What do you need help with: Eating disorders
Eating disorders happen when an abnormal attitude towards food causes someone to change their eating habits and behaviour. A child or young person with an eating disorder might worry a lot about their weight and shape. This worry can lead to them making unhealthy choices about food which harm their health. Eating disorders are often a very hidden and secretive illness, making it hard for parents or carers to know if their child has an eating problem.
Some signs of the difficulty include:
- pushing food around their plate or not eating their meals
- serious unexplained weight loss
- hiding food, under their bed for example
- leaving the table quickly after meals, to vomit for example
- wearing loose fitting clothes to hide their weight loss
- only eating small amounts of low calorie foods
- food going missing from the kitchen in large amounts (to binge on)
- showing signs they’re unhappy with their body or weight
How to make a referral yourself
To make a referral you will need to download and fill in one or more forms and answer questions about what you need help with. Your answers will give our clinical specialists the essential information they need.
It helps if you can give us as much detailed information as possible, such as:
- how long the difficulties have lasted
- how they affect day-to-day life
- other relevant experiences
You may need to share information from a doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional, or school SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinator).
Sending the form back to us
We’d prefer that you email the form back to us at cfhd.devonspa@nhs.net.
When you email us, please make sure:
- the documents you send are only in Word (.doc/.docx), PDF (.pdf) or JPEG (.jpeg/.jpg) formats
- each document is attached separately and is less than 3MB in size
- you don’t attach multiple single pages
- the email is less than 10MB in total
If this is tricky for you, you can print out the form, fill it in by hand, and post it back to us at: Single point of Access, 1a Capital Court, Sowton Industrial Estate, Exeter EX2 7FW