Two years. 425 people. One promise.
Today we are publishing Leo’s Impact Report 2024–2026, and I want to tell you what is in it and why it matters.
Leo’s exists because of what happens to families in the moments no one prepares them for: a scan that goes quiet, a baby taken to the neonatal unit, a pregnancy after loss that feels like walking a tightrope, or the strange silence of coming home from hospital to a life that looks nothing like the one you planned.
I know that silence. I founded Leo’s as a NICU and surviving-twin parent, in the thick of a complex medical journey, and so does every member of our team. For eight years our work has been about one thing: making sure no family in our community faces those moments alone, and letting them know “we’ve got you”.
This report covers two years of growth, from September 2024 to April 2026. It brings together our work funded by BBC Children in Need, Slater and Gordon Lawyers and the Pilgrim Trust, and our Family Hubs commissioned services, which were home to our baby loss, pregnancy after loss and Motherhood groups. More than that, it is the first time we have been able to show, with the same clinical measures the NHS uses, what actually changed for the families who trusted us.
What two years looks like in numbers
Between September 2024 and April 2026, Leo’s supported 425 people across Teesside and the North East: 314 parents (288 mums and 26 dads, supported in their own right) and 111 babies and children. That support added up to 4,719 recorded contacts, 337 group sessions and events, and more than 20 programmes.
A few of the figures we are proudest of:
- No wait for first contact. Bereaved families hear from us while they are still in hospital. Parents consistently tell us this is the single most important thing we do. The typical wait for NHS counselling after loss is 12 to 18 months.
- 38% of the people we support are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, more than double the local rate of 17.6%. In our Motherhood Project that rises to around 70%.
- 100% of families surveyed would recommend Leo’s, and 100% Strongly Agree they felt heard, supported and safe.
- A 19-point average reduction in PTSD scores, almost double the 10-point threshold for clinically significant change.
- No family in our care escalated to crisis services during the reporting period.
Monthly activity more than doubled over the two years, from around 100 contacts a month when the report begins to a peak of 382 in November 2025. Families came to us from six hospitals, from James Cook in Middlesbrough to the RVI in Newcastle, and from Middlesbrough’s TS1 to TS4 postcodes, which include wards in the most deprived 10% nationally.
Four pathways, one promise
Leo’s was funded to close four gaps that families in Teesside kept falling through: inconsistent psychological support after pregnancy and baby loss; inequalities in maternity and early years outcomes for marginalised communities; isolation after neonatal discharge; and a lack of specialist support in pregnancy after loss or neonatal care. Our four pathways answer each of them.
Perinatal Baby Loss. Over two years we supported 97 bereaved families across Middlesbrough and Redcar & Cleveland through 555 sessions: peer support from the hospital bedside onwards, trauma therapy, counselling, advocacy and memory making. Where measured, 100% of Family Hubs baby loss clients were no longer symptomatic of anxiety, depression or PTSD at discharge, and every parent who repeated a trauma assessment showed a meaningful reduction. The report tells Shaun’s story: a dad who came to us after losing his daughter Willow, carrying grief, birth trauma and a weight of self-blame, and who by discharge was planning skin-to-skin and cutting the cord at the birth of their next baby.
Pregnancy After Loss. We supported 32 parents through the anxiety of a pregnancy after loss, including several high-risk pregnancies alongside PTSD symptoms and complex safeguarding needs. Every one of those families took their babies home, and 100% of parents surveyed Strongly Agree with all seven of our outcome statements. We also launched our Rainbow Baby Group, which every parent surveyed rated Excellent. Shannon’s story runs through this section: she came to us after the loss of her son Finton, found out she was pregnant again weeks later, and finished her time with us with the trauma, anxiety and low mood she arrived with eased completely.
Community Neonatal Support. We supported 45 neonatal families, with babies born from 23 weeks and 5 days and NICU stays of 11 to 127 days. 100% of neonatal families reported a benefit to their mental health. Home visits matter most here: we regularly work with parents who cannot leave their front door after bringing a baby home from neonatal care. Through BBC Children in Need, 18 babies and young children aged 0 to 4 received early intervention, and 16 of 17 progressed in their developmental play goals, two-thirds significantly. Finlay, born at 28 weeks with Down syndrome, went from just beginning to crawl to walking independently with our support.
Motherhood Project. Our flagship family programme, and the place where many families who would never approach a “baby loss charity” first meet us. 190 families took part, 100% of children met the developmental goals their parents identified, and every feedback form rated us Excellent or Good across all 19 development and wellbeing domains. You will not find named stories from this programme in the report. Many of these families live in close-knit communities where being seen to need support carries stigma, and keeping them safe matters more to us than telling their stories.
