Relationships Scotland

It is over a year now since Relate Scotland and Family Mediation Scotland merged to become Relationships Scotland so I thought it would be interesting to have a look at their website to see what services are now on offer. Apart from Relationship Counselling and Family Mediation, Relationships Scotland currently supports a variety of other family support services: Child Contact Centres, Groups for adults and Groups for children.

Child Contact Centres offer supervision at the venue, supporting the exchange of the child from one parent to the other and supporting the contact when necessary. Alternatively Child Contact Centres may be used as a venue to “pick up” and “drop off” children for contact.


Family mediation services offer support groups for adults. These may be in the form of a series of workshops exploring the emotional and practical difficulties of divorce and separation. These groups are called Surviving the Break Up. Also on offer are a one off, 3 hour parent education workshop called Parenting Apart where parents can find out how best to support their children through separation – covering the emotional process of separation, children’s different needs at different stages, and what children need to hear.

Groups for children in which they are supported to express their thoughts and feelings in a safe environment re run by family mediation services. They meet with other children experiencing their parents divorce or separation and they are able to support one another through that. In some services these groups are called Time to Talk
Some local services provide a children and young persons’ counselling service to give children and young people time to explore their thoughts and feelings about changes they may be experiencing in their life due to parental separation, divorce or moving into a step-family situation.

Not all the services are available in all locations, unfortunately, but there is a useful search facility for finding specific services offered at different locations.