Following a Community Consultation project that KKDT carried out in partnership with Dumfries and Galloway’s Employability and Skill’s Partnership (which you can read about in these articles: Opportunity for Local People: We Want to Hear from You – Kirkconnel and Kelloholm Development Trust and Family Fun and Information Day Success for KKDT – Kirkconnel and Kelloholm Development Trust), we have since opened the Kirkconnel and Kelloholm Community HUB.
The consultation led us to find that Kirkconnel and Kelloholm seemed to be lacking a lot of services needed to support residents, as well as a central place to deliver these services. Through interviewing as many residents as possible, we came to find that initial care had to be dealt with first before focusing on any further steps of reintroducing employment options. It was apparent that our area lacked essential services to support parents, and the three main issues were identified as ‘Lack of Awareness of Services’, ‘Lack of Health and Wellbeing Support’, and ‘Lack of Childcare’. With these issue in mind, we invited many of the residents that were part of the research stage to collaborate with us to find out what our first steps could be in offering residents the support they need. All participants unanimously agreed that what Kirkconnel and Kelloholm was missing was a HUB: a central space that all residents can access that provides the support and services that are often missed in rural areas.
In order to achieve this, we needed a building and a dedicated worker for the project. KKDT welcomed Project Assistant, Kelsie Littlejohn, a local resident who you can read more about on the ‘Our Team – Kirkconnel and Kelloholm Development Trust‘ page, who will be leading on the HUB project. It was decided that the HUB would be based in Hillview Leisure Centre, a central point in Kelloholm and already home to the KKDT Office. The HUB’s own private room has already been furnished for services to use, and also for locals to pop along and have a chat with Kelsie. Essentially the HUB will be open whenever the Leisure Centre is not in use which is currently every Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 9am to 2pm. Some of the services that plan to use the space include; Drug and Alcohol Support, Aims Project, Capability Scotland, NHS D&G, and DG Employability and Skills Partnership, with many more being planned for the near future.
KKDT and DG Employability and Skills Partnership are hopeful that the HUB will be a step in the right direction towards providing residents with the support they need. You can visit Kelsie during the noted opening times for a chat, and any services who will be attending the HUB/Information Sessions will be posted on the KKDT Facebook, as well as events that Kelsie has planned for the coming months. You can contact Kelsie on kelsie@kkdt.org.uk or on 07774061079.
