Quarriers Family Centre - Ruchazie

The Quarriers Family Centre in Greater Easterhouse, Glasgow has been a remarkably effective and innovative multi-agency project. Quarriers Family Centre provides support to families with children up to the age of 12 years. The service began in June 2000 in a small flat in Ruchazie and in 2002 moved into purpose-built premises. The Family Centre supports up to 100 families with a multi-disciplinary team that provides nursery education and daycare, outreach work, family work, groupwork and individual work. The nursery places are for children up to the age of three years and offers an extended day and all year round provision.

Family support services provided at the centre offers both open access to families in the local community and to families with additional needs in the Glasgow East CHCP area who are referred by statutory and voluntary agencies.

Quarriers is passionate about supporting children and their families to live safe, happy and fulfilling lives. We deliver services that recognise children and their families can face many challenges and they may need a range of supports to meet these needs. Our services are child centred, flexible and accessible and we aim to make a real difference to children’s lives every day.

Quarriers’ model of family support is informed by a distinct set of principles that guide practice in all our projects. These are:

  • Respect – our staff will respect children, families, colleagues and agencies we work with.
  • Clear and Open Communication – we believe trust is the foundation for building and supporting good relationships. We tell it like it is, even when it’s hard to hear.
  • Honest relationships – with parents and children and this includes challenging each other in a constructive and respectful way as well as celebrating achievements.
  • Resilience – Our staff and services are resilient and work hard to engage with families and stay alongside them for as long as it takes to make a difference.
  • Purposeful – our family support plans and reviews keep us on track so that families can reach their goals.
  • Child Centred – We are committed to children’s right’s-based practice and we keep the safety and well-being of children at the centre of everything we do.
  • Hopeful – we believe that with the right support at the right time, people can improve their improve the quality of their lives.
  • Responsive – We in partnership with children and families to make sure that we offer the right support, at the right time in the right way to make a difference.

Quarriers approach to supporting children and their families has been developed over time and is based on our experience and learning from the large number of projects and services we have developed and delivered in Scotland and England.

We know that honest and meaningful relationships are key to our success and we encourage and inform our staff by offering learning opportunities to develop their understanding, knowledge and skills in key areas such as human and child development, safeguarding children, attachment and loss, trauma and resilience.  Ongoing training and regular supervision are important for the professional development of staff in developing a humanistic and ecological approach in our work with families.

This means we have confident and dedicated staff who understand that the way in which they engage with children and their parents is the key to developing real, sensitive, thoughtful and reflective relationships. This knowledge and understanding of both children and their carers help our staff to deliver support which creates an environment of hope within which parents can be supported to provide the close, loving, secure family relationships that children need to develop their potential to be successful participants in their communities.