Supporting Children and Young People with Disordered Eating
In 2024, the Prudence Trust and Stone Family Foundation partnered together to support organisations that deliver evidence-based, specialist eating disorder services to children and young people aged 11-25, and their families.
Eating disorders can severely affect quality of life for children and their families, and have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric condition. Those with an eating disorder often also suffer from depression or anxiety, and these conditions need to be managed simultaneously for the highest chance of recovery. We know that early intervention increases the chances of a full recovery, that parents and families need support to help their loved ones, and that continued support after a clinical intervention is important to recovery. Given the rise in disordered eating and eating disorders in recent years, we wanted to fund these kinds of specialist services for young people and their families.
This funding round is now closed, but you can read about it and the successful charities here.
KEY INFORMATION
Application deadline
First stage: 2 September 2024
Second stage: Invitations sent in mid-September
Purpose of funding
To support specialist eating disorder services for young people and their families
Eligible organisations
UK registered charities or CICs.
An annual income above £250,000.
A track record of running evidence-based, specialist eating disorder services for young people or their families for at least three years.
Example eligible costs
Salaries, training, room hire
Value and term of grants
Total grants budget: £1.2 million
Grant size: £30,000 – £100,000 per year
Grant term: Up to three years
Who was funded?
The following charities were awarded funding by the Prudence Trust:
- Brent Centre for Young People (to provide community-based therapeutic support for young people in Northwest London struggling with disordered eating)
- Eating Distress North East (to offer specialist eating disorder therapy for children and young people with mild to moderate eating distress; counselling for families; and Holding onto Hope skills-based course to help families cope in the carer role)
- Noa Girls (to expand their specialist programme for girls struggling with eating disorders and disordered eating)
- South Yorkshire Eating Disorder Association (to establish a dedicated ARFID support team)
- SWEDA (to expand their support for children and young people and develop their parent support pathway, including nutritional advice)
The following charities were awarded joint funding by the Stone Family Foundation and the Prudence Trust:
- Renew Counselling (to expand their specialist eating disorder counselling service)
- REDCAN (to establish a collective vision and strategy for this alliance of regional eating disorder charities, so that they can work together and deliver their services more effectively)
How were the grants decided?
To help our decision making, the Prudence Trust and Stone Family Foundation sought the advice of expert advisors and young people with experience of the issues. Final decisions were made by the trustees of both foundations.
Our aims for this programme are that at the end of the grant period:
- Children and young people with disordered eating or an eating disorder recover or are better able to manage their condition.
- More children and young people are able to access the eating disorder support services that they need.
- The families of these children and young people are better able to support their loved ones due to increased knowledge and understanding of disordered eating.
- More families have the confidence to support their loved ones.
- Organisations are able to expand their high quality provision to reach more people, particularly through working in new locations or reaching communities that are not well-served.
- Organisations are able to retain, better equip and support their staff who deliver high-quality, specialist eating disorder services.
We prioritised applications that met at least one of these aims and best demonstrated these strengths:
- Evidence that the organisation delivers services that make a positive difference to its beneficiaries. There must be a clear plan for how the difference made to beneficiaries will be measured, particularly if it is a new service.
- If the proposal is to reach more children, young people and their families, there is a credible plan for how this will happen.
- If the proposal is to deliver more effective services, there is a clear explanation of how the funding will achieve this.
Disordered eating is on the rise and NHS figures show that the number of children and young people starting treatment for an eating disorder in England more than doubled between 2016-17 and 2022-23.
