A national perspective

The Sunflower Garden Project is a service for children and families, affected by substance misuse. The Edinburgh service is located at Simpson House in Edinburgh. However, The Project is a national initiative that aims to share the research being undertaken by The Sunflower Garden Project with the Scottish Executive, drug & alcohol action teams and to all those collating information of effective work with children affected by parental substance use.

How the service will do this

The service will work with children (aged from birth to end of primary school) and parents from Edinburgh, providing them with alternative ways of coping with the impact of their parent’s substance use. In this way the service will have a direct impact on the increasing numbers of children affected. The approach involves reducing risk and increasing the resilience of children.

The service will provide an integrated approach, bridging the gap between adult and child services. It will work collaboratively with other agencies and services, building on the strong links already established to ensure community and national approaches to the growing problem of substance use.

While there are many early intervention projects working in this field, this new service will tackle the 'inter-generational effect' of substance use. It will provide an innovative approach, incorporating play and children’s therapeutic groups, to provide early intervention in the lives of children who are at risk because of their parents' or carers' drug misuse. The service will put children's needs, welfare and safety as paramount in terms of goal setting, confidentiality and child protection.

The service will also provide, through a parents support group, assistance in parenting skills. In this way the service will provide intervention at all family levels thus 'breaking the cycle'.

Collaborative work

Best practice and research has shown that multi-disciplinary strategies are necessary to provide help with long lasting results for the child or young person. The service will work with schools, children's centres, health visitors, social workers, and other agencies.

Service development

The service development program is grounded in two main areas: the community and the national perspective. The service will be managed as part of Simpson House Drugs Counseling Service. The service will provide research information bringing a national perspective to its work and providing valuable information for the development of national intervention strategies.

The Sunflower Garden aims to duplicate the service throughout Scotland.