ACCIDENT and emergency rooms at Darlington Memorial Hospital are to become more child-friendly thanks to students at the town's College of Technology.
A children's waiting area will be transformed into a huge snakes and ladders game, designed by student Natalie Thompson.
The children's treatment room will become a jungle, painted by Sarah Laidler, while an adolescent room will be given the graffiti treatment by Wayne Chapman.
The designs were chosen after hospital staff asked art and design students at the college to help brighten up the rooms. The £500 cost will be paid for with money raised in memory of hospital porter Alec Austin, who died last year.
Department consultant Ola Afolabi said: "Hospital can be a very intimidating place for children and what the students have done will help calm them down.
"Looking at the walls will distract them, reduce their anxiety and help them relax so we can discern how much pain they are really in."
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