ALLIANCE study

Good treatment relationships have been found to be important to service users for supporting a beneficial admission and aiding recovery. The project is a deep dive into service user and staff perspectives on what is important, what is difficult, and how to improve relational care in inpatient eating disorder services.

ALLIANCE has three stages - we are currently in Stage 2. 

Stage 1 involves reviewing existing research in the field.  This helped us to understand how to develop effective treatment relationships in inpatient settings and how this affects people's engagement with services and recovery from eating disorders. This review is completed by a mix of people with lived experience, clinicians, and academics.

Stage 2 involves interviewing service users and staff with lived or work experience of eating disorder inpatient treatment. This will help us to refine the understanding we developed in Stage 1. This will form the basis of recommendations on how to improve treatment relationships in inpatient settings.

Stage 3 will co-design a lived experience animation with people who took part in the interviews in stage 2. This will bring the theory to life in ways that help people better understand the experiences, tensions and difficulties in the development of treatment relationships within inpatient settings, as well as exploring ways to improve these.

The idea for the ALLIANCE study came from lived experience of inpatient treatment for eating disorders. It was co-produced by people with lived experience of eating disorder inpatient treatment and people with experience of treating eating disorders, as well as relevant research expertise (on both sides). Further public and patient involvement informed the research design. This includes two lived experience collaborators as part of the research team.

We welcome your communication through email (below) or any other accessible means. Alternatively, you may call, text, or leave a voicemail at the contact number provided below if that is more convenient for you.

Contact Email: ALLIANCEstudy@nsft.nhs.uk 

Contact Number: 07920545349