved.
We have also been working in coalition with other mental health charities to ensure that eating disorders are high up the political agenda and will continue to do so throughout the election campaign.
Beat is a member of the ‘We Need to Talk’ coalition, which brings together 20 mental health charities, professional bodies, Royal Colleges and service users. Today with the publication of it's election manifesto, ‘We Need to Talk’ has issued an urgent plea for improved access to psychological therapies, calling for:
Despite NHS targets increasing, most people with mental health issues still can’t access therapy. ‘We Need To Talk’ is calling for increased access to services and greater capacity, a maximum 28 day waiting time target, quality services - including more therapy sessions, more choice, and properly trained therapists - and joined up services to stop people getting lost between child and adult services.
The coalition has sent out a press release this morning to major media outlets and our Chief Executive Officer Andrew Radford has contributed the following quote on behalf of Beat:
“Early intervention for mental illnesses, including eating disorders, is vital. We wouldn’t delay if someone had broken their leg and we mustn’t delay in providing high quality therapy to those who need it. We need stringent waiting time targets for mental illness, including adults with eating disorders, and where targets are already in place, such as for children and young people with eating disorders, there must be sufficient funding in place to ensure those targets are met”.