Tilly, 12, gets the bionic hands she dreamed of

A 12-year-old girl from County Durham is finally living her lifelong dream of having two functioning hands.

Tilly Lockey was only 15 months old when she had both of her hands amputated, after contracting a severe type of meningitis. She also had to have her toes amputated.

Having lived for most of her life without hands, Tilly said it was a feeling she was still getting used to.

She said: "It's really strange because I lost my hands when I was only 15 months old so I don't really remember having hands ever.

Tilly recently appeared on ITV's This Time Next Year with her mother Sarah Lockey. Her hope when she first appeared on the show was to get brand new hands.

Her mother Sarah said the new bionic hands she had were the ones they had always dreamed of.

"Technology has advanced so much now" she said. "For ages we just seemed to have a massive pause on kid's prosthetics there wasn't really any movement on their development.

"This kind of technology is all we ever dreamed of to get for Tilly. Just something that she could operate more easily, something lightweight and something where the fingers could move."

With her new hands Tilly is now looking ahead to the future and said she has hopes of becoming a fashion designer - and making bionic hands a fashion accessory.

She said: "In the future, the aim for these hands is that I really want to make them fashionable and I want to be in the top fashion shows."