Cheshire and Merseyside Eating Disorder Service for adolescents (CHEDS)
Our footprint
Cheshire and Merseyside Eating Disorder Service (CHEDS) is the Hub in the Children and Young People’s Eating Disorder Service Hub and Spoke Model across CWP. We regularly meet with our Spoke teams across the Trust, and have strong links with other services in Liverpool (Eating Disorder Young People Service, EDYS) and Mid-Mersey (Children and young people Eating Disorder Service, CEDS).
What is CHEDS?
The Cheshire and Merseyside Eating Disorder Service (CHEDS) is a specialist outpatient team that offers assessment, treatment and support to young people aged 13-18 with eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder or atypical eating disorders.
Referrals
Referrals are accepted from CAMHS across CWP, specifically from the ED spoke teams based in Wirral, Chester, Crewe, Winsford and Macclesfield. We also accept referrals from other local services outside of CWP, including the Eating Disorder Young People Service (EDYS) in Liverpool and (Children and young people Eating Disorder Service (CEDS) in Mid-Mersey.
Referral to CHEDS is usually made when it is felt you would benefit from a more intensive approach than is available in Tier 3 services. Discharge back to either Tier 3 or GP occurs when this level of intensity is no longer felt to be required.
What does a CHEDS assessment involve?
Assessments at CHEDS typically last 2 hours and involve a range of team members like the ones listed on page 3. We invite your close family so that we can better understand how the eating disorder has affected you and your family as a whole and how we can use the skills of our team to best support you. If we do not think our service would be suitable then we can suggest a different service that may be able to help.
What can you expect from us?
If we think our service can help you, and you decide to come to CHEDS for treatment, we typically offer:
- a range of individual, family and group therapies, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Art Psychotherapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) and Family Based Treatment (FBT), depending on what would be most beneficial for you
- CHEDS also runs 4 day intensive MultiFamily Therapy (MFT) Workshops involving several families coming together to work side by side. For more information, please see the Multi-Family Therapy Leaflet
- parental support and guidance sessions
- specialist dietary advice and support
- 6-weekly questionnaires to monitor your progress and help improve your treatment and our service (including the EDE-Q, HoNOSCA and RCADS; information about these questionnaires can be found in the CHEDS waiting area)
- regular review meetings to discuss your progress and look at whether we need to change something about your treatment (typically every 6 weeks)
- opportunities for you to get involved in improving our service through feedback and service evaluations
Outpatient treatment is less disruptive to social and family life in comparison to inpatient treatment (e.g. staying in a hospital for young people experiencing mental health difficulties), so we encourage outpatient treatment as much as possible.
Staff at CHEDS
Our team is multidisciplinary which means we have a variety of different staff to help meet the needs of the young people referred to our service, including:
- Consultant psychiatrist
- Clinical psychologists
- Specialty doctor
- Clinical nurse specialist
- Inpatient link nurse
- Art psychotherapist
- Family therapist
- Specialist
- Dieticians
- Eating disorder therapists
- Assistant psychologist
- DBT therapists
- Admin staff
Appointments
CHEDS is open Monday to Friday from 9am until 5pm.
Outpatient appointments are in Chester at either our base at St Anne Street or occasionally, by arrangement, at the Countess of Chester Hospital site.
CHEDS, 71-77 St Anne Street, Chester, CH1 3HT
Tel: 01244 393 220
If you have any urgent problems, please contact your local A&E department.