In a few months’ time, Jane, whose name we have changed, will take her GCSEs. She has anorexia and is being cared for at Leigh House.
She said: “It was so much better coming here than hospital because in hospital, they don’t treat the mental side of it, they make you eat but you don’t really understand why you’re eating.
“[Hospital had] an atmosphere where I felt really sick. I felt sometimes I was being treated like I was crazy.”
Ms Cole said it was really important to “treat the whole family”.
“We want to move away from a blame model – nobody knows why young people get eating disorders,” she said.
“We want to empower families and support them to treat their young people at home and know what they’re dealing with.”
A man whose daughter has used Leigh House’s services said that before securing a place at the Hampshire facility, the only other help offered was an inpatient stay at a hospital hundreds of miles away in Liverpool.
He said the programme in Winchester was helping his family to build “the right tool set of how to deal with different situations”.
“Obviously meal times are always a struggle and there are certain things which trigger anorexia,” he said.
“You build a list of things to say, what not to say, how to react in certain situations to try to control things.”
Leigh House offers a nine-week programme for up to 10 young people at a time.
