The National Eating Disorder Network are considering how to take forward the longer term recommendations of the National Review of Eating Disorder Services.

This includes building, implementing and evaluating a public health strategy for Scotland that makes eating disorder prevention everyone's business, including social media companies.

Keeping young people safe online is of paramount importance for the Scottish Government, and prevention is key. While regulation of the internet remains a reserved matter, we have successfully engaged with the UK Government on its Online Safety Act to strengthen protections for young people.

Ministers met Ofcom in August 2024 to emphasise the responsibility of tech firms to deliver effective safeguards for young people online, and in June 2025 to discuss ongoing implementation and regulation of the Online Safety Act and possible further action. The First Minister wrote directly to tech firms in 2024 to remind them of their responsibilities and Ministers have invited X, Meta, Snap Inc and TikTok to meet.

We will continue to engage with the UK Government and Ofcom on the implementation of this important piece of legislation and to press for stronger protections to help keep children and young people in Scotland safe online.

As part of the implementation of the recommendations from the National Review of Eating Disorder Services in Scotland, the Scottish Government established an Eating Disorder National Network in 2024 to take forward the medium and long term recommendations.

Membership of the network is comprised of senior representatives from key stakeholder organisations, including national health services, third sector, and lived experience representation.

Members share the network’s work, progress and good practice within their own professional fields and networks, acting as a voice for the network as well as a channel for feeding back the views of their profession.

The Scottish Government also continues to work with partners in hosting regular webinars for clinicians, carers and people with lived experience from across Scotland.

The Scottish Government wants to ensure that people are supported to live independently in their own homes and communities.

However, decisions on how best to deliver services for local communities are ultimately for integration authorities to make. This has to be a continuous way of working that appropriately seeks to understand the needs of local people and how best to meet them.

The Scottish Government would encourage all local partners to work together to find solutions that not only address financial pressures, but put the needs of local people – particularly those most vulnerable – at the centre.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic we have provided eating disorder charity Beat with funding to provide a range of services, such as their dedicated helpline support and delivering peer support services.

This financial year, we have provided over £600,000 to Beat. This includes funding towards the Lived Experience Panel who support the work of the National Eating Disorder Network.

Eating disorder charity Beat promotes its services through existing partnerships with clinical services, carer organisations, Health Boards, universities, and education authorities. This financial year, we have provided over £600,000 to Beat.

For mental health more generally, we have invested £164 million in community-based mental health support for adults and children since 2020.

In many cases eating disorders can co-occur with other conditions. The National Specification for the Care and Treatment of Eating Disorders sets the expectation that services collaborate with appropriate teams to ensure comprehensive personalised care for individuals with these needs.

Recent work to develop consistent delivery of services to people with co-occurring conditions has included new content such as Eating disorders before, during and after pregnancy | NHS inform, and a webinar hosted by the Eating Disorder National Network to provide training on eating disorders and autism.

The Scottish Government’s funding to eating disorder charity Beat ensures that Scottish healthcare professionals can attend the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training workshops free of charge. A recent webinar hosted by Beat focussed on eating disorders and ADHD.

We are also working with NES to produce training resources for staff delivering care and treatment to children, young people and adults with eating disorders.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS Education Scotland (NES) to develop new Eating Disorder content on Turas. The updated platform will act as a multi-agency resource, structured by age, context and practice type. This will link to guidance, training and evidence-based resources. Accessibility and intellectual property requirements are being built in, and navigation will be more user-friendly than the current structure.

We are also providing funding to eating disorder charity Beat, who offer Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training to support secondary school staff to identify and act on the early signs of an eating disorder.

The National Eating Disorder Network are considering how to take forward the longer term recommendations of the National Review of Eating Disorder Services.

This includes building, implementing and evaluating a public health strategy for Scotland that makes eating disorder prevention everyone's business, including diet and weight loss companies.

More generally, the Scottish Government has funded the development of content pages and videos featuring people with lived experience, clinicians and parents/carers. This includes working with NHS inform to create a digital page to support positive body image, and to develop a self-help guide for binge eating behaviours which has guidance gathered from the Lived Experience Panel, that we fund eating disorder charity Beat to deliver.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS Education Scotland (NES) to develop new Eating Disorder content on Turas. The updated platform will act as a multi-agency resource, structured by age, context and practice type. This will link to guidance, training and evidence-based resources. Accessibility and intellectual property requirements are being built in, and navigation will be more user-friendly than the current structure.

Work is also progressing to produce Primary Care training videos focused on recognising and communicating physical risk. We have sought input from eating disorder charity Beat’s Lived Experience Panel to ensure the content is realistic and sensitive. These will be hosted on Turas once complete.

The Scottish Government has funded the development of content pages and videos featuring people with lived experience, clinicians and parents/carers. The majority of these are now available on NHS inform with links below.

Over the last 3 months the eating disorder pages have collectively been viewed over 23,200 times. By far the most popular page in the Eating Disorders section is the Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) page with 5,326 views in December.

Information pages:

• Eating disorders | NHS inform
• Anorexia nervosa | NHS inform
• Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) | NHS inform
• Binge eating disorder | NHS inform
• Bulimia nervosa | NHS inform
• How to support someone with an eating disorder | NHS inform
• Eating disorder resources | NHS inform
• Looking after yourself while supporting someone with an eating disorder | NHS inform
• Eating disorders before, during and after pregnancy | NHS inform

Videos:

• How to support someone with an eating disorder | NHS inform
• Cameron's story | NHS inform
• Abigail's story | NHS inform

We also continue to fund eating disorder charity Beat, who provide a range of support options to families and carers, including support groups.