Health and Wellbeing - For Every Family

Introduction

In this section we look at family health, wellness and ways to improve your own health and wellbeing focusing on a range of topics including:

Mental Health
Smoking
Alcohol and drugs
Sexual Health

Substances

How alcohol can affect you

Alcohol can impact your:

mood
energy levels
motivation

We often drink because we want to change the way we feel.

Growing evidence suggests that alcohol can have a negative effect on our mental health and physical health, with guidelines suggesting that we shouldn’t drink more than 14 units a week. This is around 6 pints of lager, or 7 glasses of wine.

If you have concerns look out for the following patterns:

using alcohol to block how you feel
using alcohol to help you to sleep
using alcohol to fill time
drinking alcohol more regularly
drinking more and more alcohol

For facts about alcohol, visit NHS: Alcohol.

If you are concerned about your alcohol intake, contact your GP for support.

To find your local GP visit https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-GP

Or, contact the stadultrecoveryservice.co.uk, which is specifically for adults affected by alcohol misuse who live in South Tyneside.

Support for drugs or substance misuse

If you have a problem with drugs, there’s lots of of addiction services that can help.

If you have a problem with drugs, you have the same entitlement to care as anyone coming to the NHS for help with any other health problem.

With the right help and support it’s possible for you to get drug free and stay that way.

Where to get help for drugs

A good place to start is to visit your GP.

Your GP can discuss your concerns with you
assess the nature of your problems
help you choose the most appropriate treatment and
might offer to treat you, or refer you to your local specialist drug service.

Many drug treatment services accept self-referrals.

If you’re not comfortable talking to your GP, you might be able to approach your local drug treatment service directly.

Alcoholic Anonymous

Find drug and alcohol services

South Tyneside Alcohol Recovery Service

Mental Health

Mental health is just as important as our physical health.

Our mental health is how we are feeling inside and emotionally.

It can affect your ability to:

Work
Study
Do the things you need and want to do
Get along with others
Look after yourself
Talking about your feelings and mental health can help.

If you are concerned about how you are feeling, there are lots of services that can help.

Qwell

Qwell provide free online support and counselling for people over the age of 18 years.

Website: https://www.qwell.io/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Qwell.io

Other support available

South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust

SHOUT

Mental Health Services

Kooth

Advice for parents

Papyrus HOPELINEUK

Together in a crisis Sunderland and South Tyneside – Mental Health Concern

Overview – Postnatal depression

Sexual Health

Sexual health is an important part of your physical and mental health as well as your emotional and social wellbeing

It’s important to take care of your sexual health including talking about sex and relationships with your loved ones

Local information and support

Sexual health services in South Tyneside are free, confidential and available to everyone regardless of sex, age, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.

They aim to make sure that people are given the information and skills they need to make informed choices about their sexual and reproductive health.

South Tyneside sexual health services provide:

advice on sexual health, relationships and family planning
free contraception
free testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
free HIV testing
free emergency hormonal contraception (the morning-after pill) for young people
Services might be delivered by nurses, specialist doctors, your local/regular doctor, pharmacists or outreach workers.

Not all service providers offer the full range of sexual health services as outlined above, and it’s always best to check what’s on offer in advance.

To find service available in South Tyneside Information and services from South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust Sexual Health Service

LGBTQ+

We want you to feel proud of your own identity and accept who you are.

We understand this is not always easy and we want you to feel supported:

Humankind: LGBTQ+ North East is the local LGBTQ+ support service offering friendly and practical support such as: one-to-one support sessions, sexual health guidance, fun activities, support accessing clinical gender identity services and more.

Information about national LGBTQ+ services can be found here.

South Tyneside Sexual Health Service

Contraception Choices

Smoking

Support to quit smoking

You can get free, flexible, friendly support to help you quit.

Support includes:

Specialist one to one support and advice.
Nicotine replacement therapy.
You are three times more likely to quit with our support.

There are lots of reasons to quit smoking.

For information about the benefits of quitting, visit Quit smoking – NHS (www.nhs.uk)

Ask for support

You can ask for help for yourself or for someone you know by speaking to a smoking adviser:

Phone: 0191 424 7300

Email: public.health@southtyneside.gov.uk

Online and digital support

Free personal quit plan: https://www.nhs.uk/better-health/quit-smoking/personal-quit-plan/

Call the free Smokefree National Helpline to speak to a trained, expert adviser: 0300 123 1044

Oral Health

South Tyneside and Sunderland Community Dental Service provide a full range of dental treatment for patients of all ages whose complex needs mean they have difficulty in accessing general dental services.

We aim to provide high quality dental care locally for patients with a wide range of individual needs. This includes individuals who are medically compromised or have mental health issues; adults and children with severe learning disabilities or physical disabilities and children with behavioral management issues.

