What is the Glasgow Feeding Clinic?
This specialist NHS clinic based at the Royal Hospital for Children, Glasgow serves families of children and young people in Greater Glasgow or from the West of Scotland with complicated feeding difficulties that are best helped by a team. The feeding team make detailed assessments of growth and nutritional status, diet and eating behaviour and can usually suggest changes to help.
Our aims are to:
- Minimise the need for tube feeding or high energy drinks
- Help parents worry less about feeding issues.
- Improve feeding behaviour
This is a small specialist clinic, which deals with more complex feeding problems, so we do not accept referrals straight from primary care or from out with NHSGGC.
For referrals from within NHSGGC please complete our referral form; we are always happy to discuss possible referrals.
If you are worried about a child’s diet or eating behaviour, but they are thriving and otherwise well, the Help my child won’t eat leaflet may provide the answer to some of the issues that are worrying you. If not we suggest a discussion first with your health visitor or your GP who can usually offer helpful advice and support. If need be they may decide to refer on for other help with eating and feeding behaviour.
Who we see
Children who live, or receive medical care, in the Greater Glasgow health board area who…
Are being transitioned from tube and other artificial feeding (tube weaning)
Are being considered for tube feeding
We also see some children or young people where there are major worries about slow weight gain or underweight and /or their ability to eat effectively and safely.
In many cases, after a detailed assessment of growth and nutritional status, we have been able to offer reassurance that growth levels are acceptable, given the child’s underlying condition, but in other cases we may advise that tube feeding is needed.
Have specific dietary deficiencies associated with a limited diet
Many children eat a quite limited diet and most of these children grow and develop normally, even with apparently inadequate diets. However, if there is concern about this, we would usually recommend a multivitamin supplement suitable for the child’s age and current diet and we may be able to offer some behavioural work to encourage relevant dietary diversity.
Many of these children have other features of Autism Spectrum Disorder and behavioural work may need to be undertaken by their local community team.
Very occasionally children eat such a limited diet that they become severely deficient in one of the key nutrients they need, most commonly Iron, but also sometimes vitamin D (Rickets) and rarely vitamin C (Scurvy).