Circle’s West Lothian team have been busy recently. Staff have had the opportunity to undertake training in ‘Raising Children with Confidence’ and we look forward to delivering this package in partnership with the Health Improvement team in West Lothian. This will complement our ‘Living Life to the Full’ courses that are being planned for after the school holidays.
The team, along with our partners from West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service (WLDAS) have been trained in ‘Safe and Together’, which is being rolled out across West Lothian as the model for working with families affected by domestic abuse. A huge thank you to Alison Watson from NHS Addictions who spent the morning with us delivering this session.
We have also contributed to delivering Children Affected by Substance Misuse training and to a session on parenting on the Community Rehabilitation programme at the Cyrenians, where along with some sessions on parenting we took time to remember the joy of play!!
We continue in our partnership with the Whole Family Support Service which began in April, growing out of West Lothian Council’s Families Included Service and Supporting Families. We continue to be active members of this service. We were sorry to say goodbye to Melissa Murphy who left to social work pastures new but were delighted when Nicole Towler was able to join the team.
We promoted family support in West Lothian by hosting a stall in Livingston Centre where different services were able to promote what they did. We enticed people to the stall with a free prize draw, with thanks to Lidl and the partners on the stall for the many and varied prizes.
This summer we arranged a series of Family Fun Days throughout the holidays. We have met weekly for the past four weeks in the local parks and have played with bats and balls, been on the swings and roundabouts, had lots of chat and finished each session with a fast paced and at times competitive game of rounders! We have been lucky with the weather and a good time has been had by those families who have come along to play.
We have offered most of the families we support a chance to have time out of the usual routine and visited the local parks, Almondale Centre and Five Sisters Zoo. All in all a busy, active summer.
