Growing Healthy 0-19 Gateshead

The Growing Healthy Gateshead 0-19 Healthy Child Programme (HCP) service is an integrated service for families, expectant mothers, children and young people that offers interventions from the pre-natal stage up to the age of 19. The Trust leads on the delivery of this service, with a focus on working across services and organisational boundaries to improve public health outcomes.

The universal reach of the HCP provides an invaluable opportunity from early in a child’s life to identify families that are in need of additional support and children who are at risk of poor outcomes.

If you need to contact the team please use the

Single Point of Contact telephone number: 03000 031 918

We’ve got a local Gateshead team page on Facebook where we share information and general health advice. Please click the link and like our page: www.facebook.com/GrowingHealthyGateshead

The aims of the HCP service is to:

• Help parents develop and sustain a strong bond with children;
• Encourage care that keeps children healthy and safe;
• Protect children from serious disease, through screening and immunisation;
• Reduce childhood obesity by promoting healthy eating and physical activity;
• Identify health issues early, so support can be provided in a timely manner;
• Make sure children are prepared for and supported in all child care, early years education settings and especially are supported to be ready to learn at age two and ready for school by age five.

The role of the 0-5 Service is to protect and promote the health and wellbeing of children under five and their families.

The 5-19 team promotes and protects the health and wellbeing of all children and young people aged 5 to 19 and up to age of 25 with any child with additional needs

0-5 Health Visiting Service

All families with a child under five in Gateshead have access to a Health Visiting 0-5 Team, consisting of Health Visitors, Early Years Practitioners and Family Nurse Partnership. They provide expert health assessments, advice, support and interventions for babies, children and families.

The Team encourages and supports parents and carers to develop life-long skills to enable them to make informed choices that affect their family’s future health and wellbeing.

The Team works in community settings to deliver universal and targeted interventions designed to meet public health outcomes. We ensure the emotional and physical health and wellbeing of families, children and young people across Gateshead.

The team aims to help build parents’ confidence in their ability to give their child the best start in life and listen carefully when parents have concerns. It identifies and builds on what is going well, and provides information to help parents find their own solutions to problems where possible.

Some common areas of information and support:

• Pregnancy and transition into parenthood
• Infant feeding/ specialist breast feeding support
• Growth and nutrition
• Healthy eating
• Dental health
• Development
• Behaviour
• Accident prevention
• Safe sleeping
• Speech and language development
• Immunisations
• Common childhood illness/infection
• Safeguarding
• Postnatal depression and emotional wellbeing
• Parenting

Family Nurse Partnership

Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) is an intensive home visiting programme for first-time young mums and families, working with them to:

• Improve their child’s health, development and readiness to learn at school
• Reach their goals and aspirations.

Your visits will start during pregnancy right through until your child is aged between one and two. Throughout this time, you and your family nurse will work on lots of different aspects of your pregnancy and becoming a parent together, including: parent-child attachment, breastfeeding, immunising your baby, child development and school readiness.

Your family nurse will fit the programme around you and your baby’s needs, helping to improve your self-confidence as well as supporting you on other issues such as mental health, anxiety, housing and stopping smoking.

5 -19 School Nursing Service

We work with children, young people and families to empower and enable them to make informed decisions about health, and to support them in transitioning safely and happily into adult life. The 5-19 Service works in community settings to deliver universal and targeted interventions designed to meet public health outcomes. We ensure the emotional and physical health and wellbeing of families, children and young people across Gateshead.

The team includes School Nurses, Emotional and Resilience Nurses, School Staff Nurse, SEND Team, Early Year Practitioner and Screeners.
The team provides a service to all children and young people of school age, and their families, whether or not they are attending school. We offer advice and information, and assess health needs on children entering school and on transfer to secondary schools. We are the first point of contact for schools when there are concerns about a child’s health and wellbeing.

We are also responsible for:

• Measuring and weighing children in reception and year 6 as part of the National Child Measurement Programme
• Providing enuresis (involuntary urination) advice and support
• Providing emotional health and wellbeing support;
• Parenting and behavioural problems
• Risk taking behaviour including drugs and alcohol
• Stopping smoking
• Relationships, sexual health & pregnancy
• Promoting healthy lifestyles in schools and communities through health education
• Support for children and Young People who are Looked After
• Safeguarding of children and Young People
• Supporting children and families with additional health needs or disability up to the age of 25 -The SEND Team (special educational needs and disabilities) they work closely with parents and schools. They provide specialist support in areas such as toileting, eating, sleeping and behaviour. They promote healthy lifestyles and offer health assessments to children, young people and their families. The team will offer the same service to all children and young people whatever their needs and will adapt the way in which they support to best suit individual needs.
• The 5-19 team work closely with Health Visitors so that children and families with complex health and social care needs are identified early. We support the development and implementation of health management plans to promote the child’s health and wellbeing, school attendance, education and attainment.

HENRY Programme

We have a fantastic new Healthy Families Programme, known as Henry, running locally in Gateshead. It is a free 8 session programme which supports families with children aged 0-5 and 5-12 years to give them a great start in life and develop a healthier lifestyle for the whole family.

We also have some workshops/taster sessions available – fussy eating, for families of children aged 1-7years and Eating Well for Less for families of children aged 0-12 years.

For further information you can contact our HENRY coordinator on our single point of contact 03000 031 918

Useful Links

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