For more information, visit: https://www.stsft.nhs.uk/services/dental-services

A Parents’ Guide to oral health and dental care for children with a learning disability, autism or both

Click here to view

Looking after your child’s oral health

Babies should be registered with the dentist as soon as first teeth appear and regular visits should be encouraged. It is important to start brushing your baby’s teeth as soon as they appear. You can find out more about looking after your baby’s teeth:

Quick Links

Keep Warm, Keep Well Visit Site

Healthy weight and physical activity Visit Site

NHS Health Check Visit Site

Greenhope Oasis Allotments – Neca (https://neca.co.uk/greenhope-oasis-allotments/)

Greenhope Oasis Allotments (NECA) Visit Site

Find drug and alcohol support near you | FRANK (https://www.talktofrank.com/get-help/find-support-near-you)

Find drug and alcohol support near you Visit Site

Anxiety UK Visit Site

Who we are - Escape Intervention (https://www.escapeintervention.org.uk/)

Escape Intervention Services Visit Site

Home | Compact For Race Equality South Tyneside (https://www.crest.uk.com/)

CREST Visit Site

WHIST – Women's Health in South Tyneside (https://www.whist.org.uk/)

Women's Health in South Tyneside (WHiST) Visit Site

Activities

Learning With Play 0 – 4 Years

This group promotes quality time and learning through play, as well as an opportunity for you to access information and advice from professionals.

HENRY Healthy Family Right From The Start

Henry is an 8-week, programme to give babies and young children 0 to 5 years a good start. The programme helps the whole family to adopt a healthier lifestyle, creating more opportunities to play with your children, and helps parents to support their children’s health and social development. HENRY workshops include understanding behaviour, looking after

Early Words Together (3 – 4 years)

A 6-week programme to help families to support their child’s communication and development. Receive free books and spend quality time with your child.

KalmaYoga (5+)

We have teamed up with KalmaBaby South Tyneside to bring you a course of KalmaBaby Yoga sessions. Make yoga and massage fun with serious developmental benefits. Yoga inspired stretches with child in order to promote healthy and deeper sleep patterns, suppleness in joints and muscles, co-ordination and gross motor skills. Who the sessions are for:

HENRY Preparing for Parenthood (Antenatal)

A 6-week programme to help expectant parents develop a healthy lifestyle for themselves and their baby whilst preparing for birth and caring for a new baby.

Starting Solids

An interactive session to support you to wean your child.

Little explorers

Little Explorers is a 6-week programme for toddlers led by Early Years Practitioners who will provide you with guidance and support to use in your own home. The programme focuses on communication, health and wellbeing, safety, development milestones and leaning through play.

Baby Explorers

For ages conception to mobile – a programme of 6 sessions. Focus is on bonding and attachment, communication, health and wellbeing, safety, development milestones and learning through play. Booking essential – please contact the family hub directly.

Next on 21 Jan 2025 4:00pm

Williby Rocs (5+)

Williby Rocs aim to increase community inclusion to develop and use local green space for play, connection, therapy and learning. We want to provide inspiring and engaging environmental education sessions to all. They aim to provide regular interactions with nature to help build confidence and self-belief, respect and wonder for the world around us and

Next on 22 Jan 2025 9:30am

Little Hearoes

A pre-school group for deaf babies and young children which gives them the opportunity to play and learn with other deaf children, to develop early communication, listening and social skills through songs and play as well as encouraging curiosity through a wide range of creative and explorative activities. Parents and carers will have the opportunity

Next on 21 Jan 2025 1:30pm

Learning With Play 0 to 1 Year

A play session for children from birth to 1 year that promotes quality time for parents / carers and their young children.

Next on 23 Jan 2025 9:30am

Triple P Babies

Triple P Baby is an evidence-based programme which consist of four sessions, followed up by four individualised sessions. Trained Early years Practitioners will support parents with the transition to parenthood and the first year with baby, offer the opportunity to find out about sensitive and responsive parenting and take part in activities to develop positive

Next on 24 Jan 2025 1:30pm

GroBrain

GroBrain Baby course is for parents of babies pre-birth to 12 months and consists of four sessions, lasting around 2 hours each. The course focusses on bonding and brain development, and the vital part parents and carers play in ‘wiring up’ the connections in their baby’s brain in the first 1001 critical days of life.

Next on 27 Jan 2025 9:30am

Solihull Parenting Group

A programme based on the Solihull approach that supports parents and carers to understand their child’s behaviour in the context of their development and child-parent relationship.

Next on 27 Jan 2025 1:15pm

First Words Together

Enjoy exploring rhymes, stories and games to play with your child once a week for five weeks.

Next on 22 Jan 2025 4:00pm

Science Buddies (5+)

Science Buddies provide Fun, 1 hour hands on sessions with new experiments each week! Gooey slime, exploding volcanoes, amazing rockets, potion magic and colourful bath bombs are just some of the fun experiments for everyone to use their investigative skills.

Next on 21 Jan 2025 1:00pm