Culturally safe support runs through every pathway rather than sitting in a separate service. It means building connection and felt safety, respecting culture and religion, learning from the community, and working around barriers of language and stigma. We have built lasting trust with Pakistani, African and other communities that statutory perinatal services have historically failed to reach.
Measured like an NHS service, delivered for £738 a family
Few charities of our size use validated clinical measures. We do. Leo’s measures mental health with the same tools used across the NHS: the PCL-5 for post-traumatic stress, the PHQ-9 for depression, the GAD-7 for anxiety and the DASS-21. We have now embedded WEMWBS and the Neuroception of Psychological Safety Scale for before-and-after measurement, so we can show how safe families feel in our care, not just how unwell they were when they arrived.
Across 137 completed clinical assessments, over half of the parents assessed for trauma scored in the severe PTSD range on arrival, and one in four came to us with an existing mental health diagnosis. At follow-up, parents with moderate to severe scores showed consistent, meaningful reductions across all four tools. Parents moved from severe PTSD into the sub-threshold range, from severe depression to none, and from moderate anxiety to minimal.
In the year to September 2025, Leo’s spent £199,220 on its charitable work and supported 270 families: an average of £738 per family. That covers everything from a single peer support call to two years of home visits, trauma therapy and advocacy. A single course of NHS perinatal mental health care costs £1,500 to £3,000 per patient. Our care costs a quarter to a half of that, is free at the point of need, and is delivered by a team of six, all of whom have lived experience of neonatal care, loss, birth trauma or perinatal illness.
We invested £13,497 in staff training in 2024/25, and the team gained 22 specialist courses and qualifications between 2024 and 2026. Every member of the team is trained in birth trauma care, which means parents like Shannon and Shaun could access trauma therapy within the relationship they already trusted, without a separate referral and another wait.
Honest challenges, and what we are doing differently
An impact report that only shows the good news is not much use to anyone, so the report also sets out what has been hard.
Funding constraints reduced our in-house counselling, so we had to refer families elsewhere when many wanted to stay with Leo’s, and referrals to our neonatal services have fallen since we lost our counselling and trauma therapies. Fundraising and donations fell significantly, as they did for many charities. Our Perinatal Baby Loss service was not re-commissioned beyond 2026, following changes to the Department for Education’s Best Start for Life guidance, and we made the difficult decision to step away from commissioned work for our Motherhood service while we seek other funders to continue it.
In response, we have launched Her Journey, funded by the Pilgrim Trust, for young women aged 16 to 25 in Teesside affected by pregnancy or baby loss, pregnancy after loss and neonatal care. We have a new website and brand, designed and donated by YellowBox Marketing. We have built a trading arm, NICU Neuroscience, whose neuroscience-based training for professionals working with neonatal families completed its first cohort in 2026, with students from the UK, Ireland, the USA and South Africa, and every course sold supports Leo’s work. And we are developing a funding strategy that combines trading income and grants, so more of our work is protected from funding cycles.
Families have told us clearly what they want: in-house counselling and trauma therapies back in every service, more in-person sessions, an infertility peer support worker, and support that is not cut off by age or postcode. Our priorities for the next chapter follow directly from that:
- Restore our neonatal trauma service, with virtual and in-person therapy options, to bring back our full wrap-around service
- Secure funding for wider neonatal, baby loss and pregnancy after loss support
- Reinstate our Motherhood service
- Secure funding for occupational therapy
- Grow our own sources of income
This is what you made possible
Every figure in this report exists because funders, commissioners and partners backed a lived-experience-led model before the evidence existed. The evidence now exists. Thank you to BBC Children in Need, the Department for Education’s Family Hubs programme with Middlesbrough Council and Redcar and Cleveland Council, the Woodsmith Foundation, Slater and Gordon Lawyers, the Pilgrim Trust and Tees Valley Peer Network, and to YellowBox Marketing for our website, brand and films.
And to every family who trusted us at the hardest moment of their lives, and especially those who shared their stories in this report: you are why we do this.
One mother told us: “Leo’s has been my lifeline, I genuinely don’t know if I would have survived the loss of my baby if it wasn’t for them.” That is the number that matters.
Read the full report: Leo’s Impact Report 2024–2026 (PDF)
If you are a commissioner, funder or potential partner and want to talk about what comes next, email lottie@leosneonatal.org. If you are a family who needs us, you can refer yourself at leosneonatal.org, or ask a professional to refer on your behalf.