STROUD (NNA) – A new centre offering support primarily for young people with eating disorders through a combination of full residential care, anthroposophic therapies, and a therapeutic education with supported transition is planning to open its doors in the UK before the end of the year. The centre will also offer evening and weekend support sessions.

Upper Grange in Stroud has recently been gifted to a newly formed biodynamic land trust, the Living Earth Land Trust, and consists of a sixteenth century grange situated in a semi-rural location with a productive biodynamic garden five minutes’ walk from the town centre, the project says in a statement.

The centre will be staffed by a multi-disciplinary team and will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on difficulties for young people between 14-19 years of age. Clients will include individuals with primary diagnoses of eating disorder, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and will also include individuals who are repeatedly using traditional services in the “revolving door” pattern, the statement adds.

In work funded by the Ruskin Mill Centre for Cultural Development, the project team consisting of Dr Marian Naidoo, Aonghus Gordon, Charlotte von Bulow and Ian Clements (with endorsement from Dr Stefan Geider) is currently “researching and identifying an unmet need for integrated and holistic solutions to eating disorders,” the team says.

The work also involved clinicians, practitioners and the service users through a series of workshops and seminars. As a result of this process a methodology was being developed which was designed to support the re-engagement of clients through aesthetics, warmth, rhythm and nurture.

This methodology in turn provides the basis for a curriculum which develops an “appetite for life”, the initiators explain. It will offer qualifications tailored to the needs of clients in the form of transition programmes validated by the Crossfields Institute, a licensed educational charity specialising in the design of holistic and integrative qualifications. 

“The centre will offer commitment to provide each client with a holistic and integrated service that supports their re-covery, re-connection and re-integration,” the project team says.

The team highlights three unique characteristics which distinguish this centre from other services.

First, it offers a rare opportunity for positive intervention in the lives of individuals who would normally be victims of a cycle of intensive care and hospitalisation.

Then, through the integration of anthroposophic medicine and therapies deeply imbedded in the residential care aspect of the offer, the centre will be in a position to take a “whole-human being approach to the recovery and rebuilding of faculties”.

And finally, through the Learning to Live curriculum, residents and day participants will be introduced to an exceptional and carefully designed learning journey through the arts, philosophy, projective geometry, beekeeping, gardening and the development of life skills for transition and reintegration.

END/nna/cva

Item: 111011-01EN Date: 11 October 2011

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