Dr Tania Withington is a Social Worker and Family Therapist in the role of Program Manager of the Children’s Health Queensland, Child and Youth Mental Health Service, Eating Disorder Program.  

Dr Withington is the co-lead in the development, implementation, evaluation and design of the Eating Disorder Program which is a large state-wide service offering evidenced based services and evidenced informing innovation for children and young people with eating disorders and their families.  The Model of Service developed by Dr Withington places emphasis on evidenced based treatment with every clinician supported to achieve accreditation status as Family Based Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa (FBT) clinician and/or supervisor or Cognitive Behaviour Therapy enhanced (CBTe) senior clinician status as core skills.   Dr Withington led the development, trial and ultimate embedding of the first evidenced based treatment telehealth service for eating disorders in Queensland, offering FBT and CBTe in regional rural and remote areas of Queensland since 2016. In 2020 Dr Withington led the development and implementation of the first public health available state-wide Day Program for children and adolescents diagnosed with eating disorders in Queensland with FBT and Emotional Focused Skills Training (EFST) as core intervention. In 2020 Dr Withington led the design and implementation of a longitudinal mixed method research project investigating efficient and effective treatment services for children and young people with eating disorders and their families incorporating current evidenced based treatments and innovative treatment options including an online psycho-education series for parents as preparation for treatment, a parent EFST treatment group, Day Program, and Attachment Based Family Therapy for eating disorders. Dr Withington herself is an accredited FBT Clinician and Supervisor with the Training Institute for Child and Adolescent Eating Disorders USA and has co-written FBT training with the Institute for the Australian context.  Dr Withington co-chaired the ANZAED Child and Youth Treatment Special Interest Group in 2018-2019.  More recently Dr Withington has been invited to join the Australian Eating Disorders Research & Translation Centre Governing Council and the National Eating Disorder Collaboration National Strategy Treatment Working Group.  Dr Withington has presented at national and international conferences and published in peer review publications in the areas of eating disorders, child and youth mental health, child protection and aged care.  Looking forward Dr Withington’s interests are directed to timely effective and innovative service delivery utilizing evidenced based, evidence informed and evidence informing models of service and care to promote recovery in children and young people with mental health concerns and their families