Please join us for the fourth annual SUCCEED Tube Feeding Picnic. We will be celebrating Feeding Tube Awareness Week and launching our Tube Friendly Cafe initiative.
Bring a rug and your favourite formula, blended food and/or oral snacks. There are facilities on site and we’ll play games, have music and just hang out.
Where: Mortdale Community Centre (**new location**) 2b Boundary Rd MORTDALE NSW 2223
RSVP: Anyone touched by tube feeding a child is welcome. We would love to know numbers please so RSVP here. If your numbers change a bit on the day that’s ok!
Our vision is a world where children with feeding difficulties thrive.
Our mission is to help families celebrate and embrace mealtimes, however they choose to feed.
As the only evidence-based online resource by parents, for families of kids with complex feeding difficulties in Australia, this is the table where everyone is welcome.
The SuCCEED Study and ChildFeeding.org are working for change, so that every family knows the simple joy of sharing a meal, and every child thrives.
Choose any of our topics from the menu, or to jump right in click the button below!
Late July 2023 saw the world-first pilot of our Tube Training Course.
Parents have been telling SUCCEED for years about how much pressure there is on the (often) one adult in a family who knows how to tube-feed their child.
In 2018 two of the parent co-founders of SUCCEED presented an idea to source some training mannequins and set up a short course to teach more adults how to tube feed.
After years of fundraising and the generous support of Adam Rouilly and the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation as well as dozens of carers, clinicians and a research team led by Prof. Nick Hopwood, we were delighted and emotional to pilot this course.
The goal is to make a 2-hour hands-on workshop in tube feeding accessible to families around the country and the world, backed up by innovative, free online resources to make the leap into tube feeding as easy as possible.
While this course won’t be finished until 2024, we are working on the online videos and information right now – so please come back soon and check on our progress!
It doesn’t matter if you tube feed your children now or did so in the past. The Tube Feeding Picnic is open to everyone. Please come and meet other people who know what it’s like.
Prof. Nick Hopwood has been featured in an episode of the “Nourishing Matters to Chew On” podcast and he talks tube feeding, mealtimes and SUCCEED!
Nourishing Matters to Chew On is a podcast that takes its cue from big picture, healthy and sustainable food system agendas and digs in to explore what these change agendas mean for us here, in Australia. It looks at how we produce and enjoy food in a Climate Change future, as well as how we value the people, places and animals that nourish us.
The episode is free to listen to and available by clicking this link:
We have a massive “thank you” for Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation and the incredibly generous donors who joined us for the first online fundraising event.
Together, we raised an amazing $30,000 for SUCCEED!
We suggested three projects for funding, and we will be working with our team the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation to make a plan for these essential funds.
We won’t waste a single dollar, and we can promise that these donations will change the lives for children who tube feed, and their families.
At childfeeding.org we are often asked about blended tube feeding options for children. While blended tube feeds work very well for some children and families, they are not suitable for everyone. Whether or not to try blended tube feeds is an individual decision that should be made with your usual healthcare providers.
SUCCEED were incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to collaborate with UTS student group the NEU Collective. NEU Collective developed a brand toolkit for SUCCEED, including these three remarkable videos. Please watch and share!
If you’ve never seen a child being fed with a tube, that might be because families find it so hard to get out and about and end up staying at home, alone. This is precisely what we want to address.
We’ve listened to families and now we need your help to give children who tube-feed their play time back. Visit our fundraising page below to learn more about our plan, who it is for, and why it will work:
Please share this page, share your story or even donate what you can happily afford. Anything you can do has a huge impact for children who tube-feed, and their families.
We want to help children who tube-feed and their families experience the joy of mealtimes, play, physical activities, and celebrations with others.
We want families, friends and relatives of these children to feel comfortable and confident including children who tube-feed in everyday life.
By facilitating the education of family relatives, friendship groups, play groups and the wider community using these resources, the lives of these children, their siblings and parents will be greatly improved.
Can you help us raise $10,000 to help children who tube feed play, laugh and participate in our community just like any other child?
