10 years of positivity with Nourish, proving anything is possible

From its humble beginnings as a group of five parents who set out to support one another, the group has grown to be at the forefront of additional needs services in the town.

Lynne Scott, founding member and manager of Nourish, has been the driving force behind the charity from the very beginning, leading the way to ensure not one person or family is forgotten about.

She said: “I’m really excited to be celebrating 10 years of Nourish, and I am blown away by how far we’ve come.

“We’ve had so many fantastic achievements over the years, and when I think back to our first group meeting I think, wow, compared to where we are now, wow is absolutely the right the word to use!”

Lynne’s son Adam was born in 2000, and was diagnosed with multiple health conditions, with Lynne and her family being told by doctors that he may not live to adulthood.

"It was an extremely difficult time, and although friends and family were supportive, I needed more,” she said. “I joined a parent support group ran by Forth Child Development Centre and met so many other lovely, supportive parents, who were experiencing similar challenges to me.

"In 2011 the centre moved to Glenrothes, and myself and other families in Kirkcaldy really felt the loss.”

With only £50 in a kitty to buy tea, coffee, cups and saucers, Lynne and four other parents decided to create their own group and met for the first time in Hayfield Community Centre using borrowed toys for their children.

On that day Nourish Support Centre was born and has strived to support people and families with additional need in the Kirkcaldy area ever since.

“We hired a hall in Hayfield Community Centre and created Nourish. We borrowed furniture and toys, and met every Thursday afternoon.

"It wasn’t long before other families joined, and we held our first official open day in January 2012, before becoming a registered charity in June that year.

"Three out of the five founding members have stayed with Nourish, been part of the Journey, and are still a huge part of Nourish now. Aileen Dryburgh, Beverley Mclean and myself, who all have children with additional support needs – we know and understand the challenges faced by families – we get it!"

Over the years Nourish has had many celebrations and also faced many challenges, with some families seeing their children grow up and move on with new families joining the group.

These challenges didn’t last very long however, as more families joined Nourish and as the group grew it moved to larger premises.

"We moved to Linton Lane Centre, where we held some fantastic family activities and fundraising events, but budget cuts in our local area saw more families not only asking about our services, but also asking what we could do to support them.

"It was clear that there was a need for more than what we were doing – there were many gaps needing filled, and we wanted to try and help fill them.”

As the group grew, and with support from Fife Council, Nourish moved into Glebe Park Centre in 2017 to begin delivering its new services.

"We opened our Happy Mondays group for adults with additional support needs, and provided extra family support sessions as well as introducing our food support service for families who were struggling to make ends meet.

"We also began Holiday Clubs, providing activities and home cooked meals for families, and we gradually began to grow all while looking for funding to support our dreams.”

Last year when the coronavirus pandemic struck, Nourish, like the rest of the world suddenly came to a stop, however, Lynne and her team quickly realised that families who Nourish supported needed their help.

"When lockdown was announced, local businesses got in touch to offer us food donations as they closed their doors. This helped many of the families we were supporting and we needed to ensure we could continue with this.

"Stephens Bakers provided us with daily donations of fresh rolls and cakes, and many of our members started volunteering to pick up and deliver the food to my home.

"We also delivered online support which included weekly online family support groups, weekly family quiz time, and weekly activities and discos for the children and young people – it really helped our members to still feel connected and part of something.”

During 2020 it was clear to Lynne that the need was still there for support, and as Nourish had to leave Glebe Park, they started to look for new premises.

“We found Elizabeth House and fell in love, but we didn’t have the funds, so we started a joint campaign with the Fife Free Press, and before long Pete Melville from Pete’s Man Chat Movement got involved too.

"We held fundraising events that included dressing up and waving posters at roundabouts, Kirkcaldy Retail Park and Kirkcaldy High Street.

"Fife council gave us £5000, our local community got behind us and in just a few weeks we raised the remaining £10,000 to secure our first years rent.

"We were blown away at how quickly we raised the funds and we opened our new dedicated family support centre. We also changed our organisation over to become a SCIO (Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation) and secured more funding to run projects and hire staff.“As we celebrate our 10th birthday and enjoy looking back over the years, we are also looking forward – we know there are many more families in Fife who would benefit from our services, and if we can secure funding to hire more staff, we know we can achieve this goal.”

Thank you for reading this article on our free-to-read website. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

Please consider purchasing a subscription to our print newspaper to help fund our trusted, fact-checked journalism.