Kin Begins

Kin Begins is back at the Kin Collective Family Wellbeing Hub on Monday 26 October, starting at 6:00 PM. It's the community wellbeing pregnancy support project run by Kin Collective, a Leith-based organisation, and it's built around mental health and wellbeing during pregnancy and into parenthood.

The sessions are led by perinatal wellbeing practitioners with support from peer volunteers, and they're designed as a space to learn, connect and share. The whole thing is focused on early intervention and prevention, with the aim of reducing pre- and postnatal mental health challenges before they take hold. If you're expecting or in those early days of parenthood, it's a place to find other people in the same boat and get some professional support alongside it.

There's a bit of local history behind it too. Kin Begins was one of ten new community initiatives approved through Leith Chooses, the area's participatory budgeting event. It's been running for more than a decade and lets residents of Ward 13 (Leith) and Ward 12 (Leith Walk) decide how public funds are spent in their own neighbourhood. Nearly £2 million of income from Edinburgh's visitor levy now supports community activity across the city through the scheme, which the Cockburn Association describes as a model of local knowledge driving social infrastructure. In plain terms, it's a project that came from the community and is funded by the city's visitors.

It runs from the Kin Collective Family Wellbeing Hub at Lochend Road Hall, Leith, EH6 8HT, Edinburgh, on Monday 26 October at 6:00 PM.