Hello readers! We hope this finds you well and making the most of your time at home!
We just wanted to give you an update on what we’re doing and how we will continue to support children and families over the next few months.
We have prioritised the health of SLCo’s service users, volunteers and staff by temporarily closing our main office in Dundee, and all of our regional teams are working from home.
Our services remain active, we will continue to provide a Telephone Helpline for parents or carers needing some guidance on what to do at home or someone to chat to.
Mrs Pop-ins our virtual family coach, will provide tips and downloadable activity sheets which busy mums and dads can use at home to help boost their children’s learning and social interaction – it’s a really good idea to keep a routine and not let any gains your child has made slip.
SLCo Interactive, our e-learning hub for parents – is a good source of information and learning – make use of it whilst you’re at home – we’re adding new resources soon.
Our Facebook and Twitter pages are good points of contact, there will be a new FB private group running soon which might be a helpful hub to join, providing a space to share questions and worries. Positive strategies to use at home will be the focus as well as opportunities to get 1:1 advice.
Our new online Fred & Tallulah’s Learn & Play Club will be ready to launch within the next week or two. Fred & Tallulah, that is Fred (the lucky black cat) and Tallulah (the Airedale terrier with the waggy tail) who are the mascots for our social clubs, featuring Robotics and Lego play, will now be the hosts of our online community for as long as it takes to start our kids and youth clubs and regular activities again. This will really help them to maintain their social circles and build social communication skills. Moderated and guaranteed child-safe of course! Contact us if you’d like to find out about how to join.
Please look out for regular bulletins which will keep you up to date with events – you can also easily just subscribe to our mailing list.
If you can help us get over the finish line with our Make Friends with Marty Crowdfunding Campaign – we’ve only a hundred pounds or so to raise! – the kids who will attend the future club we’re fundraising to run – will benefit so much!
We hope you’ll find something useful for you and your children during such challenging circumstances we understand how much more difficult it is with kids who need extra support, so please let us know how we can help.
You can also access a lot of useful information from the Scottish Government all in the one place. Following school closures, a new hub of information has been created on parentclub.scot covering health information, advice on how to talk about Covid-19 and ideas on helping children through this time. Click here to access the hub