Who We Are
Who we are
Family Mental Fitness North East CIC is a community-based early intervention organisation working with children, young people, families and communities across Newcastle and the North East.
We believe children's wellbeing matters before difficulties reach crisis.
Our work creates practical, enjoyable opportunities for children and families to build positive relationships, develop confidence, play and learn, navigate everyday challenges and strengthen the connections and experiences that help them thrive.
Sometimes that looks like a wellbeing activity. Sometimes it looks like building, planting, playing, creating or simply spending positive time together.
Because mental fitness is built in ordinary moments too.
Our Role in Early Help
Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness.
Positive relationships, trusted adults, opportunities to play and learn, supportive communities, confidence, creativity and the ability to cope with everyday challenges can all contribute to children's wellbeing.
That's why our work starts earlier.
We provide community wellbeing and targeted early intervention, working alongside families, schools, health services, local authorities and community organisations.
Our role is complementary. We are not a crisis or specialist mental health service, but part of a wider network of support around children and families.
What We Offer
We deliver structured early intervention and wellbeing support across age groups, including:
- 1–1 therapeutic and wellbeing sessions
- small group regulation and wellbeing programmes
- sensory, creative and movement-based support
- family and intergenerational wellbeing sessions
- outdoor and community-based programmes
Support takes place in schools, community venues and local spaces, allowing people to access help in environments that feel safe, familiar and inclusive.
Our Approach: Better Together
Everything we do is guided by five foundations:
Safe · Calm · Create · Connect · Grow
Together they reflect some of the everyday experiences, relationships and opportunities that can support children and families to thrive.
SAFE
Trusted relationships, warmth, acceptance, inclusion and environments where children and families can feel secure and supported.
CALM
Developing the capacity to recognise, tolerate and recover from everyday stress and overwhelm, supported by co-regulation, predictable environments and strategies that work for the individual.
CREATE
Play, creativity, curiosity, expression and enjoyable learning — giving children opportunities to explore ideas, make choices and experience themselves as capable.
CONNECT
Positive relationships, belonging and supportive networks — with families, peers, trusted adults and the wider community.
GROW
Confidence, agency, self-worth, problem-solving and perseverance — learning through experience and developing the capacity to navigate challenge.
These aren't five separate interventions or a checklist for children to complete. They are the foundations we try to create around our work — whether we're running a targeted intervention, building a birdhouse, playing a board game or bringing families together in the community.
WHAT WE LOOK FOR
Across our programmes, we look for opportunities for children and families to:
- build and experience positive relationships and connection
- develop confidence, agency and self-worth
- practise coping with manageable frustration, challenge and uncertainty
- experience play, creativity and learning with enjoyment
- develop problem-solving, communication and perseverance
- identify and use people, places and strategies that help them feel safe and regulated
- experience positive shared interactions with parents, carers, peers and trusted adults
- strengthen the supportive relationships and networks around them
What this looks like will be different for every child, family and programme. Our aim isn't to manufacture a particular version of “wellbeing”, but to create environments and experiences in which positive development, relationships and resilience can be supported..
Our Purpose
Family Mental Fitness North East CIC exists to make preventative wellbeing and early intervention more accessible to children, families and communities.
As a Community Interest Company, we work for public benefit and reinvest our surplus into developing our provision and increasing access.
We believe children shouldn't have to reach crisis before their wellbeing matters — and that supporting mental health doesn't always need to begin with a problem.
It can begin with a relationship.
A safe place.
A shared activity.
A chance to try again.
A moment of belonging.
Better Together.