Australia’s first publicly-funded specialist residential eating disorder treatment centre is ready to offer a “place that feels like home” to patients in Canberra.
The centre offers up to 12 people with common eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge-eating disorder 24/7 sub-acute care from a multidisciplinary team.
It has been modelled on Queensland’s Wandi Nerida, which costs patients tens of thousands of dollars to attend.
The Coombs facility is Australia’s first publicly-funded specialist residential eating disorder treatment centre. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
Services provided at the centre, in the suburb of Coombs, will include creative and music therapy, gentle exercise like yoga, and activities like gardening and cooking therapy.
It will be staffed by a multidisciplinary team which includes general practitioners, nurses, dieticians, exercise physiologists, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists.
Some patients will come into the centre having already attended hospital while others would attend in order to avoid a hospital admission.
But patients would need to be medically stable in order to stay at the centre.
Services provided at the centre will range from creative and music therapy to gentle exercise and activities like gardening and cooking therapy. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
Sarah Toohey, from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), said the aim of the centre was to show little bits of each of those disciplines and how they could help in someone’s recovery journey.
She said sharing food and cooking was an important part of that.
“We have a gardening program to help people kind of recognise the values of being in the soil, growing things, growing food, and then seeing that food on the plate,” she said.
“It’s sort of creating a whole new relationship with food and wellbeing, and that more holistic approach to recovery.”
Ms Toohey acknowledged there would be “challenges” when people initially arrived at the centre when it came to eating, but that staff would support them through that.
Residents of the centre will be able to invite loved ones to come and visit and eat with them, Ms Toohey said, and given the “voluntary” nature of the centre, patients would also have opportunities to come and go.
The ACT government says the new centre will provide 24/7 care “in a place that feels like home”. (ABC News: Michael Barnett)
A person could stay for around three months, she said, and by the end, “We’re increasing their independence and their autonomy a little bit more”.
“So we’re going out and about, and we’re going to shops,” she said.
“We’re normalising life outside of this facility. So it’s that step out to go back home.”
‘Important part of ecosystem of care’
Mr Quilty says family support is vital for someone with an eating disorder. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Advocates have long stressed the need for the centre, including David Quilty, who heads up the ACT chapter of the support group Eating Disorders Families Australia.
Mr Quilty and his partner have spent many years caring for their daughter, who is now a young adult, who suffers from an eating disorder.
Much of her treatment had been accessed interstate, he said, but he noted the new centre may form part of his own family’s journey in the future.
“It provides a really important part of the whole ecosystem of care and support,” he explained.
“Many people with eating disorders spend multiple times in hospitals, and hospital care doesn’t work for them.”
Service a long time coming
Similar federally-funded are expected to open around the country. (ABC News: Peter Jean, Michael Barnett)
The Butterfly Foundation estimates that 1.1 million Australians, or 4.5 per cent of the population are living with an eating disorder at any one time.
Based on that percentage, the disease could be affecting more than 21,000 people in Canberra.
Helpful eating disorder resources:
Advocates have calling for a residential treatment centre of this type in Canberra for years and federal money was first promised by the Coalition government ahead of its 2019 election win.
Those federal funds kicked in during the 2020-21 financial year, with the ACT government tasked with finding a location for the service, designing a model of care and actually building the $13.5 million centre.
Five years on from those initial promises, the first patients are now preparing to move in.
Not open to those under 16 years of age
ACT Minister for Mental Health Emma Davidson said the facility would be an “inclusive space”.
“We can provide for people of genders and all body shapes and sizes,” she said.
“People with lived experience have been with us every step of the way.
“They’ve been involved in the design, not just of the physical space, but also of the model of care, and how this is going to fit in with all of our other eating disorder services here in the ACT.”
Patients will visit the centre for appointments from next week and residential stays will begin in September.
(ABC News: Michael Barnett)
But people younger than 16 won’t be able to attend the facility.
Mr Quilty said there was a gap in care for younger teenagers.
“We’re finding that people at a very young age are having eating disorders,” he said.
“Pre-teens is certainly quite frequent now so it’s vital that we look to do whatever we can as quickly as possible for those young people, because the clinical evidence makes very clear that the longer you have an eating disorder, the harder it is to return to a normal life.”
Canberra mum Vanessa, who made the difficult decision to move her child Haven to Victoria to seek treatment for an eating disorder, is disappointed by the age limit.
She said she believed “holistic” care was needed from the get-go, including for children younger than 16.
Haven first began experiencing anorexia-like symptoms at age 11 and had been in and out of hospitals in Canberra and Melbourne since, Vanessa said.
Vanessa said her now 14-year-old child wouldn’t yet be considered medically stable and able to attend such a centre.
“There needs to be a centre or a facility that can do both, and to be able to cater for all levels of eating disorders, whether it’s mild, moderate or extreme,” she said.
Vanessa with her child Haven before they became unwell. (Supplied)
But Ms Davidson said the facility was for patients who had been experiencing an eating disorder for “a period of time already”.
“The kind of care that you provide to someone over 16 versus someone under 16 is quite different,” she said.
The centre also wouldn’t provide acute care such as a feeding tube as Ms Davidson said it was “more appropriate” for that to be done in a hospital setting.
She said in the future, the ACT government would look to “integrated” eating disorder support where both levels of care could be provided at the same time.
Similar federally-funded clinics are expected to open around the country in the coming months.
