Changing Futures North East

Changing Futures North East believes the relationships in our lives matter! They really matter. A variety of strong, healthy relationships within and outside of the family protect us for harm and help us thrive. Conflicted, dysfunctional or damaged relationships can have a huge impact on individuals, families and organisations, and prevent people from feeling and doing well, and reaching their potential. Changing Futures North East thinks this common sense notion needs to be at the heart of public policy and at the heart of the practice of the agencies, staff and volunteers who work with children, families and communities. Consequently, the Charity seeks to improve children’s lives in three distinct ways:

Developing and delivering services to support individuals to have and to maintain healthier relationships Developing and delivering services to help couples and families have and maintain healthier relationships Supporting and enabling organisations to have better relationships

We provide services including couples interventions (Moving on for separated and intact couples; mediation; therapy), family communications work, mentoring, support for looked after children, and lead Hartlepool’s Healthy Relationships partnership to help other agencies build a strong couple relationship focus that enables more effective outcomes for families and for children. The help we offer has been evaluated to show reductions in parental conflict, improvements in family communication, improved parenting alliance, improved mental health and emotional wellbeing. We use evidence based tools to evaluate outcomes.  Research evidence shows that improving relationships within families, in particular parental relationships, has a huge impact on children’s outcomes - including how well they do in education, how they go on to manage their own relationships as adults, and their health and employment outcomes.