Eating Disorders Child and Adolescent Inpatient Service - Wisteria Ward

South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust is one of the largest and longest established NHS specialist eating disorders services in the UK providing the full range of inpatient, outpatient and community treatments for eating disorder in two units:

• Wisteria Ward is a 12 bedded service unit for treatment of child and adolescents, between the ages of 11 to 18 years old
• Avalon Ward is a 24 bedded inpatient unit for treatment of adults, more /our-services/eating-disorders-adult-inpatient-services-avalon-ward/

The eating disorder services offered include assessment, treatment and management of people with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, eating disorder not otherwise specified. We provide a range of evidence-based care packages tailored to the needs and recovery of patients.

This service is for patients from across the country.

Referrals are accepted from child and adolescent mental health teams or an equivalent service. 

 A Referrer's Guide for Eating Disorders Service 

We can accept the following referrals:

• detained under the relevant Mental Health legislation
• multi-impulsive patients
• co-morbid personality disorders
• male patients
  

This unit accommodates 12 patients, either as inpatients or day attendees, providing recovery-based treatment programmes that focus on family intervention.

The range of therapies include group and individual therapy in the form of cognitive behavioural therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR), and exercise therapy, as well as social work, specialist nursing care, dietetics, and occupational therapy.

There is a strong focus on family interventions as this is shown to be the most effective therapy in treating young people with eating disorders, in accordance with NICE guidelines. These interventions include family therapy, parents groups, and supported family meals. As part of our family focus, we have a family accommodation suite. This enables families to stay over and spend time with their children and participate in family therapy, as well as eating with their children, which is fundamental in terms of recovery.

Our onsite school helps young people stay in mainstream education. Ofsted rated it "outstanding" for all 24 categories that make up the overall ranking. It is believed to be the first time ever that this type of specialist service has received a clean sweep of top scores, more. 

New: The Arthur Crisp High Dependency Unit (HDU) is an annex of Avalon Ward  for the treatment of severe eating disorders for both adults and child and adolescents. The Arthur Crisp HDU opened in March 2012 and is has been designed to address the recommendations of the Management of Really Sick Patients with anorexia nervosa (MARSIPAN) report.

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