Specialist obesity care beyond the hospital

Children referred to specialist CEW care may be living with physical complications of severe obesity alongside emotional, behavioural and social challenges.

Newcastle’s service covers families across a large part of the North East and North Cumbria, making care delivery more complex than a sequence of hospital appointments.

The Trust therefore describes a model that works across outpatient clinics, hospital wards, the home and community settings, with support tailored to each child and family.

This makes continuity, accessibility and family engagement important parts of the pathway.

Newcastle’s Children’s Health Psychology service works as part of the CEW multidisciplinary team.

Its public pathway describes support for:

NHS England currently lists Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust as a CEW spoke within the North East and Yorkshire network.

The service itself covers Newcastle, Durham, Gateshead, Sunderland, North Cumbria, Northumberland and both North and South Tyneside, with families in the south of the region referred to the Middlesbrough CEW service.

The pathway is described by the trust as a regional tertiary referral service, accepting referrals from a secondary care general paediatrician who remains responsible for the child while they wait and after discharge.

Newcastle’s CEW model already extends specialist care beyond conventional outpatient appointments.

Evira adds another home-based layer around that approach.

Connected measurements give families and clinicians an ongoing view of progress, while digital communication creates another way to maintain contact between scheduled interactions.

Newcastle’s public pathway makes clear that severe childhood obesity is managed across physical health, nutrition, emotional wellbeing, behaviour, social circumstances and family life.

Much of that journey happens outside hospital.

A treatment model that already works across home, community, school, online and hospital settings creates a natural role for digital support that connects those interactions over time.

Evira extends visibility and communication around the pathway while the multidisciplinary team remains responsible for specialist care.