New Inverness centre will help kids in family break-ups

A PIONEERING project to support children in Inverness who have been through family break-ups has just opened.

The Child Contact Centre, run by Relationship Scotland, will support children to maintain relationships with parents or other family members they no longer live with.

The project’s aim is to provide a safe, friendly, child-centred environment for children to meet their non-resident parents or family members, with trained staff in attendance offering support.

The centre is based at the family mediation office on Academy Street and at Inverness East Church.

Highland Council director of care and learning Bill Alexander said: "For whatever reasons families do break up more often, sometimes with significant conflict or violence, and for whatever reason we have more children with fragmented lives.

"The community network is not there, our society has changed very considerably. And of course, now we are living in tough times"

"Unfortunately the council is less and less helpful to family mediation in terms of being able to provide financial support, which has reduced over the years.

"Therefore it is great that we have this great initiative that does bring together the public sector, funding sources, community action and voluntary effort from all the wonderful volunteers."

The contact centre, is the first of three planned for the North and was funded by the Big Lottery.

The £315,000 funding will be used over the next three years to develop the centre in Inverness and create another one in Caithness by 2016, as well as one in Lochaber by 2018.

Family mediation received more than 80 CVs from volunteers wanting to work at the centre and there will be 22 trained and experienced volunteers.

The services to be provided range from supported contact, supervised contact, video contact and supported handover.

Self-referral is welcomed and encouraged for the centre.

Sheriff David Sutherland said: "The break-up and end of any relationship is difficult, particularly when children are involved.

"The tragedy is that although there may be a good relationship between the parent and the child, the whole relationship is eroded by friction between the parents.

"I’m sure the service being offered here will benefit these children."

Do you want to respond to this article? If so, click here to submit your thoughts and they may be published in print.