Scope

This clinical reference group (CRG) provides strategic oversight and expert leadership for all-age eating disorder (AAED) services in England. It supports the commissioning, delivery, and development of high-quality, accessible, and evidence-based care for children, young people, and adults with eating disorders. The CRG ensures that pathways across different care settings are integrated and responsive to patient needs.

Current workplan (2024 to 2027)

The CRG has established a comprehensive workplan for 2024 to 2027, with delivery through key working groups that focus on specific areas of service improvement and transformation. These groups are dedicated to enhancing service access, addressing health inequalities, and improving outcomes for people with eating disorders.

The CRG continues to provide expert leadership and advice to enable and support:

• Service access and transformation – ensuring that individuals with eating disorders receive timely and equitable access to care, supporting service improvements in line with the NHS Long Term Plan.
  • Children and Young People’s (CYP) Eating Disorder Task and Finish Group – addressing challenges in CYP eating disorder services, supporting early intervention, and ensuring alignment with national service models.
  • Adult Eating Disorder Task and Finish Group – enhancing adult eating disorder pathways, including stepped care approaches, transition processes from CYP to adult services, and care of adults with longstanding eating disorders.
• Data quality and monitoring – strengthening data collection, analysis, and reporting to improve the accuracy and availability of information supporting service planning and evaluation.
  • Supporting the national audit on eating disorders – overseeing the implementation and findings of the national audit, ensuring data informs policy and service development.
  • New pathway modelling – developing and refining care pathways that support early intervention, long-term recovery, and integration with physical and mental health services.
• Workforce, education and training – supporting workforce development through training initiatives and capacity building to enhance specialist skills in eating disorder care.
• Eating disorder strategic oversight groups (SOG) – NHS-led adult eating disorder provider collaboratives and CYP inpatient provider collaborative SOGs providing national forums for system-wide oversight of eating disorder inpatient services, and identifying emerging challenges and best practices in line with the NHS Inpatient Quality Transformation programme.
• Eating disorder clinical forums – bringing together inpatient and community clinicians to discuss clinical quality and excellence across the whole pathway, ensuring continuous improvement and alignment in eating disorder care. 

Service user and carer involvement

The experiences of people with eating disorders, their families, and carers are integral to shaping services. The CRG prioritises meaningful engagement with experts by experience to ensure that their insights inform service design, policy decisions, and workforce development. This involvement is key to creating patient-centred care models that improve experiences and outcomes across all age groups.

The CRG remains committed to driving innovation, improving access, and ensuring that services are responsive to the evolving needs of people with eating disorders. Through collaboration with providers, commissioners, and experts by experience, the CRG supports the transformation of eating disorder care across England.

Membership

The CRG is a clinically led group whose membership consists of a diverse group of clinical and non-clinical members who bring expertise from across the eating disorder pathway:

• CRG Chair and National Specialty Advisor:  Dasha Nicholls – Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Honorary Consultant, Imperial College London and Central and Northwest London NHS Foundation Trust
• Co-Chair and Lead Commissioner: Marlon Brown
• Clinical Members: Dr Frances Connan, Dr Simona Baracaia, Dr Emma Blake, Dr Adaeze Bradshaw, Dr Sarah Maxwell, Dr Joanna Miatt, Dr David Ochando, Ursula Philpot, Dr Emma Tiffin
• ED Charity Membership: Umairah Malik (B.E.A.T)
• Patient and Public Voice Members: Natalie Butt, Claire Mundle, Matthew Wilson 

Products

A key part of the CRG’s work is to develop a range of commissioning products, including service specifications, quality dashboards and commissioning policies and guidance. These are tools that will be used by regional specialised commissioning teams and lead providers for NHS-led provider collaboratives.

Service specifications

Service specifications are important in clearly defining the standards of care expected from organisations funded by NHS England to provide specialised care. The specifications have been developed by specialised clinicians, professionals, commissioners, experts by experience (patients and carers), and public health representatives to describe both core and developmental service standards. Core standards are those that all funded providers should be able to demonstrate, with developmental standards being those which may require further changes in practice over time to provide excellence in the field.