Family Journeys are excited to annouce our new venue in Duddingston. In collaboration with Jock Tamson Gardiens, and Fairer Life Chances, we are delighted to now be able to offer community based family connections (“child contact”) services in a dedicated natural outdoor, theraputic venue. Nurture at The Den is a nature-based therapeutic family connections programme. A special and serene community based enclosed, safe, space available to Family Journeys and our children, young people, and their families to build better relationships and connections during family time. Focussed on delivering child-led, connection based, trauma-informed family connections support that addresses inequality for single parents, strengthens family wellbeing, and improves long-term life chances for children and their parents who have experienced a traumatic separation. Through a blend of outdoor family connection work, therapeutic activities, intensive family support,mediation and skills development, the project aims to support positive family relationships, reduce barriers to equal life chances often experienced with single parent households, increase trust in adults, grow confidence and resilience, and empower young people to move toward stable futures without repeated patterns of generational trauma and broken attachments.
We know that nature-based, community driven service delivery improves connection, trust, self-regulation and increases engagement for children with disrupted trauma and attachment histories. Many families accessing Family Journeys support have historically benefited from therapeutic spaces outside of the four walls of a traditional “contact centre”, when we have piloted “contact in the community”, developing safe relationships that can be set up to thrive. Following our 3-year Promise Project, we also identified that care experienced young people have particularly benefitted from non-institutional, outdoor relationship building and developed skills for young adulthood that have not been modelled in their own childhood.
For more information on our services at The Den, please contact us on info@familyjourneys.scot