Feeding Clinic for Children with Food Aversions
We offer a Feeding Clinic for children with ARFID, food aversions and food phobias. Through the Clinic, we help families build more positive mealtime experiences, and help the child improve their relationship with food.
What are food aversions?
For some children mealtimes are a difficult - even distressing - experience. Children may have a sensory aversion to certain food, or have had negative early feeding experiences. This can lead to restricted food choices, fear of food, and difficult mealtimes.
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Food aversions affect a child’s ability to eat, as they are being overwhelmed by the sensory aspects of certain foods. This can include the taste, texture, or smell of foods.
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Avoidant or Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) is a condition when someone limits how much they eat or avoids certain foods. This might be because of negative feelings around the smell, taste or texture of certain foods. Alternatively, it could be a response to a past experience, such as choking on a food or being sick after eating a certain food. It can also be a lack of interest in food.
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Children can also suffer with food phobias, where certain foods cause undue levels of fear or anxiety for them.
All these conditions can cause children to refuse foods to the extent that it drastically impacts their diet and nutrition.
How does the feeding clinic work?
Our Speech and Language Therapist will start with an hour-long online consultation to discuss your child’s eating and drinking needs. We will discuss their early experiences with feeding, and any interventions that have already taken place to support their eating. This helps us get a full picture of your child’s broader needs and an understanding of the support they have had, currently have or are on a waiting list for.
We will then do a face-to-face mealtime assessment either at home or in your child’s education setting. The therapist will assess:
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your child’s feeding skills;
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your child’s swallow;
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your child’s response to different textures of food and fluid.
We observe your child, assessing the specifics of their skills with eating.
Following these assessments the therapist will feed back their findings, and give recommendations to help your child develop a better relationship with food. We may also recommend further therapy sessions.
