Day Care

Feedback from engagement events and speaking with individuals accessing inpatient eating disorder care across the West Midlands was that people would like a more intensive community offer, something that could aid the transition between hospital and home or perhaps even prevent the need for an admission in the first place. Through working together as a collaborative we have been able to reduce our overall spend on inpatient and out of area admissions, allowing us to reinvest this money into new developments to better meet the needs of our local communities. This has enabled us to set up and fund day care provision.

This provision currently offers a variety of treatment places and provides structured interventions Monday – Friday in a hospital setting, focusing on prevention of an in-patient admission and supporting individuals with transitions into our Community Outreach team.

The day treatment programme functions flexibly and offers either a step up from outpatient care or a step down from inpatient care, when a lower intensity of treatment is sufficient to maintain progress.

Treatment is provided five days a week at each services covering a minimum of two meals and two snacks per day.

Day treatment is tailored to individuals needs and may focus on weight restoration, by providing a consistent and stable structure around food and eating through to the giving of information and practical support. The programme can also tackle other disordered eating behaviours such as the use of laxatives, binge purging behaviour and over exercise.

Each of our day care services provide a high quality daily group programme overseen by an occupational therapist that offers opportunities for motivational enhancement, psychoeducation, dietetic /nutrition psycho-education (delivered by a dietician), development of emotional coping skills, independent living skills, social skills, adaptive future lifestyle skills plus recreation and social activities.

As people make progress, the frequency of day patient treatment will be reviewed and decreased to ensure an appropriate step-down to community treatment.