The Children’s Cancer run is one of CCN’s many important fundraising initiatives, the 2026 run is on Sun 17th May at Newcastle Racecourse
Enhancing Impact with Children’s Cancer North
Over the past few months, Goodlabs has had the privilege of working with the brilliant team at Children’s Cancer North, a charity whose mission is simple and powerful: making life better for children with cancer. They walk alongside families facing one of the most difficult situations imaginable, offering support at a time when life can feel overwhelming.
Their work is compassionate, complex, and far-reaching — and they approached us because they wanted to strengthen the way they monitor, understand, and communicate their impact to the many people and organisations who support them.
Children’s Cancer North invests generously across three major areas of work:
Direct support for children and families, which includes financial, emotional, and practical help throughout treatment. This also covers the charity’s commitment to funding specialist workers on the childhood cancer wards at the Great North Children’s Hospital in Newcastle, ensuring families are supported by skilled professionals every day.
Raising awareness and building a community of care, helping the public and key groups better understand childhood cancer and the challenges families face, whilst nurturing a supportive community around them.
Investing in groundbreaking research, including their long-standing and significant support for work at the Wolfson Childhood Cancer Research Centre in Newcastle, helping to drive forward understanding and treatment of childhood cancers.
Building a clearer picture of impact
Our task was to help the charity bring these strands together into a comprehensive theory of change — an end-to-end picture of how their work contributes to making life better for children with cancer.
We began by mapping the landscape: the pressures families face, the challenges clinical teams work under, and the broader issues in treatment, research, and public understanding. From there, we worked with the charity to articulate how their activities address these issues, and crucially, how their work leads to specific outcomes, such as:
Relieving the financial, emotional, and practical pressures on families during treatment.
Ensuring children benefit from the support of specialist ward staff who provide essential day-to-day help.
Attracting talented young professionals to work in children’s cancer research here in the North East.
Supporting research that moves us closer to better treatments and improved understanding of childhood cancers.
Practical tools for real-time learning
We also guided the process of developing a set of practical tools and feedback mechanisms for gathering clearer, more immediate insight. These allow families, ward-based workers, and research partners to reflect on what difference the charity’s support is making, and where further improvements can be made.
And this work doesn’t stop with internal learning. We’re also supporting the charity to refresh and restructure their annual impact reporting, helping them tell a clearer, richer, and more coherent story about the difference they make across their three core areas of work.
The aim is to build a cohesive impact methodology that supports learning and decision-making behind the scenes, as well as communicating achievements more effectively to supporters, partners, and the wider public.
Laying foundations for the future
Working with Children’s Cancer North has been a privilege. Their dedication to their mission shines through everything they do, and their willingness to reflect, adapt, and enhance their impact speaks volumes about their commitment to families across the region.
Gaining real-time insight into positive change in such a complex area is never straightforward. But by strengthening their systems and sharpening their understanding of impact, Children’s Cancer North is laying foundations that will help them remain resilient, focused, and effective long into the future.
We’re delighted to have supported them on this journey.