With the generous support of University of Technology Sydney we are raising money to create the first Australian research-informed public awareness campaign for children who tube-feed.
Who will benefit?
Parents have expressed through research they are frustrated and saddened to see their child excluded, and this often translates into their own social isolation as they lose connection with others. Siblings are often also impacted by default, when their brother or sister is not able to join in social activities.
Children who tube-feed will directly benefit as they will be less excluded from play, shared mealtimes and celebrations with others – and in turn will benefit from all the developmental, social and emotional value these activities offer.
Impact of project
We aim to change the quality of life of young children who need to use a feeding tube. We want them to be able to experience the joy of mealtimes, play, physical activities and celebrations with others.
Tube feeding is more common than many people think and can be needed for many reasons including low birth weight, insufficient weight gain, childhood cancer, autistic spectrum disorder, genetic disorders, recovery from surgery and so on.
Much like children who consume food orally, children who tube-feed also enjoy playing with friends, sharing mealtimes and participating in physical activities. These are just as important for their development and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately, too many children with feeding difficulties are excluded from these joys and miss out on the benefits they offer.
Outcomes of the project
Because tube feeding has so many different causes, it often falls through the cracks of existing health and charitable organisations.
We have undertaken research with families of children who tube-feed, and parents have consistently relayed the same message: that they have to constantly educate the people around them, that they find this difficult, but that it can make a huge difference to their children’s inclusion in play.
Wider research suggests exclusion is a result of stigma associated with a lack of understanding, and being afraid of what might happen to the child. Educating people on how to include children who tube-feed is likely to be impactful, as it is doubtful that they believe these children don’t deserve to be included.
How you can help
We imagine a world where a feeding tube isn’t a barrier to joining in meals, playing with friends, or celebrating with family and the wider community. We need your help to give playtime back to these children!
Visit our page today to learn more – and please, next time you sit down to eat a meal, please share our message!
The SuCCEED Tube Feeding Picnic is a time to come together as a community of people touched by tube feeding a child – family, friends, clinicians and researchers.
This year the picnic has been postponed due to COVID-19, but that’s no reason to feel alone. We are all in this together.
Watch and share this video with your family and friends. See our amazing families here playing, laughing, getting on with their days and bringing the joy back to mealtimes, no matter how they choose to feed.
We are very sorry to announce that the Tube Feeding Picnic 2020 has been POSTPONED due to COVID-19. It would not be safe or fun to bring everyone together and share a meal at this time.
Instead of meeting in person, we’d love to release a video of everyone bringing the joy back to mealtimes that we can all can watch at home on March 22nd.
Please send us a short video, photo or your best tip for joyous family mealtimes with a tube-fed child and if we receive enough we’ll make a fun, inspiring video to share on the day.
You can EMAIL us photos and tips, or UPLOAD videos securely to our Dropbox (no login required).
You can be anonymous or acknowledged by name (or nickname) at the end of the video.
Please thank our amazing volunteers
We had some great entertainment volunteering at the picnic and not only have some spent money booking transport and accommodation, they have also given up the chance to earn an income at smaller events.
Please take a second to send some love and thanks to these amazing people:
Thank you to every one of the approximately 100 people who turned up to our first ever picnic. The sun was shining, music played and we came together as a community around the incredible children and families who are at the heart of the SuCCEED Study.
A huge and special thank you to all our volunteer clinicians, entertainers, and photographers for making this such a special day. We could not have done this without you.
If you had professional photos with Kat Cvet please give her a few weeks to send out the link to them. We will update childfeeding.org with video and photos from the picnic once we have edited them all.
The message from the picnic was “you are not alone”. We look forward to walking the next steps, together.
the SuCCEED Study team
These were our picnic details. See you next year!
The FIRST EVER SuCCEED Tube Feeding Picnic 2019 was held at Hill Pavilion, Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday 31st March 2019 from 10am – 2pm.
There was child and tube-friendly entertainment generously donated by some wonderful performers:
