Adult eating disorders community services across the country will soon benefit from training delivered by Maudsley Learning at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has been awarded a four year, £2.2 million contract to design and deliver the Eating Disorders Service for Adults Whole Team Training (EDSA WTT) programme to every community team in the country.

Colleagues from the Trust’s Eating Disorders services and Maudsley Learning led collaborators from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, University College London, and a host of other national collaborators, in bidding successfully.

This contract, which has been awarded by Health Education England, responds to the need to upskill teams to support people with eating disorders and ensure they can benefit from high-quality care and evidence-based interventions in line with the EDSA WTT curriculum and competencies.

The annual programme includes blended learning across eight training sessions and access to an online learning hub to ensure that busy professionals and teams can learn flexibly and translate this learning to practice.

Training delivery starts in March 2021 with subsequent years beginning in January 2022, 2023 and 2024. Up to 270 healthcare professionals from teams across England will be trained per year, covering the North East and Yorkshire, North West and Midlands, the East of England, South East, South West and London. We are currently recruiting teams and participants for the March 2021 cohort.

The programme engages with our stakeholders to develop and deliver the programme, ensuring the widest reach and impact possible. Service user, family and carer collaboration features throughout the programme, from the training design and delivery, through to evaluation and quality assurance.

This successful award demonstrates the unparalleled expertise in the field of Eating Disorders at SLaM and IoPPN, bringing together clinical and academic excellence. The Trust’s award-winning Maudsley Learning team will be working closely with our clinical academics to deliver this project and bring their expertise in high quality workforce development and training programmes.

SLaM looks forward to adding this exciting project to our incredible portfolio of work that is all geared towards improving the lives of people in our communities and across the country, and demonstrates our excellence as a leading healthcare organisation.

More information about the programme is available here.

If you are a Service Lead or professional working in Eating Disorders services in England please direct interest and enquiries about the programme to EDSAWholeTeamTraining@slam.nhs.uk.