The Family Hub includes Start for Life and Early Help family support for families with children of all ages. This includes play and early learning sessions, health and wellbeing, parenting skills and support, antenatal support and breastfeeding. Early Help family support is for families with children up to the age of 19 in need of additional support.

The Children and Young People’s Service provides a single service to all children and young people aged 0-18 years living in Newcastle and Gateshead who present with mental health difficulties.

This includes children and young people who may be living in difficult and challenging circumstances.

Click here to read more and download a wealth of resources to help support you.

Children North East exists because growing up can be hard. We want all babies, children and young people to be happy and healthy and to grow up feeling: 

• Safe and loved

• Resilient to the challenges they may face

• Valued and confident  

We have a strong children’s rights ethos and believe that real social change is achieved when those who are, or have, experienced issues lead the change.  

Our children’s orthopaedic service cares for children and young people with disorder and injuries to muscles, tendons, joints, bones and nerves.

We aim to provide our children with the best possible orthopaedic care at the Great North Children’s Hospital.

The children and young people’s haematology and oncology service, cares for children and young people under the age of 21 who have cancer, leukaemia and other related diseases. 

Our department is one of the largest, most advanced in the UK, providing a comprehensive range of leading edge oncology services, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery.

We are the Regional Treatment Centre for all of the Northern region, treating patients from Teesside to Newcastle, and Northumberland to Cumbria.

Our children’s endocrinology and diabetes service is a regional centre for children with hormonal disorders, including diabetes.

Our team run an extensive range of clinics in diabetes, general endocrinology and growth.

Alongside this we run specialist clinics for children with Turner Syndrome and Metabolic Syndrome.

We also run a number of joint clinics with other clinical colleagues specialising in:

The children’s ear, nose and throat (ENT) service is for young patients, from newborn to 16 years old.

Conditions we treat

We provide services to treat common childhood ENT complaints such as:

• persistently runny or blocked noses
• breathing problems
• throat infections
• nasal speech
• snoring.

This might include procedures such as:

Our children’s gastroenterology and nutrition unit cares for children with disorders of the gut, liver and pancreas, as well as children with nutritional problems.

Based at the Great North Children’s Hospital, our team includes:

• expert consultants
• specialist dieticians
• paediatric pharmacists
• highly-trained paediatric nurses.

We provide a wide range of diagnostic and treatment services for children from across northern England.

The Children’s Audiology service can help with children’s hearing aids, their fitting, hearing aid reviews and repairs.

The Children’s Heart Unit at the Freeman Hospital provides care for children up to 18 years old who need medical or surgical help for conditions involving the heart, lungs and airways.

It is one of two units in the UK to carry out heart and lung transplants on children.

We are the only centre in the country to provide all cardiac care from conception, through birth, childhood and on to adulthood.

CHIPS is a specialist service designed to provide expert palliative care support for babies, children and young people with serious and life-threatening conditions and their families.

The service works alongside the other clinical teams who are caring for them.

CHIPS is a regional service supporting babies, children and young people across the North East and north Cumbria.

Our infectious diseases service looks after children admitted to the hospital with severe infections.

Together with the microbiologists and virologists, we also advise other teams looking after children with infections such as osteomyelitis or meningitis.

We advise on:

• diagnostic tests
• which antibiotics to use – either by cannula or medicine, or tablets – and for how long.

With this advice we aim to get the best results with as few side-effects as possible.

Children’s intensive care provides medical and nursing care for critically ill children from birth to 16 years.

Children can become critically ill when one or more of their organs start to fail. This can cause them to become so ill there is a risk that they may die. 

Children’s intensive care aims to support children through their illness until they recover to continue life with their family.

Critical illness can be cause by a number of reasons

We provide a comprehensive regional children’s kidney disease (nephrology) service for the North East and North Cumbria.

One of only thirteen specially designated centres for children’s nephrology in the UK, we look after children from childbirth up to the age of 18 years.

Our service is mainly led by consultants and specialist nurses who are specially trained to be able to diagnose and treat acute kidney injury (sudden kidney failure), as well chronic kidney disease (long term kidney failure).

Our children’s neurology department is the only specialist neurology service in the North East and Cumbria.

We provide highly advanced treatments for disorders of the brain, spinal cord, nerves and muscles.

This includes treatment for:

Children’s (paediatric) ophthalmology service cares for children with eye and visual problems from common disorders to more severe conditions which can cause lifelong poor vision.

We see children with eye and visual problems which range from milder, common disorders such as:

We provide specialist respiratory care for children and young people.

Our children’s respiratory unit provides specialist respiratory care for children in the North East. Patients are referred to us from local paediatricians and GPs.

We support patients at the Great North Children’s Hospital and the Freeman Hospital.

Our staff are familiar with the specific needs of children, and we care for our young patients on dedicated wards and outpatient departments.

Our children’s rheumatology team care for children and young people with rheumatic diseases.

Our specialist services include the investigation, diagnosis and treatment of children’s rheumatic diseases. We also provide education and ongoing support.

We are the only children’s rheumatology team outside London to provide autologous stem-cell treatment for children with the most severe rheumatological problems.

The service also has one of the UK’s largest research programmes into children’s rheumatology diseases.

We provide many types of routine and emergency surgery for children of all ages in the Great North Children’s Hospital at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Our team see children from across the North of England, from Leeds to Edinburgh, and Whitehaven to Tynemouth.

Conditions we treat

We treat children who have a range of conditions including;

Our Children’s urology and stoma care service provides care, support and education for children with bladder and bowel dysfunction.

We have an experienced team of specialist nurses, paediatric doctors and surgeons.

Together, we cover the entire northern region – from the Scottish border to Teesside and across to Cumbria. We also care for patients who live outside of the region.

Childsplay Nursery was established in 1982 as a "not for profit" cooperative and has been working alongside families successfully ever since.  Childsplay retains their Ofsted judgement as an OUTSTANDING provider, our most recent inspection dated 5 December 2019.

We provide breakfast club and after school club for children aged three years plus as well as a holiday club at this venue!

Holiday club is open 8:00am-5:50pm for children aged three years plus.

We can offer additional 15 hours funded childcare within our out of school club services as well as within our preschool service. 

• We offer 2, 3, and 4 years funded education  as well as paid for places.
• We provide a wrap around service to the onsite nursery school at English Martyrs’
• We offer access to our breakfast and after school clubs on site, so children can access childcare from 8:00am-5:50pm for children ages 3 and over.
• We also offer a holiday club 

We believe that working in partnership with families, involving them in children’s learning, is a strength of our school.  The school has had a strong tradition of working with families for over 120 years.  We are a small family orientated school and our size enables us to reassure parents that we can really get to know their unique and special children.  Because we are small we can really spend time getting to know our families well.  Each year has 30 children or less, with every class having additional support to ensure your child achieves their very best.  F