Children in intensive care are benefiting from a pioneering project that is aimed to reduce the amount of the time they need to recover.

The Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow is the first in the UK to establish the Move on Ventilation Early programme (MoVE) programme, which encourages youngsters to get active as early as possible in their recovery.

The scheme helps patients reduce the amount of the time they need to spend in bed and also helps them to start breathing on their own again more quickly.

When two-year-old Iain Norrie was born with holes in his heart, his parents Iain and Nicola knew it wouldn't be an easy journey.

Baby Iain was taken to surgery on the day of his birth and has been back several times since to repair the medical issues.

While recovering on the ward after an operation, Iain caught a virus, extending his recovery time.

His dad Iain said: "When he was born we knew he was going to have problems with his heart.

"On one of the operations, they realised it hadn't gone as well as we had hoped, so he had to go back just a few days later.

"After that one he was really ill, with different infections and things like that."

His mum Nicola added: "There was a day about six weeks ago and literally his leg was just a bone because he'd been so poorly and lost so much weight.

"You're looking at your baby and thinking 'Oh my goodness how are we going to make this better, how is he going to get stronger again?'

"And now, six weeks on he's here and is as well as he's going to be for now.

"He's got his little chunky legs back and a week chunky face and I'm sure that part of that is due to the outstanding care from the hospital and all the staff.

"But the MoVE programme has made such a significant difference and for that we're very grateful."

MoVE aims to give all patients in paediatric intensive care a form of activity as soon as they are medically stable.

This programme of rehabilitation helps patients to be released as early as possible from the wards.

The physiotherapy offered helps not just the children, but their parents too.

Nicola said that "It's made an incredible difference to Iain's recovery.

"The physiotherapists would come round every day and do their assessments and set goals.

"The goals are really important for the parents as it gives us something to work towards. It made so much of a difference, knowing we could get Iain up and out to play."

Jenna Hills, one of the physiotherapists, said: "Were really wanting to empower the families to carry out these activities with their children and do exactly that, take away the fear from the fact that they're in intensive care.

"What we've proven over the last six months is we can carry out this activity, despite the winter months being really busy.

"It might be that we don't affect their intensive care stay but the stay afterwards.

"We are already seeing that with some of our children that despite a prolonged stay in intensive care they are getting a very quick turnaround on the ward because we've already rehabilitated them to a point."

It's early days yet but the team has already been approached by other children's hospitals to learn from their work so far.