We are delighted to have been chosen as local travel company, Stanley Travel’s first Charity of the Year.

Director Andrew Scott and son Gavin are running the Great North Run for Heel & Toe and the family-run business is also supporting us by selling our Competition Tickets on their day trips and Lucky Cities Cards on holiday trips.  The Heel & Toe team are really looking forward to working with Andrew and the Stanley Travel team over the coming year.

American children’s author LeeAnn Piermont Camut has written her second children’s book named ‘Toe Jam’ and dedicated the book to 2 charities including Heel & Toe.

The book is available from Amazon.com from £5.92 and is suitable for ages 6 months to 4 years old.

Click below to view the trailer for Children’s Book ‘Toe Jam’.

Toe Jam Book Trailer

An Introduction to the Charity

The ladies at the Golf Association have been a fantastic support to the charity over the years but this donation couldn’t come at a better time. We send a huge thank you to Captain Marion Griffiths and the team for their generousity and look forward to seeing them at our Annual Charity Golf Day.

Heel & Toe Childrens Charity provides free therapy to children with Cerebral Palsy, Dyspraxia and any other movement condition. This is provided through a system of learning called Conductive Education. Any child can benefit and parents/carers are encouraged to take an active role in their own development.

Children and parents learn new ways to overcome problems with their movement, enabling them to be more active and live more independent lives. Children are proud of their own achievements, which increases confidence and self-esteem.

Please browse our website to understand how you can make use of our free services, help or how you could support our charity.

Youngsters with the condition have been encouraged to play specially-written Nintendo Wii games to help develop muscle control and coordination in their hands.

The Limbs Alive project, operated at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, invited 10 families to trials. Games differ to those available commercially as they are not as fast paced and complicated.

Research has shown that children are then encouraged to use their weaker hand and there is an improvement in co-ordination.

Occupational therapist Janice Pearse scooped the national Rompa Quality of Life award 2009 for her contribution towards the project, funded by charity the Children’s Foundation.

Janice said: “The award is a great achievement for the Limbs Alive project and the cash prize will help us continue our research to develop more games. The children very much enjoy the games and this form of therapy is really seeing results.” Byron Patterson, an 11-year-old pupil at Denbigh Community Primary School in Howden, is part of a small group taking part in the trials and plays games for about half an hour every night.

Mum Wendy, 31, said: “He can do this and play and receive his therapy at the same time not realising that he’s doing it. That’s the good thing about it, that he’s exercising without having to think about it

SEEING babies trying to get to grips with sitting up, crawling or taking those tentative first steps is one of the joys of parenthood.
But for the mums and dads of children with cerebral palsy, those milestones are far-off goals which may never be achieved.

That is why centres like County Durham’s Heel and Toe, supported by The Children’s Foundation, are so important for helping babies with the condition.

“We’re still adjusting to everything being different from how we expected,” says podiatrist Laura Cowap, 36, who is mother to Lois, 19 months.

“You expect your baby is going to be one way and when you get that diagnosis everything changes. But we’re still smiling.”

Laura and her partner, Dean, 47, live in Chester-le-Street, County Durham. They were given their daughter’s diagnosis in November 2008 when she was five months old. Since discovering Heel and Toe, Laura has seen Lois’s development really come on.

Based at a centre in Spennymoor, it teaches parents how to help their children through exercise sessions and how to cope with everyday life.

The work Heel and Toe do is a lifeline to parents at a loss as to how to help their children and gives them access to a valuable support network of other mums and dads.

Laura and Dean knew there were problems with Lois, their only child. She was born 19 weeks early and kept in the special care baby unit for two months.

Understandably they were distraught at her diagnosis but, Laura says, “life goes on and we love our daughter”.
“Lois is amazing really. She’s got spasticity in both arms and legs, but now she’s getting there with her development and we make sure we give her lots of affection and attention.”

The children who attend Heel and Toe have a more severe form of cerebral palsy and the classes, based on conductive education, help them to improve their muscle strength and mental development.
Laura says: “Our experiences have been really positive and Lois has come on so much since we’ve been to Heel and Toe.
“Knowing I’m doing something to really help her is so valuable.”

The Children’s Foundation’s Regional Small Grants Panel recently gave £950 to the group.
The panel, which meets three times a year, has awarded nearly £200,000 to organisations since it was set up in 1993 and provides a lifeline to community projects in the North East.
Heel and Toe used the grant to buy equipment including floor frames, a balance bench and sensory kits.
These are used every day to work with the 40 children who visit the centre.

Paul Martinson, 33, a personal trainer at Slaley Hall, and his wife Gill, 36, live in Shotley Bridge, County Durham. Their daughter Esmee is 15 months old.
They were told Esmee had cerebral palsy in March last year.
From in utero they knew their new baby was going to have some problems.
She was diagnosed with a rare congenital condition called Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula (TOF), which means she had difficulty breathing from birth.
She had to go through a series of operations – the first at just six hours old.
Paul and Gill were told on a few occasions she may not make it and advised that if they wanted her baptized they should do it immediately.
Gill recalls: “She was minutes away from complete organ failure.
“We went through quite a few emotions in hospital, it was a very difficult time.”
Gradually Esmee recovered from her traumatic start and her parents were told they could take her home. But the trauma she suffered had left its mark and the couple were told she had cerebral palsy.
Gill says: “We were devastated.”
Paul adds: “From then on our world changed.”
Heel and Toe is a great support for Gill and gives great care to Esmee.
Gill says: “It is teaching us what we can do because it is a way of life bringing up a child with cerebral palsy.
“We have learned exercises we can do with her and we are learning a lot of it is about repetition.
“Since coming here there’s definitely been a huge, huge improvement.”
The support Gill gets when she visits Heel and Toe is also very important.
She explains: “Everybody’s situation is different, but here we have got some kind of common ground.
“Nobody in our family has cerebral palsy so coming here has been a really big help.”

Leanne Harker, 29, is mum to Max, three. She lives in Oakenshaw, County Durham, with her partner Mark Austin, 29, an engineer.
Max was born at 23 weeks. His twin didn’t survive and as a result of complications with such an early birth Max was left with cerebral palsy.
Leanne recalls: “We were told before we left hospital that Max had cerebral palsy.
“I’m now his full-time carer. It is hard – there are lots of different things you have to do to look after him.
“I found there wasn’t much available on the NHS. They would give you a leaflet showing exercises but here you get demonstrations of how to do them.
“I felt very alone when I began and a bit at sea, but Heel and Toe really has been a lifeline.”
The group only opened in October 2008, but as the charity’s director Doug Long says, there is a huge call for it.
He says: “The NHS don’t fund us and it costs us £37 a hour to do what we do, but we do it completely free of charge for parents and I think that’s important.
“We are the only centre in the North East which does what we do, in an area with 1,600 children who have cerebral palsy.”
Heel and Toe relies on donations from places like The Children’s Foundation, sponsors and fundraising.
The more money they get, the more hours they can devote to helping children like Esmee, Lois and Max, and their parents.
As Paul Martinson says: “It has given us a bit of hope really that we can do things to help her.
“We know it is not going to “fix” her, but it is going to help her.”
Gill adds: “When I went with her to some baby groups near where we live we’d get looks from the other mums who were there.
“I felt really isolated, but I’m comfortable here and so is Esmee.”

To sign up to the Happy, Healthy, Safe appeal, contact Hannah Jackson at The Children’s Foundation on 0191 282 0897, email hannah.jackson3@nuth.nhs.uk, or download a form from www.thechildrensfoundation.co.uk
HEEL and Toe is a regional charity based at The Meadows Spennymoor, providing conductive education to teach children with cerebral palsy and other motor disorders how to cope with everyday life, through meaningful one-on-one and/or group sessions.

Conductive education is a system of rehabilitation. To achieve this the brain utilises its re-organisational ability.
This is appropriate for conditions where disease or damage to the central nervous system affects the person’s ability to control movement.

Conductive education benefits:
Promotes strong development of muscles and bones, thus eliminating the need for some surgery
Improves social/verbalisation skills
Improves mobility, which in turn allows the child to live more independently
Builds self-esteem because the child experiences success on a daily basis
Develops physical stamina and independence
It is a fundamental principle Heel and Toe no child is denied conductive education due to lack of money.
If you have a child who suffers from cerebral palsy or a motor disorder Heel and Toe provides sessions for children from 12 months to 16 years old.
Sessions include: group sessions, one-on-one, school-time sessions, after school sessions, holiday camps and Saturday morning sessions.
Please feel free to contact one of the team on local rates 08443 350 512, or e-mail info@heelandtoe.org.uk, or visit www.heelandtoe.org.uk

What is cerebral palsy?

CEREBRAL palsy (CP) is not a disease or an illness. It is the description of a physical impairment that affects movement. The movement problems vary from barely noticeable to extremely severe.

How does it happen?

Cerebral palsy is most commonly the result of failure of a part of the brain to develop. This is sometimes because of a blocked blood vessel, complications in labour, extreme prematurity or illness just after birth. Infections during pregnancy, or infancy and early childhood, eg meningitis or encephalitis, can also cause cp.

What are the effects?

The main effect is difficulty in movement. Many people with CP are hardly affected, others have problems walking, feeding, talking or using their hands.
Sometimes other parts of the brain are also affected, resulting in sight, hearing, perception and learning difficulties. Of those affected, between a quarter and a third of children and adolescents, and about a 10th of adults, are also affected by epilepsy.
People with CP often have difficulty controlling their movement and facial expressions. This does not necessarily mean their mental abilities are impaired. Some are of higher than average intelligence, others have moderate or severe learning difficulties.

How prevalent is cerebral palsy?

Improvements in maternity services and neonatal care have meant that fewer babies develop CP as a result of lack of oxygen (from difficulties at birth) or jaundice, but they have also meant that more babies with very low birth weights survive. These babies are more likely to have CP.
In recent years there has been a slight increase in the proportion of children who have cp; currently about one in every 400 is affected.

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